We’ve always been fascinated by technology, and in artistic projects being developed simultaneously – especially across communities and naturally curated collective models. We’re big believers in keeping an open mind. Being an interdisciplinary collective, our model is naturally one of motion, and also one that means we choose to rely on others as well as ourselves. The movement of ideas from one place to another through a series of gates, a series of people – with each stop being a structural or format-based set of boundaries that changes the fundamental ideas that pass through it. When we take an idea for sound and lead it through into a film scenario we have to ask ourselves what changes? And why?

Be it experimental short films (see our short MONO) or interdisciplinary community projects combining theatre, sound and literature like Transmissions in 2025 – it’s safe to say we like to get stuck into non conventional means, especially if it means trying something we’ve never done before. But now we’re at the end of one our biggest projects yet, and we’re looking to bring it to you after a year of collaboration.

Throughout 2026, we were incredibly fortunate. Thanks to funding from Arts Council England, Lift Off Global Network and The Royal Society of Literature, we set out on a year long project to develop our work in projection, rendering and captioning as well as build or own in-house studio equipment build. It’s something we’ve always aimed for but never had the support to actually contribute to new artistic projects and build what we need. This desire to create cost-effective and practical technical solutions to accessibility and interdisciplinary standards for cross-platform creative work, began COMMUNE.

Over the course of a year we held Research and Developments projects at Bush Theatre, Et Cetera Theatre Camden and Omnibus Theatre Clapham to develop live performance elements and short films and cinema projects to be used both as digital resources and excerpts for live performance. We’ve used a combination of live spaces and these cinematic motifs in order to crossover with the two sources – the result being spaces that are inhabited by both audience and artist alike in order to be embraced and a participatory experience enacted, rather than just speciation. More than just making new things, these spaces were places for us to try and fail, and then try again.

Our priority is live performances. As much as we enjoy filmmaking, we always like to draw it back to a live space. Be it through contributing to showcases and premiering at physical spaces, or by using our recorded materials as cinematic motifs. So we’re fascinated by what technology can provide live spaces.

Interdisciplinary work for us is more than just dramaturgical or artistic, but it’s also practical. What are we able to use in a space? If we’re using sound and film as digital motifs – how do we make the most of this?

Or I guess to be more specific, how do we not f*** it up.

Projection was always an obvious one. An essential area to broaden a live experience so that we can enhance visuals – a way to bring cinema into a space where it interacts with sound and performers. All of which helps it become an experience to take part in rather than just spectate. But then from an accessibility perspective as well, captioning felt vital. Given our previous access based work, upscaling our technical ability in-house meant that we could really embed this in everything we do. Having all of these as motifs for us to use gives such exciting potentials around our devising process.

The obvious use for funding is equipment. It seemed like an obvious first step that having this equipment in-house would be invaluable to us. But that idea has developed as we started to understand how video, animation and rendering software intersect within our practice, and how it can actually benefit work beyond ours. St Ghosty has always been about supporting people around us as well as promoting our work, but it’s felt like we haven’t necessarily had huge opportunities to do this yet.

We of course have SIGNALS, our dramatic and project feedback service for scripts and funding applications, but we wanted a way to support creatives in our network more thoroughly. It’s always been the case the AV and tech in live performance, particularly installation and theatre, have been somewhat priced up. There’s no shade here, we get it, it’s a tough time to be freelancers (where more than 75% of AV services originates) but we suddenly realised that COMMUNE put us in a unique position to actually provide tangible services to our community, in more radical ways through the exchange of services or low cost solutions.

Because we’re largely subsidised, we don’t rely on the results of COMMUNE for income – which we’re extremely fortunate for.

This means we can offer something that’s just more who we are…more ‘us’.

Be it for a lower cost because we can front the equipment, or by exchanging skills in physical or digital spaces where we can swap knowledge and experiences to benefit simultaneous art. Rather than offering a product, we can offer our time and a chat. A relationship where AV/tech solutions are integrated into a project from the inception seems far more useful to emerging creatives and far more in keeping with our model. The prospect of a network of artistic projects being developed simultaneously through skill sharing between collectives and artists is an incredibly exciting one.

Now we’re at the conclusion of our project, creating two short films, premiering them at three different film festivals, internationally at festivals in Shanghai and Thailand as well as creating theatre events across London and the East Midlands in five launch events. Likewise, we’ve managed to pay 12 different freelancers/creatives in order to facilitate events for a total of 820 audience members – now with a fully functional in-house creation suite.

We’re incredibly proud and now stand at a point where COMMUNE is a resource as well as the full establishment of our practise as a collective. And we want to share it according to our purpose – to make AV, captioning and projection easier for new/emerging creatives. We want to share what we’ve learned with others and are now in a position to support other emerging creatives. These things are often costly, and the ongoing aftermath of this project is to set out to reduce this to as great an extent as possible with creatives we’re connected to, or likewise to work on an exchange basis of skills rather than just financial.

All of that has been tested over the past year. The R&Ds, the rehearsals but also the conversations and professionals who have helped us by guiding us through some of those initial pitfalls.

There’s still more for us to learn, of course – but we’re now excited that we now have the capacity to be more substantially interdisciplinary and supportive to emerging creatives, which are the two pillars of what we’re trying to achieve here.

Reach out via email or social media if you’d like an informal conversation about COMMUNE and about either onboarding our skills onto your project, or potentially contributing to ours! We want COMMUNE to expand, and can’t wait to see where this goes now we have the equipment and skills to back up our ambitions.

Tom, Faizah & George x