New Diorama launch free rehearsal complex for independent artists in world first

Hattie Fisk
Monday, October 4, 2021

Partnering with British Land, New Diorama Theatre’s Broadgate project offers 20,000 square feet of rehearsal space to more than 80,000 creatives over the next year, free of charge.

Rehearsals in NDT Broadgate
Rehearsals in NDT Broadgate

Guy J Sanders

The new space, NDT Broadgate, boasts 29 high quality rehearsal spaces, meeting rooms, design studios and communal areas, designed by artists. The building is fully staffed and equipped, and is available for free, providing independent artists and freelancers with space and resources. The project aims to support hundreds of new theatre productions and promote the renewal of London’s arts and culture industry post-pandemic. 

The team suggests that the space can act as a blueprint for future projects in other places around the country. This is emphasised by the project's partnership with the Culture & Commerce Taskforce, who are using NDT Broadgate as a testbed for how culture and commerce can work together for mutual benefit to accelerate London’s recovery. This taskforce is chaired by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, and is led by the City of London Corporation with Culture Mile. 

Four NDT associate theatre companies will co-programme the space alongside New Diorama: Nouveau Riche, The Pappyshow, Migrants In Theatre and Chinese Arts Now. Each of these companies will have a dedicated office and rehearsal space in the building. 

The project will also provide a home for theatre designers, with the interior spaces imagined and created by freelance theatre design team Joshua Gadsby and Naomi Kuyck-Cohen. NDT’s staff associate designer Shankho Chaudhuri will also launch a design studio and make-space at NDT Broadgate, free for early-career designers to use.

New Diorama Theatre artistic & executive director, and NDT Broadgate founder, David Byrne said: ‘Through lockdown we’ve all been imagining what a better world could look like. NDT Broadgate will be an engine for change – a place where artists will come back together and catalyse a new wave of creativity, accessing free shared assets to make inspiring new performances that will energise the nation, while investing in new ways of working and a more inclusive future. None of this would be possible without the generosity and insight of our partners British Land. 

Everything we’re doing will be made completely free to the country’s artists, in a world-first act of radical generosity to support the return to live performance.’

Senior project manager at NDT Broadgate, Justin Masterson, said: ‘I think the best thing about the space is that by December, 42 per cent of all the companies we have given space to will be Black, Asian or global majority artists, 48 per cent will be working class, and 23 per cent will be D/deaf or disabled. I think nobody in theatre is hitting those numbers, and it is something we should be striving for.’

Early bird applications for free space at NDT Broadgate between 4 January – 31 March 2022 are now open. 

www.newdiorama.com/ndt-broadgate