• SPILL FESTIVAL OF PERFORMANCE 

  EN MASSE

• (2016)

Live • International •  Artist-led • Ipswich

En Masse - as a group / all together / all at once.

SPILL Festival 2016 - En Masse took place over five days in October, with more than 100 events spanning live performance, installation, gigs, film, discussions, parties and more. The programme included UK and international SPILL Commissions made especially for the festival, alongside world premieres and work being shown in the UK for the first time. The day the festival opened a SPILL Symposium took place, advertised as taking the pulse of where radical, activist and politicised performance was at.

By 2016, SPILL had become entirely Ipswich-based. When Robert first started making the festival in 2007, he had not imagined that he would ever be making it in Ipswich. The move had developed gradually through projects including On Landguard Point in 2012, the establishment of SPILL Think Tank, and the first Ipswich festival that same year. For Robert, putting down roots in the town meant earning the trust, loyalty and support of local people, and by its third Ipswich edition SPILL was developing a sense of its own identity.

35 works formed the SPILL National Platform, presenting work by early-career makers with support from the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. The festival also expanded its programme for Kids + Families, introduced a new Heritage and Place strand celebrating Ipswich, and placed a greater emphasis on Sound + Music.

Presenting at more locations across Ipswich than ever before, the festival extended into outdoor spaces, Ipswich Museum and Christchurch Park, where artist Mike Challis presented SoundHide. The new SPILL Dome brought a programme of art, music and performance onto the street throughout the day and into the evening, with local performers, bands and DJs appearing across the festival. All events in the Dome were free.

For Robert, festivals were temporary moments of celebration where people could come together, unleash energy, reshape something and rethink how they interact with the world. As always, SPILL Think Tank activities ran alongside the festival, including daily talks, SPILL Writing, SPILL TV and Photography. Increasingly, the festival was becoming something made not simply in Ipswich, but in and of Ipswich.