Making Weather is a process-led, peer learning lab for up to 15 artists to co-develop practical, low-tech methods for making ecological performance for and with children and young people.
Artists working with young people face urgent demands: climate grief, cost-of-living pressures, stretched school capacity, and a need for accessible, outdoor and unusual spaces and low-resource formats. Many of us are tackling these alone. This DIT will create time, peers and confidence to prototype methods that are imaginative, ethical and practical. It will centre collective learning, build a local network in East Anglia, and leave participating artists/practitioners with shareable scores, facilitation tools and approaches that can seed future projects in education and outdoor arts.
The DIT / LADA context
Making Weather is organised as part of Do it Together (DIT), a long-term initiative from the Live Art Development Agency (LADA)
For 2026, there are 19 delivery partners for DIT nationally. In Norfolk, Norfolk & Norwich Festival is the lead partner, together with GroundWork Gallery
Do It Together (DIT) is a peer-to-peer professional development programme that enables artists to explore ideas, aesthetics and sociopolitical realities together.
Knowing that the development of a live art practice is as much about methodologies and experiences as training in skills and techniques, DIT invites artists to delve into collective enquiries and share their process.
DIT reimagines LADA’s flagship programme, DIY, which ran unique professional development projects BY artists FOR artists from 2002 to 2020. For 2026, LADA reactivates the programme as Do It Together (DIT) in line with our renewed focus on co-learning.
How to apply
On this page are just outline details to signal this partnership project. For further details and to apply, please consult information on the LADA website here, where you will find forms, FAQs and help re accessibility.
Who should apply?
We would like to gather a group of interdisciplinary artists interested in ecology, youth-led participatory and outdoor practices, with a range of experiences and interest in working with children and young people
Festival Connect & Create is Norfolk & Norwich Festival’s participation and engagement initiative, working to improve the cultural lives of children, young people, and their communities across Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
This DIT is therefore open to artists working in these areas, building a network local to East Anglia of artists working with children and young people.
Deadline for applications
Monday 23 February 2026
Follow this link: https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/opportunities/dit-making-weather/
Further questions/support:
email willy@thisisliveart.co.uk or call us on 020 8985 2124.
Making Weather is a project led by Autin Dance
Johnny Autin (he/they) is a multidisciplinary artist/choreographer and the Artistic Director of Autin Dance Theatre CIO. They explore resilience, belonging, ecology and care through participatory, inclusive processes with communities and young people. They emphasise that liveness matters, because shared bodies-in-space create empathy, agency and collective meaning that cannot be replicated digitally. Recent creations include Parade – The Giant Wheel (large-scale outdoor procession), Out of the Deep Blue (13-foot puppet and dancers on climate themes), and Up in the Sky (aerial dance for young audiences). Johnny also leads intergenerational and SEN-inclusive workshops and CPD for teachers, embedding access, co-creation and wellbeing throughout.
Hannah Woodliffe is a dance artist with eight years of professional experience performing, choreographing and teaching in a wide variety of contexts. She has danced full time with ACE Dance and Music for three years, touring internationally and collaborating with a range of renowned choreographers. Her recent credits include Autin Dance Theatre, Hikapee Circus Theatre Company, Ascension Dance, and Motus Dance. Alongside this, Hannah co-directs the dance company H&T Creative, choreographing and performing No Time to Waste nationally, an outdoor dance duet based on plastic pollution.
When?
Making Weather will take place over 3 days in King’s Lynn, based at St Nicholas Chapel
Thursday 16 – Friday 17 – Saturday 18 April, 11-4
Outline plans for what will we do
Over three days we will ask:
How can playful, low-carbon practices make climate stories tangible, hopeful and co-owned by young audiences?
How might performance practices foster agency rather than eco-anxiety?
What consent, care and co-creation protocols help children take part safely in streets, squares and schools?
What does a ‘tourable’ eco-practice look like when resources are limited and contexts vary?
We will move, make, and think together, to: engage in embodied warm-ups; story-gathering walks;
object improvisations using found or recycled materials; co-created choreographic scores;
and reflective circles to document tools, ethics and access practices.
An optional outdoor micro-sharing on the final day, will let us test ideas collectively in public space.
