‘Events – Work With Us’
Southbank Sandpit: the Seaside
Friday, June 3rd, 2011
Come along to the Southbank from 6:30 to 10pm on Thursday 4 August for a free evening of games and playful experiences! As part of the Southbank Centre’s seaside weekend, we’ll be running a night of seaside-themed games in Royal Festival Hall and around the Southbank. Book places in games in the Clore Ballroom from 6:30; play begins at 7.
There’ll be folded pieces of paper and running and sneaking and waving flags and building things and knots and boats and maybe even a real live deck chair. We’re still confirming the game details, but there’ll be:
I Say (Rosie Fairchild): Hunting and escaping, sneaking and finding are at the heart of this thrilling chase game around the Southbank.
All Hands On Deck (Hide&Seek): You just want a nice sit-down in a deck-chair – but the deck-chair inspector and that pesky seagull have different plans.
Bucket and Spade (Nichol Keene and Toby de Angeli): Two teams battle it out using anything from mime to song to work out clues and create the perfect day at the seaside.
The Future is Not a Noun; It’s a Verb (Charlotte Jarvis): Psychological experiment, performance, social intervention and comic turn.
Charabanc (Tom Armitage): Ah, the race for the last seaside parking space: Mum’s tired, Dad’s lost, the kids need the loo, and EVERYONE’S COMPLAINING. A noisy, competitive role-playing team game for two or more groups of four.
Competitive Sandwich Making (Tim Mannveille and Clare Huxley): Test your skills in the ancient art of tessellating pieces of cheese to make the perfect sandwich.
Do Whales Eat Sand? (Silke Abele): Cunningly discard seaside ‘objects’ with the help of creative and convincing arguments in order to win treasure for your team!
Mission (Bread and Goose): An unwitting passer-by is thrust into a world of espionage, deceit, and corruption. Can you decipher the clues and complete your mission?
Ms Lidbetter’s Bakery presents Battle of the Seas: See if your fleet’s tactics can control the most treasured trade routes… before your rivals gets there first.
Time*Trails (Sophie Sampson and Michael Dales): Find the hidden history of the South Bank! Time*Trails brings the Festival of Britain alive in the very spot it took place using the GPS technology in your iPhone.
A Motley Cruise (Simon Katan): a game for pirates and merchants. Sail the high seas to chase down your enemy and steal their bounty.
Werewolf: nothing to do with the seaside, but someone’s going to play it anyway, might as well make it official…
Wish You Were Here (Holly Gramazio): a game of seaside postcards and censorship – can you get your joke past the all-seeing eye of the Postmaster?
Plus a rockpool, masks, more spy trails, an actual genuine sandpit with real sand in it, a family car journey, and maybe even an actual genuine ice-cream: fifteen games across the site, most new, a few familiar; some high-tech, some using nothing but flags or ice-cream or sand or water; some for one quiet player, some for forty runners-around and jumpers-about.
These games are intended primarily for adults.
Tell us you’re coming on the Facebook event page, or just turn up on the night!
The Sandpit is Hide&Seek’s irregular playing and playtesting event. For artists and designers it’s a chance to try out new ideas; for everyone else, it’s a chance to play new games for the first time, or to revisit old favourites. There are always plenty of games going on, so there’s bound to be something that suits you.
Picture by 55thstreet
Games at You Are GO!
Monday, May 16th, 2011
From 17-19 June, Invisible Playground will be running Berlin’s first festival of street games, You Are GO!. Hide&Seek will be there with three games: Semaphoria, a game of flag-waving and secret messages; the Stag Hunt, a game of chasing and balloons; and Pingus, a game of industrious but dim-witted penguins.
Plus there’ll be brilliant games from other designers and groups, including Packet Sniffing – a game that uses your actual sense of smell – and a mix of clapping, smuggling, LEDS, surveillance and much more.
Picture by Pink Sherbet.
Spin Your Partner and Taunt! at Igfest
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
We’ve mentioned Igfest before – Bristol’s festival of street games; it’s now just around the corner, on the 28th and 29th of May, and the schedule of games is looking amazing.
We’ll be there with two games: a quick run of Taunt!, which you might remember from last year’s Weekender: a game of shouting, etymology, insults, teamwork and more shouting and insults; and Spin Your Partner, a brand new… something-or-other… that’s part game, part dance, in the style of an old-fashioned ceilidh.
There’s also Igfest’s own amazing chase game 2.8 Hours Later, plus games from SF0, Come Out and Play, and more – if you can make it, you should definitely come and play!
Picture by jonesor under a CC license
PlayStation GameRunners
Monday, September 20th, 2010
Fri 8th October will see an amazing day of play as part of the PlayStation GameRunners project, an experimental project where PlayStation, members of the public and young people from diverse backgrounds come together to create social games.
The project has been developed by PlayStation and Hide&Seek with a team of 8 initial Game Runners who PlayStation have picked to train as game designers. The event, in a central London location, will run all day – do come along and play!
Hide&Seek Workshop: Stories Without Borders
Monday, September 20th, 2010
The second of Hide&Seek’s upcoming Script Factory workshops deals with transmedia for writers.
Stories have always been everywhere, but they’re now expected to be everywhere at once. As traditional, linear narrative forms forge closer relationships with digital, interactive and distributed formats, it’s getting harder to know where a story should start and stop. Working across these media provides extraordinary opportunities for evolving how we tell stories, but also presents technological, practical and conceptual challenges for writers.
