Our next Pitch Up event will be on Tuesday 8 October at our host venue Gulbenkian Arts Centre. Pitch Up provides a space for making connections, for new partnerships to emerge and flourish.

We are now pleased to announce the ten artists and companies who will join us to pitch their work alongside house venues BEAM Hertford, Ropetackle Arts Centre, The Alex, Gulbenkian Arts Centre, ARK Cliftonville, EM Forster Theatre, The Hawth, The Marlowe Theatre and Applause Rural Touring, Brighton Fringe and Looping the Loop.

We are thrilled to be welcoming such an inspiring group of artists, companies and venues together in Canterbury. Meet the artists and companies below:

She Said Jump

She Said Jump is a physical theatre company combining the silly and the serious to create performances for indoor, outdoor and digital spaces. We create original equipment that helps us to integrate stories with aerial circus. Our approach focuses on playfulness and communication and draws on theatre clown, circus, dance, mime and puppetry.

Pitching - Dirt is an immersive, multi-sensory performance and installation for children 5+ and families, with accessibility woven throughout. Inspired by Lewis Carol’s classic tale, Dirt invites audiences to fall down the wormhole and journey underground into the living ecosystem of the soil, exploring our connection to the earth and each other.

TalkShow

TalkShow creates live performances, work for digital platforms and participation projects where the audience has a role to play. We work collaboratively with artists and communities, creating pieces that flip modern fears and anxieties into collective experiences.

"exquisitely crafted & often painfully funny"- The Guardian

Pitching - Bad Party is an interactive theatre experience for 8-12 year olds. The Bad Party audience will be guests at a party, but with a sense that all is not well. They’ll need empathy and creativity to get the party, and the adults running it, back on track!

Beeja

Beeja is a dynamic dance company that creates and tours innovative dance theatre, including Choogh Choogh, an immersive performance for early years, inspired by the sights and sounds of an Indian train journey. Developed with early years settings, it has toured theatre venues and nurseries, increasing capacity for South Asian-led participatory work and engaging young children in the arts.

Pitching - Choogh Choogh is an immersive performance for early years children, inspired by Indian train journey, enriching South Asian-led work. Our new project, RedYellowBlueGreen, is a multi-sensory experience referencing Holi, designed to immerse children of all ethnicities in vibrant colours and interactive

Half a String

Half a String uses puppetry, design and original music to craft fantastical human stories that are grounded in live performance. We tour theatre, publish books and work with people of all ages to unleash creativity. Our community of artists explore ideas to create accessible, intelligent and astonishing work that champions meaningful collective experiences.

Pitching - Breathe is an Offies Award nominated show about the ways trees work. Through the use of intricate puppetry and ground breaking live camera work, live folk music and D&B our audience is immersed in a story that captures the imagination of the whole family (5+).

Coppice Theatre

Coppice Theatre is an award winning theatre company based in Cornwall. Coppice was founded in 2016 by a group of Cornwall based artists with the aim of providing professional theatre work for emerging practitioners across the theatre arts.

Our work: Science based storytelling shows Science Adventures, The Power Pickle, Deep Sea (toured to schools, theatres, fringe festivals and via rural touring). Tales from a Haunted Bookshop for slightly older audiences (8+). A collection of spooky tales for horrible children.

Pitching - How to Catch a Book Witch, A children’s storytelling show (4+) that explores the importance of libraries, sharing stories and not judging people. Featuring live music, puppetry, captions, key-word signing and optional accompanying workshops. Kira loves reading, one day the words in the books start to disappear, there is a Book Witch hiding in the library.

Moving Memory Dance Theatre

Moving Memory Dance Theatre has been entertaining family audiences since 2011 delighting them with shows that are surprising and life enhancing, drawing on the perspectives and experiences of older people.

We make and present striking, visual and meaningful performances, films and installations which surprise and entertain audiences and change peoples’ perspectives of ageing.

Pitching - Devil's Doorbell a passionate response to the pervasive misogyny written through women’s lives, laced with laughter and the moving messiness of life. Target audience - 50+

A family show, Golden Slumbers will be a highly visual outdoor show exploring the endless cycle of labour, celebrating everyone’s right to little rest.

Yolanda Mercy

BAFTA Nominee - Yolanda Mercy is a British Nigerian writer, performer, and director whose creative journey has taken her from the stages of London to the international screens of television and beyond. With a passion for storytelling that knows no bounds, Yolanda’s work has garnered critical acclaim and numerous accolades.

Pitching - Big Bodies Cabaret a joyous celebration of plus size bodies, movement, and self-expression. This 75-minute dance theatre extravaganza challenges conventions, embracing the beauty and power of plus-size bodies in motion. Featuring a dynamic mix of dance, theatre, and music, this show redefines what it means to take up space with unapologetic joy. Come for the performance, stay for the post-show rave—where all bodies are celebrated, and everyone is invited to move freely. Join us in reclaiming the stage, one joyful step at a time.

Xan Dye

Xan Dye (they/them) is a neurodivergent artist based between London and Surrey, exploring rhythmic, repetitive movement as stimming – a manifestation of their neurodivergence.

For Xan, the intersection of stimming and dance is a way to explore accessibility in dance practice. Their ongoing project STIMMING, on which they are lead artist, is funded by Arts Council England.

Pitching - Practicing in Parallel is a performance project combining movement, drawing and sound for neurodivergent, learning disabled folk and the communities we interact with.
A dialogue between drawing and dancing emerges through deep listening. Internal rhythms become externalised and shared. Drawer and dancer exchange tools and inhabit each other’s space and sensory worlds. Their roles blur and unspool.

Microwave Coven

Microwave Coven is a new company that has launched as a product of Develop Your Creative Practice Funding, which was awarded to the Artistic Director in order to specialise in intergenerational co-creation.

Pitching - Our first ever piece of local, intergenerational, co-created family theatre, made with local over 75s and under 12s, and to be performed professionally in autumn 2025. The play will be for all the family, and for the audience that created it, in South East Kent.

Smoking Apples

Smoking Apples are an award winning puppetry and visual theatre company that work with complex subject matter. There are three main strands to our work; indoor touring shows, outdoors and large scale work and outreach/educational projects. Our indoor work is the most active strand and since 2010, we have created six original shows.

Pitching - We Are More Alike
A family friendly, large scale outdoor show, We Are More Alike follows the movement of people through the Kentish coastline.

A new outdoor show suitable for family audiences, exploring our rivers and open water spaces.