Andy Field (artist)

He has created and toured his own contemporary performance work in the UK and internationally. He is most well-known for the work he creates in collaboration with young people. His performance Lookout has toured to cities including Beijing,[1] London,[2] Vancouver,[3] Cairo and Milan and in 2018 won the Spirit of the Fringe award at Auckland Fringe Festival in New Zealand.[4] He regularly collaborates with producer Beckie Darlington and in 2021, their project The Book of St Helens,[5] a guide-book to the town of St Helens created by 150 local primary school children, won the Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Impact Award for Improving Education.[6]

Andy is co-director of Forest Fringe, a multi award winning artist-led producing collective which originated in Bristo Hall at the Forest Café during the Edinburgh Festival in 2007[7] and has since curated events, entitled "Microfestivals", in venues across the UK and Europe.[8] Andy Field innovated The Travelling Sounds Library through Forest Fringe, a case of books containing audio-pieces by British Theatre artists, including Blast Theory and Stan's Cafe which has travelled to venues throughout the UK.[9] On their website Forest Fringe writes, "we try and serve as a bridge, finding imaginative ways to connect the country’s most innovative performance artists and theatremakers with new audiences, new supporters and new contexts for their work. " [10] Forest Fringe also created a book of DIY performances to be read at the Edinburgh Festival called "Paper Stages", featuring performance texts by Tim Etchells, Bryony Kimmings and Tania El Khoury. Readers could obtain a book by volunteering one hour at a local Edinburgh charity during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.[11] In 2009 he and Forest Fringe co-director Deborah Pearson were named in the Stage list of the 100 most influential people in British theatre.[12]

In 2022, Andy and Deborah Pearson co-directed the feature film Dream Agency,[13] which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Between 2007 and 2011 he regularly wrote about art and experimental theatre for the Guardian Stage website.[14] In 2020 he collaborated with the journalist Maddy Costa to write Performance in the Age of Precarity, a collection of essays on theatre and art for Bloomsbury.[15] Field completed a practice-led PhD at Exeter University in 2012 exploring the relationship between contemporary performance practice and experimental art happenings in the 1960s and 1970s in New York.[16]

• Herald Angel, 2008
• Peter Brook Award Special Mention, 2008
• A special Fringe First shared with The Arches for Innovating new forms of presenting work at the Edinburgh Festival, 2009
• Jack Tinker Spirit of the Fringe Shortlist, 2009
• Peter Brook Empty Space Award, 2009
• Herald Angel, 2011

• Forest Fringe
• Andy Field and Beckie Darlington