The assembly takes place over 3-days in May as part of the Brighton Festival, England’s largest multi-artform festival.

Each year we receive around 200 applications from contemporary theatre-makers. We invite applications for both tour-ready work and pitches of new ideas. Around 20 proposals are then selected for the showcase by the curatorial group. The curatorial group is comprised of representatives from Farnham Maltings, Brighton Festival and British Council along with guest UK and international programmers. We also curate a marketplace of an additional 20 companies, which takes place on the final day of the showcase.

Our emphasis for the assembly has always been on building meaningful relationships, rather than ‘selling’. We only invite around 60 international programmers to the showcase, and we create spaces where artists and programmers can meet informally, whether that’s over lunch or in the bar. In 2020, in response to restrictions imposed by Covid-19, we tested new ways of connecting people in the digital space. We will be integrating some of these into the 2022 assembly and beyond.

The assembly will continue to evolve in response to the needs of the sector but wherever this takes us, we remain confident that personal connections are the key to fruitful international collaboration.