Advance

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Advance 2016 Audience, credit Paul Woodhouse
Photo: Advance 2016 symposium hosted by Central Sept 2016, courtesy of Paul Woodhouse

Advance is working with England’s leading performance companies, transforming their aspiration for gender equality into reality.

Advance is a series of innovative programmes designed by Tonic Theatre and led by its director, Lucy Kerbel. With support from Paul Hamlyn and Arts Council England twenty leading performing arts organisations have took part in the programme which initially ran for two cohorts in 2014 and 2016. Participating in Advance has enabled theatre, dance and opera organisations to identify and understand the root causes of gender imbalance within their own companies and art forms. Advance has supported each company as they identify a key question for their organisation and develop the means to move toward meaningful changes for gender equality.

As academic partners, Central’s research team worked on Advance with both 2014 and 2016 cohorts, tracking the process and progress of the work in the context of broader discussions around equality issues, offering wider cultural perspectives and more focused reflections as the impact of the work for each organization develops beyond the initial targets of the intensive six month programme.

For Advance 2016 Central’s Professor Gilli Bush-Bailey and Dr Katharine Low were joined by Research Associate Dr Lisa Woynarski. As academic partners Central were pleased to host both the first launch of the Advance website in 2014 and the updated website to include the 2016 Cohort.

In 2020, Central’s research team, including Gabriel Vivas-Martínez as Research Assistant, undertook a review of the changes made by the performing arts organisations since their participation in the first Advance programmes and recorded the impact of the work as companies continue to develop their EDI work with Tonic through the Advance Network programme. In March 2021, after a full year of ‘lockdown’ closures for all the companies, Central has completed a report on what has been gained, and what must not be lost, in the move toward greater representation and equity in the leading arts organisations. The full report can be found in the Tonic Theatre Report - Ahead of the Curve or on the Tonic Theatre - Advance web page.


Read a full account of the first Advance programmes, the aims, process and the benefits experienced by all the participating companies.

More information about the ongoing work Central’s research team can be found by visiting Tonic’s website.

For interviews with artistic directors at the NT, Clean Break, Sadlers Wells and Northern Stage  followed by footage from the Symposium hosted by Central in September 2016, see the Tonic Advance 2016 YouTube playlist.

Photo: Advance 2016 symposium hosted by Central Sept 2016courtesy of Paul Woodhouse