Hello friends. We have some Mayfest news.

We're taking a year off next year. Mayfest has been rampaging all over Bristol for, well, years. In the past few years the festival has increased quite dramatically in terms of reach, scale and ambition. And this year, we've really struggled to secure the additional investment we need in order to bring you the festival to which you are accustomed. As you may be aware, the pressures of fundraising in the current climate make delivering an annual festival very demanding. So we'll be back in 2018, and every 'even' year after that. In order to keep thriving, we need longer to make it all happen.

The first revelation for me in the Agents for Change process has been that walking and talking feels really good. I mean, I’ve done it on away days, but not really as part of my normal working day. It really allows you to think. But walk we did, Alice and I, around the harbourside from Colston Hall past Watershed and the amphitheatre all the way along to Hotwells and then back up past the ss Great Britain and M Shed.

Catch Of Riders and Running Horses in this short documentary about Tbilisi International Festival Theatre.

MAYK and Situations remember Sanctum, one year on. 

Last month we joined Still House in Tbilisi, Georgia to present Of Riders and Running Horses and a UK cultural delegation in Seoul, South Korea. Here are some notes from the field.

There's nothing like trying to drag a suitcase through the streets of Edinburgh at the tail end of the Fringe to make you want to escape to a quieter place. I finished four inspiring days at the world's biggest arts festivals with Rachel Clerke's blistering Cuncrete ringing in my ears and headed for Iceland; a place that couldn’t really be more different to Edinburgh in August.

Reykjavik’s Every Body’s Spectacular festival is collaborative working at its best. Two distinct programmes, Lókal and Reykjavik Dance Festival, combine for an annual festival of local and international work. We’ve been lucky to have been invited for a number of years, and it’s been great to get to know some of the local artists on this remote volcanic rock.