This page is intended to outline the Albany’s Artistic Policy. You can find more context for this policy by reading about our Creative Strategy. It is important for us to be transparent to artists and communities about how we work, our priority areas and what we stand for artistically, socially and culturally.  

Albany Presents

As part of our strategy, we curate a year-round programme of presented work and live performance at the Albany and Deptford Lounge which offers an accessible ‘on your doorstep’ cultural offer for our local community.

We generally programme in two main seasons – September – December and January – June with some ad hoc events over the summer. We programme approximately 25-30 events per season.

Our key artforms are: work made for children and families; contemporary music (particularly jazz, urban, soul, R&B, experimental, electronic); comedy; spoken word & live literature; interdisciplinary performance.

Our programming priorities include:

  • Work that people will be excited to see and that is trying to do something that hasn’t been done before   
  • Work which has clear audience potential and a strong strategy for reaching and developing an audience
  • Work that resonates with our audiences and reflects the diversity of 21st Century London – South East in particular 
  • Work which represents the voices of those who are often less visible in public discourse 
  • Work which reflects the communities in and around the Albany particularly African/Caribbean and Vietnamese communities, and LGBTQ+ communities 
  • Intergenerational work which meaningfully engages older and/or younger participants in a co-collaborative opportunity  
  • Work which could only happen at the Albany – uniquely inspired by our space and local area 
  • Work which is co-created with communities and audiences – by this we mean work that actively engages with other people through the creation process, and artists who are interested in being with local people as part of making their art
  • Work which has the potential to engage audiences and communities to come together to discuss current issues that are of interest to them, and take action!  
  • Work that was born and developed from Albany supported artists who have shown a good fit with our ethos 
  • Work which is entertaining and joyful for audiences.

Other things to note:

We don’t really see ourselves as a home for new writing or traditional repertory / scripted plays as we believe there are lots of other London theatres that are doing a brilliant job of that. However, if you have a scripted play which fits other artistic priorities for us, particularly if it involves co-creation with our communities, we would still consider it.  

If you have a proposal for something you would suit our programme that you’d like to discuss, you can send information to creative@thealbany.org.uk. Please send us as much information as possible about your show (e.g. tour packs, technical riders, reviews and trailers where possible). We are also always keen to see work so do invite us to come and see something!  

We generally programme around 6 -12 months ahead. If there is not space or your work doesn’t immediately fit into an upcoming season it is still worth a conversation and beginning a relationship for future opportunities to connect with the programme.  

Please note we are a small team and receive a high volume of emails – we try to get back to all email enquiries within two weeks but please be patient with us or give us a nudge if you don’t hear from us! 

Artist Development

Aside from our presented programme, we are also interested in working with artists to develop new work and develop their creative practice. We do this through a variety of schemes: 

  • Associate Artists – six artists per year receiving a package of space in kind and seed funding (now open for applications until 15 November 2024)
  • Artists of Change – one artist per year receiving a cash commission to co-create a project with our communities which demonstrates an ambition to make a local social impact and/or organisational change 
  • Pizza & Pitches – two events per year where five projects are selected from an open call to pitch for £1,000 of funding – the winner is selected on the night by our community audience
  • Creative Communities – £35 annual membership which unlocks access to co-working space, last minute discounted space hire and networking events  
  • Creative Cuppa – join us at one of our quarterly coffee mornings with our Creative Team to chat to us about your ideas or plans and meet other artists.

We usually encourage artists to access support via one of the above schemes rather than through ad hoc requests due to our limited capacity and needing to balance artist development with our income generation needs as an organisation.  

Artists and projects should be able to demonstrate a good artistic fit with our priorities (as per Albany Presents, above). We have a particular interest in supporting artists from diverse and non-mainstream backgrounds who will really benefit from having a platform and support for their work.

Community Engagement

In recent years we have been shifting our model to better facilitate community co-creation, ensuring we best serve local people and the issues that matter to them. Broadly our vision is about building a more co-operative and responsive relationship with people in our communities, finding ways to work in a non-hierarchical way and centring their interests, ideas and needs in our programme and activities.  

Our aim is to find multiple, visible routes for people to use, engage with and shape the cultural opportunity that the Albany offers, though the responsibility for building that programme will likely still sit predominantly with staff and Associate Artists. 

We are developing an approach to more effectively incorporate existing local culturally-led activity to form part of our programme, ultimately encouraging more use of the space for community-led creative events through supported hires. 

We are also finding ways to integrate our Albany Youth Programme, Meet Me… at the Albany programme for over 60s and community engagement work undertaken at our partner space Deptford Lounge into the overall programme allowing for greater cross-fertilisation between engagement and creative programmes. 

Our key community engagement schemes are:

  • Community Council – eight people with a connection to Deptford/Lewisham who will be critical friends of the Albany, get to know the team, share their thoughts and feedback to help shape the future of our programme 
  • Pizza & Pitches – two events per year where five projects are selected from an open call to pitch for seed funding – the winner is selected on the night by our community audience  
  • Creative Community Sessions – three sessions per year facilitated by an artist for our wider community to share their ideas and feedback  
  • Creative Communities – £35 annual membership which unlocks access to co-working space, last minute discounted space hire and networking events 
  • Hires – if you would like to hire our spaces to put on your own event please contact hires@thealbany.org.uk to enquire 
  • Visit our Get Involved pages for information on the Youth Programme and Meet Me… at the Albany.

What spaces do we have?

Our main theatre space is flexible and can range from 190 with raked seating to 250 cabaret seating or 500 standing. We also have a two studio spaces which range from 50-70 capacity, and our public CaffA spaces. You can see our spaces here.

We also sometimes have opportunities to programme work into the children’s library / foyers of Deptford Lounge.  

An audio version of this policy will be available soon.

Lead photo by Ellie Koepke.