This workshop will present a short series of in-depth case studies showing how stories can be successfully seeded across different media, giving writers tools to tackle these arenas and a chance to test them out in an exploratory and supportive environment. Perfect for those experienced at writing, but new to writing across platforms, this workshop follows on from the general Introduction from Transmedia, but can also stand on its own.
Book places at the script factory website; or see this information in pdf form.
Hide&Seek Workshop: Introduction to Transmedia
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010
The first of Hide&Seek’s upcoming workshops with the Script Factory will run on 27 October, 10:00 to 5:30.
From major studios to micro-distributors, experiments in transmedia – screen storytelling in a networked world – have taken many forms. There have been blockbuster games, film characters with their own social network pages, fictitious websites: a dizzying array of attempts, many with mixed results. Ensuring success is hard: attracting audiences, managing digital production and safeguarding creative integrity are all big challenges.
This workshop, designed for producers, directors and writers, gives a general overview of these formats, a clear insight into their value and opportunity, and strategies for how this content can be effectively integrated into the production process.
Details and booking at the Script Factory website, or in pdf form.
Transmedia Training Days
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Hide&Seek have formed a new partnership with The Script Factory, Europe’s premier script development organisation, to launch two brand new workshops this Autumn.
If you read about the amazing Wonderlab and thought it sounded interesting, or if you’re beginning to work in transmedia and want to kick-start your career, then these events are for you. The day-long workshops are devised and run by our very own Alex Fleetwood and Margaret Robertson, and they’re going to be brilliant.
On Wednesday 27 October, there’s an Introduction to Transmedia: a day for directors, producers and other film industry pros looking to understand the increasing opportunities for screen storytelling in a networked world.
And then on Thursday 28 October, it’s time for Stories Without Borders, a practical workshop for writers focusing on how stories can be successfully seeded across different media. The workshop will give writers tools to tackle these arenas and a chance to test them out in an exploratory and supportive environment. If you’re experienced at writing, but new to writing across platforms, this is the workshop for you.
The workshops cost £120 + VAT, or £210 for both. Places can be booked via The Script Factory.
Photograph by ktylerconk: Quill and ink.
The Beach – National Theatre Wales
Monday, July 19th, 2010
Want to be one of the participants in the first mass-participation playable documentary theatre piece? Then you need to head to the fine sands of Prestatyn beach in the last week of July.
National Theatre Wales, in partnership with Hide&Seek, have developed a new kind of performance which will explore Prestatyn’s missing generation. The event itself – called The Beach – will be playful, dramatic and spectacular, and the story has already started unfolding online. Check out The Beach community site to start following, and head over to book your tickets – and do it right now, they’re selling out fast!
Hide&Seek Weekender
Monday, May 17th, 2010
This year’s Hide&Seek Weekender runs from 9-11 July at the magnificent National Theatre on London’s Southbank, in partnership with London International Festival of Theatre.
There’ll be running, hiding, drawing, thinking, laughing, hat-wearing, nonsense, internationality and cleverness for everyone. And it’s all free. Except the party. But that’s cheap.
Check out the programme here!
Sandpit at Warwick Arts Centre in partnership with Fierce!
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
On 26 June, from 6 to 10pm, we’ll be at Warwick Arts Centre for a FREE night of games from Midlands artists, theatre-makers and game designers. The event is part of Fierce Festival.
There’ll be skulking, hiding, deciphering, making, listening, and pretty much all the sorts of games you could want, so do turn up and give it a try! We’ve got:
- Bloop! from Nikki Pugh, using an electronic hat to put players in the position of a whale, navigating the oceans (okay, a room) by sound alone
- Flag it Up! from Dusty Button, a competitive flag-making game. We give you the country, you give them a new flag.
- Space Campfrom Unlimited Theatre. Ever wanted to be an astronaut? This game tests whether you’ve got the skill…
- Musical!, a fast-paced story-telling game designed to make you burst into song
- Babel from Rosie Fairchild, a game of communicating without words, hidden objects, and sneaking
- Homely Planet from Andrew Birley, which asks you to make a two minute documentary about
WarwickFrance. Or possibly Italy, China or New Zealand. - Search and Replace from Kevan Davis: grab a handful of letter tiles, go and look for signs, and twist them to your will.
Image by the V&A Lates photographer
NT Studio / Delhi (private playtest)
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
On 29 May, we’ll be at the National Theatre Studio – and also in Delhi. We’ll be testing out three new games that take place in London on the Southbank, and simultaneously in Delhi, involving players from both countries.
This is a private playtest, but the games will be reappearing at the Sunday of the Weekender on 9-11 July.
Contact Theatre, Manchester as part of the FutureEverything Festival
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
On 15 May, Hide&Seek was at Contact Theatre in Manchester as part of our series of International-themed sandpits. There were theatrical games, running-around games, puzzle-solving games, creative games, and pretty much any sort of game you could want, including:
- The Ranimal Front of Mancunia, from Larkin’ About: search for animals, help them solve their problems, and hope that they might help you to solve yours.
- The Remote Clapping Game, from Aliki Chapple: guide your team-mates from a distance, but your only form of communication is a clap…
- Camera Spin, from Dave Green: sit round a spinning video camera, performing tasks when the camera dictates.
- Urban Fox-Hunting, from the Loiterers Resistance Movement
- Super Political Street Fighter from Greg Foster – like Street Fighter, but with super politics
- The Spy Game from Nick Howard – try to carry out your special spy tasks with your partners, but watch out – you don’t want to be betrayed…
- Getting to Know You: Seated Globalised Network from Kai-Oi Jay Yung – sit in a circle and get to know each other, complete with questions, dares and more. Newer Entries »