It is with huge sadness that we announce the closure of MAYK. It’s the last thing we wanted to do, but we are left with no choice. It has become impossible to continue.
The picture for the arts in this country is increasingly grim. Years of underinvestment have created a structural crisis that devalues culture at its core and is causing real damage.
It needs fighting for: proper investment, imagination, care.
The last two years have been particularly gruelling for MAYK, as they have been for so many. In the face of diminishing income and rising costs we have been forced to make significant changes – halting plans for Mayfest 2026, moderating our programme, reducing the team and adapting our leadership. Each decision was made to safeguard what we believe in most: supporting artists to make extraordinary, vital work that connects people and reflects the world we live in. A world without art-making, experimentation, innovation and joy is bleak.
We have worked tirelessly to adapt – reimagining as radically as possible, restructuring, and fundraising – but the gap has simply become too wide. We can no longer make it work.
We are so proud of what we have achieved over the years. The extraordinary gatherings, the beautiful and thought-provoking performances that have travelled the world. The celebration of a passionate community of artists through many editions of Mayfest.
More recently, we’ve loved creating a home for artists at St Anne’s House, welcoming hundreds of creatives to play, think and make. We’ve subsidised this beautiful space to make it as affordable and accessible as possible, because artists need space to be. We will miss it very much.
With love and gratitude to everyone who has been part of the last fifteen years.
MAYK is all of us, along the way.
Over and out. ❤️
Some photos from our R&D sharing of Proper Time last week! A huge thank you to everyone who came and to everyone who supported the project:
Thank you to ACE for funding this R&D, to Level Centre for awarding us a 2023/24 Residency, to Bristol Old Vic for supporting us with rehearsal space and MAYK for producing the project and being fully behind it’s ’stretched time’ residency form.
Photos by Keycreationz
Full team credits:
Jamie McCarthy - composer,
performer, collaborator.
Anna Starkey - performer, writer, collaborator.
Laura Dannequin - dramaturge, outside eye.
Drew Bachelor - lead creative technologist.
Robin Thorn - creative technologist.
Finn Macneill - technical support, studio access support.
Linzy Na Nakorn - creative access, audio description.
Rhiannon Colvin - MA placement.
Jazz Thompson - live scribe.
Josephine Gyasi - producer, MAYK.
Kate Yedigaroff - artistic director, MAYK.
TODAY is a GREAT DAY!
We have Cloudspotting Digital shows at Wiesbaden Biennale @ 3pm and 7pm today, Friday & Saturday. I’ve drawn an arrow to my resting hexagon for those of you using the Resting App.
AND I’m at Trinity with the creative team working on Proper Time ahead of our sharing next week. This photo is of Kate Yedigaroff and I resting under the epic ceiling of Trinity’s Fyffe Hall.
What a lush day!
#wiesbadenbiennale #mayk #criptime
We’re testing the digital version of A Crash Course in Cloudspotting ahead of our first digital shows since 2022! I’m so excited this piece gets another outing at Wiesbaden Biennale! (get tickets via linktree).
Listening today, I feel very close to all those who collaborated on the piece. And a special thank you to the Cloudspotter who wrote and read stories for the piece: I. Ailing; M. Agathangelou; A. Berry; N.Kov; J. Mclaughlin; A. Morgan; P. Sanchez; M. Smith; and Nina Cov. Thank you for your generous collaboration.
And grateful as always to have worked with a great team on this: Sound Artist Jamie McCarthy, Associate Artist Laura Dannequin, Artist & Theatre Designer Sophia Clist, Artist Tom Metcalfe, Sound Designer Charles Webber. Publication Design by Lily Green (No Bindings), MAYK and producer Hattie Gregory.
I’m leaning back into Proper Time, getting ready for an informal sharing on 24 September. I’m remembering I want to speak to how time became a tool of oppression alongside the poetry of space time.
Jenny Odell is super articulate about how timekeeping evolved as a capitalist, colonialist tool. Here are some quotes from her interview with Emmanuel Vaughn-Lee / Emergence Magazine. Which naturally made me want to smash all my clocks!
“You can’t separate the history of timekeeping from colonialism - which involves putting people to work - or industrialism.”
“…towns were becoming very commercial and started needing to be able to count up and measure the labor hours they were buying from people. And so some confluence of things led to this notion of an hour: like an hour is an hour, and a labor hour is a labor hour, and it sort of doesn’t matter what season it’s happening in, what time of day. And for me, that is the crucial separating point. That is when this idea of time as stuff started to peel away from all the things it had been embedding in previously.”
“…it’s also an interesting question throughout history to ask, who is timing whom? Timekeeping didn’t just advance itself, right? We don’t have more and more minute measurements of productivity for no reason. There was always a reason to be doing it, and the reason was always to get more work out of people faster.”
Photo credit: Stephen James Moore
Dreamy team. Thanks to all the wonderful and dedicated folk who have been part of making this piece. Excited to share it again in this context to start new conversations. Now work it. 💕
I’m delighted A Crash Course in Cloudspotting digital shows will be part of the Wiesbaden Biennale this September!
The shows on from 18-20 September are in English and the show on 21 September is in German.
MAYK and I are excited we get to power up our Resting App again and share both the English language and German language versions of the show. The German language version was commissioned by WDR radio last year, created with additional supper from Mousonturm, Frankfurt. The English language version was created with support from Unlimited, Camden Alive, and Coventry City of Culture. Both were produced by MAYK.
Deep Time
I first wrote about deep time in an essay for ‘Out of Time? Temporality in disability performance’ published in 2024. Here’s some of those words:
‘Deep time is a different felt sense of time, weightier and more expansive than clock time, introvert, deeply embodied. In this mode the expectations of normative culture fall away. With this falling away I (mostly) feel no guilt, and time becomes a quiet thing.
I also wrote these instructions that I am returning to as I think about crafting a new piece about non-normative times:
i. Let yourself drop into deep time. Take up the physical space you need. Relish the stillness and counterpoint to normative culture you create.
ii. Let your weight fall away. Attend to the small details of your view (however mundane). Feel the ever shifting nature of things (in your bones).
iii. Let the sounds of the world in. Revel in rest. Zoom out and attend to a quiet recognition of one another.
#deeptime #criptime #propertime #disabilityarts #cripritual
DEEP TIME
I first wrote about Deep Time in an essay for ‘Out of Time? Temporality in Disability Performance’, published in 2024. Here’s some of what I wrote:
Deep time is a different felt sense of time, weightier and more expansive than clock time, introvert, deeply embodied. In this mode the expectations of normative culture are meaningless and fall away. With this falling away, I (mostly) feel no guilt and time becomes a quiet thing.
I also wrote these instructions:
i. Let yourself drop into deep time. Take up the physical space you need. Relish the stillness and counterpoint to normative culture you create.
ii. Let your weight fall away. Attend to the small details of your view (however mundane). Feel the ever shifting nature of things (in your bones).
iii. Let the sounds of the world in. Revel in rest. Zoom out and attend to a quiet recognition of one another.
I’m returning to these instructions as I think about Proper Time and how we craft different experiences of time.
#propertime #criptime #disabilityart #cripart #deeptime
