KAKILANG
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Mission Statement
Kakilang 自己人 produces and presents world-class interdisciplinary art from a wide spectrum of Southeast and East Asian voices. We pioneer work across multiple art forms and showcase artists working at the intersection of diverse practices.
About This Cause
Kakilang (formerly Chinese Arts Now) was founded in 2005 and became a National Portfolio Organisation supported by Arts Council England in 2018. Since then we have partnered with the Barbican, Southbank Centre, Rich Mix, Soho Theatre, The Place, Horizon, Leicester Curve, York Theatre Royal, Cambridge Junction, Oxford Contemporary Music, LSO St Luke’s, BFI, Young Vic, Tamasha, Dance Umbrella, and more. We rebranded as Kakilang in September 2022. The new company name Kakilang (自己人), meaning ‘one of us’ in the Hokkien dialect, evoking kinship and affinity, is widely used amongst East and Southeast Asian diasporic groups. For us, our Kakilang are people who come together through art, and who champion diverse voices and communities. The rebranding marks a watershed moment for us as we grow the ambition, scale, and reach of our in-house productions and the platforming of East and Southeast Asian artists. Kakilang also recently won Arts Council England’s Digital Culture Award (Storytelling) which secured our position as a pioneer in innovative digital works. 2018/19: Citizens of Nowhere? (Southbank Centre’s China Changing Festival, London Duddell’s, Nottingham Lakeside Theatre), Bats and Beats (Southbank Centre’s Soundstate Festival, Shanghai tour), CAN Festival 2019, over 4,000 audience. 2019/20: Augmented Chinatown 2.0 app (combining tour guide, drama, music and AR, permanently available on App Store and Google Play; The Stage ‘surprising and engaging immersive journey’; Lyn Gardner ‘infinitely touching’), Overheard (Theatre Royal York), Ways of Being Together (Shoreditch Town Hall), CAN Festival 2020, over 12,000 audience. 2020/21: 6 Digital Commissions, CAN X Two Temple Place Digital Exhibition and Immersive Performance (selected by Horizon Showcase and shortlisted for Arts Council England’s Digital Culture Award), CAN Festival 2021 (digital edition), ticketed audience for digital events over 2,000; digital work engagements over 12,000. 2021 to the present: CAN X Two Temple Place Digital Exhibition and Immersive Performance at CAN Festival 2021 and Horizon Showcase, HOME X (digital/live hybrid game-theatre production commissioned by British Council Hong Kong), Climate Exploration Cookbook pilot (co-commission with Season for Change, partner with Chinese Community Centre), Augmented Chinatown 2.0 Westminster Council Community Exhibition, Queering Now, over 9,000 digital/live audience. In November 2021, Kakilang restructured to a four-person gender-balanced artistic team, with backgrounds in community engagement and activism as well as the arts, all from diverse ESEA diasporic backgrounds. We are pioneering a new structure for arts organisations where we offer artists a solid base to develop their work and leadership while maintaining other freelance work (three associate artistic directors, permanent part-time and flexible hours). All artistic directors will lead Kakilang Productions, Commissions and community works, offering more freelance artists opportunities as well as developing new audiences from a rich diversity of multi-generational and language backgrounds, particularly (but by no means exclusively) more diverse East and Southeast Asian heritage audiences, by utilising a vast range of cross-artform platforms in live, digital and hybrid formats and with a plethora of subject matters, genres and performing arts disciplines.