Holding on and letting go
Friday night in Downtown Vancouver, February 2025
What are you holding on to? What are you letting go of? These questions were the framing of Theatre Replacement’s festival HOLD ON LET GO in Vancouver earlier this month.
I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the festival as an international delegate, alongside seven other colleagues from around the world. The trip marked the culmination of a sixth-month mentorship programme, where I’d been working with Vancouver-based artist and dramaturg Davey Calderon as part of Theatre Replacement’s Accelerator Lab series. Davey and I have been meeting online every month, exploring their practice and its wider context and thinking about how Davey’s work could meet an international audience. These sessions have been nourishing creatively for us both, and so it was so great to be able to meet up in person, alongside the other mentors and mentees.
Over a packed week in Vancouver artists, audiences and international delegates talked, listened, shared food and experienced some brilliant work that is emerging from the city’s performance scene and beyond – from tasting Keeley O’Brien’s deliciously playful cakes as part of Secret Ingredients to exploring sex, drugs and criminality with some famous Canadians, a group of teenagers and Mamallian Diving Reflex.
I took part in a panel discussion on the final day of the festival with Ragnheiður Skúladóttir (Festspillene i Nord-Norge, Norway) and Juliet Knapp (Kyoto Experiment, Japan). Theatre Replacement’s Maiko Yamamoto asked us those same questions – what are you holding on to? What are you letting go of?
I spoke about holding on to weirdness. About how the context here in the UK right now feels perilous. That we are at risk of losing many artists who can no longer sustain a career in the industry. That those who are able to make a living are being increasingly asked to justify their practice in terms of economic and social impact. And that by holding on to weirdness we are able to make a space for new possibilities, for things that feel unusual or niche or strange, but that might open a window onto a new way of thinking, or tap into an emotion we didn’t think we could feel.
We talked about letting go of caution and fear – about embracing risk-taking and joy.
These questions have stayed with me, resonating beyond the festival – particularly in relation to Confluence.
Confluence is about transience and change. About flow and movement. So holding on and letting go feel like pertinent questions for this project too.
We’re halfway through the decade. A decade which so far has asked us to radically rethink our relationship to the city – firstly by limiting the way we interact with it during lockdown, and now by looking forward to a period of rapid change and development. What do we want to hold on to in Bristol? What do we want to let go of?
I want to hold on to Bristol’s independent spirit, its weirdness, and the spaces where creativity thrives outside of the mainstream. The city has always been a place where experimental, risk-taking work can happen. That feels more important than ever, in the face of increasing economic pressures. I want to hold on to the sense that Bristol is a city where artists can take up space, make work on their own terms, play and take risks.
I want to let go of the inertia that stops us from imagining something bold for the future of our city. Bristol is a city in transition, and I want to let go of the fear that things won’t be as good as they used to be, and instead lean into the idea that we can shape what comes next.
I also want to let go of the increasing pressure to justify art solely in terms of economic impact or social utility. Those things matter, of course, but they can’t be the only measures of value. There’s something vital about making space for work that is unquantifiable. Work that’s playful, strange, deeply human.
Matthew Austin