Our Associate Company programme formalises our significant commitment to long-term artist development. While Shoreditch Town Hall has always existed to champion and support artists, this initiative provides a clear public framework for our sustained relationships with artists and companies. Over a one-year period, we’ll work together to allow time for meaningful creative development of considered, high-quality work that reflects the values of our venue.
The companies supported as part of this programme should help to illustrate the type of work we present at Shoreditch Town Hall and what audiences can expect to see as part of our programme. We are dedicated to platforming LGBTQ+ and women-led work that is rooted in lived experience and engages with the history of the building as a space for dialogue, discussion, protest & progression. In response to the continued lack of funding and resources available to develop new work, we believe it is vital that, as an established venue, we are investing in and supporting artists to make work that will play in our unique spaces.
This programme fosters an outward-facing collaboration where artists act as artistic sounding boards and ambassadors, championing experimental practice. By providing commission funding, residency space, and technical support, we empower companies to play an active role in our wider programme through workshops, talks, and community collaboration.
Josie Dale-Jones is a multi-award-winning theatre maker, producer and performer whose work champions theatre as a catalyst for social change. As the lead artist behind ThisEgg, she creates bold, collaboratively devised performances that interrogate power, freedom and contemporary life, earning widespread critical acclaim, including multiple Scotsman Fringe First Awards. Her work has been celebrated for its urgency, wit and political clarity, establishing her as a vital and distinctive voice in experimental theatre. Josie was recently part of Shoreditch Town Hall’s Spring 2025 season with her acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe transfer A Little Inquest Into What We Are All Doing Here.
ThisEgg plays with theatrical form, often celebrating the here and now of a live event. Responding to the world we are living in, ThisEgg invites audiences to ask big questions and imagine into a potentially better future. ThisEgg's work is firmly rooted in the hope that theatre can be a motivational force for social change. ThisEgg aims to make people feel more connected.
ThisEgg’s most recent show A Little Inquest Into What We Are All Doing Here premiered at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, receiving a Scotsman Fringe First Award 2024. Before that, ThisEgg’s dressed. received a Scotsman Fringe First 2018 as well as a nomination for ThisEgg for Total Theatre Awards’ Emerging Company 2018. The show completed a national tour before returning to the Festival for the British Council Showcase 2019. ThisEgg won the inaugural Underbelly and New Diorama Untapped Award 2018 for early-mid career theatre companies. Me & My Bee, ThisEgg’s last show for family audiences won the inaugural Les Enfants Terribles Stepladder Award 2017 & was nominated for The Fringe Sustainable Practice Award & Brighton Award for Excellence. Me & My Bee was performed almost 200 times across 150 venues in England, Scotland, Ireland & Wales. It toured again in Summer 2021 produced by Oxford Playhouse. It was part of National Theatre’s River Stage Performances in Summer 2022. Whilst government restrictions lifted following COVID-19, ThisEgg created DISMANTLE, and when we went back into lockdown, made & then everything just-.
ThisEgg was commissioned by British Council’s Creative Commissions stands to create an international film and podcast series, motherEarth international for COP27. ThisEgg currently has three new shows in development, un/fortunately, You Do You & motherEarth.
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Jonathan Watkins is an award-winning director and choreographer celebrated for ambitious, cross-disciplinary work that reimagines literary and contemporary texts for stage and screen. His visually striking productions, spanning theatre, dance and film, have been presented at major venues and broadcasters in the UK and internationally. His company Ballet Queer creates authentic work that represents Queer identities and experiences, exploring and challenging what ballet can be and showcasing the talents of LGBTQ+ artists. Jonathan regularly leads Ballet Queer workshops exploring queer identity through dance at Shoreditch Town Hall, open to Hackney residents with an interest in dance.
Ballet Queer is the UK’s first LGBTQ+ ballet company founded by Jonathan Watkins. Ballet Queer creates authentic work that represents Queer identities and experiences, exploring and challenging what ballet can be, and showcases the talents of LGBTQ+ artists.
Ballet but not… In the past, ballet provided images, legends, spaces and institutions through which Queer artists and audiences could achieve some degree of visibility. Now we create a safe space of full visibility with Queer artists for ALL audiences to learn, engage, discover and enjoy. Ballet Queer works with a diverse range of humans who identify as Queer as well as creative allies, organisations and audiences.
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020 7739 6176
info@shoreditchtownhall.com
Shoreditch Town Hall,
380 Old Street,
London EC1V 9LT
