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If I'd have to sum up The Space in one word that one word would be...
A delight.
Huge.
Accessible.
I'm thinking something like rich.
Opportunity?
Far-reaching? That's a hybrid word. Does that count?
A feast?
Space.
Exhilarating.
We're celebrating a year of great art.
A year of full-length performances,
new commissions and fresh ideas
from the UK's arts and culture scene.
The Space has been up and running since May 2012,
changing the way you can enjoy the arts.
Perfect.
There's new dance, film,
theatre, performances and much more.
Live, free and on demand.
When I arrive at the Space,
I'm thrilled by the content that is there.
I feel I need more hours in the day to be able to absorb that.
And 1.5 million of you have enjoyed what's on offer.
Because you miss 99.9% of everything that happens in the arts.
So it's good to be able to catch up on things
at your own leisure.
Established British artists feature alongside fresh emerging talent.
You can create your own version
of the York Mystery Plays
choosing from multiple camera angles.
And there's exclusive access
into John Peel's private record collection.
John's record collection is one of the most important in the world.
And The Space project is
actually allowing people to have a small insight into what's there.
Britain's artists came up with ambitious and creative works
to engage, provoke and delight.
- Bye, bye. - Bye, mummy!
- See you later! - Bye!
Bye, mummy!
Renowned choreographer Russell Maliphant
took his sell-out show The Rodin Project
and adapted it for The Space
creating a beautiful work of art in its own right.
It allowed me to make Erebus.
It allowed me to work on a collaboration with great people
which we'd been hoping to happen
but didn't have the resources and the funds to do that.
So The Space gave us the opportunity.
We showcase highlights
from the London 2012 Festival and the Cultural Olympiad
during a spectacular time for the UK's vibrant arts scene.
The Space matched that extraordinary creativity
with digital experimentation.
What could be really thrilling about The Space
from the work we've seen it produced so far
is the way it can help the arts
to become digital innovators.
A lot of the arts tend to be digital laggards.
They're not using the resource of the internet
as well or as brilliantly or as creatively as they might.
Both for creating new work
and for reaching, engaging and enriching new audiences.
So The Space has got a really huge potential.
Lyrical gymnasts, Tongue Fu, took their improvised poetry night
and adapted it for the digital world.
That helped spread the word about this off-beat art form.
Since doing The Space project
we've seen a significant increase in our audiences.
We've had opportunities to come to the Albert Hall and do this gig.
The Space has definitely helped us to grow our profile.
I think it's a fantastic way for people to see
what they might be drawn to.
What might appeal to them.
Because you can sit in front of a computer for an hour
and watch several pieces.
And think, "Wow, that one is fantastic! I really want to go and see that."
The Birmingham Opera Company
sold out a performance of the Helicopter String Quartet.
Part of its production of Stockhausen's Mittwoch.
But thousands more got the chance to see the UK premiere
thanks to a live stream on The Space.
Catching it as it happened or later on demand.
And that was just one of the many live performances
The Space brought to your TV, laptop, tablet and smartphone.
And in January The Space hosted a broadcast
from backstage at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden.
Presented by Kirsty Wark and me, Suzy Klein,
Royal Opera Live featured unprecedented behind-the-scenes access
to rehearsals, interviews and insights
during more than ten hours of uninterrupted programming.
Nobody was precious about us
seeing them maybe slightly not quite getting it right.
Everybody was so anxious to show us what they did. It was wonderful.
We got a real sense. We were looking at a maquette of a new performance.
We were seeing somebody going through their Russian.
We were seeing fight sequences.
We were seeing senior opera singers go through their paces.
It was something really rather special.
It culminated in a world first.
A performance where the viewer could choose between sampling the backstage action
watching the conductor in the orchestra pit or the drama on stage.
The Space had several cameras available.
We were performing act three of Wagner's Die Walküre.
It was incredible, because that night there was as much drama backstage
as there was on stage.
Things were potentially gonna go very, very wrong.
But in the end all was saved.
The fact that this was captured on film and people can see
the real workings of backstage during a performance
I think is important and unique.
That technical innovation is at the heart of The Space,
putting you in control.
Whether that's remixing your own version of Holst's The Planets,
reading Will Self's re-imagined Literary Essay for the digital age
or playing with a new soundtrack to a once silent film
commissioned from the New Radiophonic Workshop,
a sound artists' collective
founded by The Space.
Vortex Jazz Club developed a dynamic player
which offered you the option to pause a performance
and put the music and the musicians into context.
It allowed for innovation,
it allowed us to think about the way that we would do it differently,
than you would do in many other circumstances
if you were putting it online, if we were just gonna go through usual avenues.
As well as building digital skills in the arts sector
The Space encourages artists to try new things
backed by unique partnership between Arts Council England and the BBC.
It has magical powers.
Take it. Take it!
That helped first-time television director Dawn Walton
make the transition from stage to screen.
Every single day was a learning experience which I very much enjoyed,
loved, ate up and grabbed hold of
and got as much as I could.
And I hope improve throughout the process.
And I feel very confident about approaching film now
which I didn't before The Space.
I didn't know if I could do it. Now I feel I definitely can.
And I can't wait for the next time to do it again.
Art from across the UK is championed.
From Acropolis in Belfast,
new music from the northeast
to a country boy's struggle: the wannabe rapper from Cornwall.
And of course, The Space is available wherever you are in the world,
whether it's New Zealand, New York or Newport.
The Space brings a worldwide audience to the British arts scene
like the Globe Theatre's ambitious season to stage all of Shakespeare's 37 plays
each in a different language.
Without The Space the place wouldn't even have been filmed,
let alone available everywhere in the world.
We got data back about who was watching it
and we found that lots of people were watching
the films of the Globe to Globe shows in Istanbul, Lahore and in Mexico City.
It's thrilling to think that you didn't have to be here on bankside to take part.
The Space brings layers of context
to help you get the most out of the ever expanding art scene.
On his very first film Hitchcock signed his name.
This is a very bold thing to do.
And everything about the film, how it's structured, written and shot
is extremely confident.
Expert advice features alongside gems from the archive.
While forgotten footage from the vaults of the BFI,
Arts Council and BBC is presented in refreshing ways.
The Space teamed up with the BBC's multi-award winning art's strand
to check in to the newly commissioned Arena Hotel.
This ground-breaking online-project
allows the viewer to delve into Arena's 35-year history.
As I'm speaking it becomes archived,
as the words are leaving my mouth and being recorded on the camera.
And I think if you put the archive together
with the internet,
then you have the potential for a kind of virtual time travel.
And certainly a time travel in the mind,
which offers us all sorts of extraordinary possibilities.
So what happens now?
The Space has connected a wider audience to the arts
and has captured a unique collection of UK culture.
What The Space allows and offers
is that kind of extra dimension to the arts.
It adds to the whole mix of what's online.
It was huge for us to get that commission.
You know, we sat next to the Globe.
You might be able to watch it through a smartphone
or you might be able to watch things
on a computer in an internet café anywhere in the world. And that's huge.
This is The Space.
Hundreds of hours of original work
direct from some of the nation's greatest artists and arts organisations
will remain free and on demand for you to enjoy as The Space collection.
To be, to look, to really see.
To share, to live, to question.
To give, to make, to forge, to gorge.
To taste, to chase, to find the space.
The space.
captions by www.subtext-berlin.com