We’re delighted two artists supported by Opera North have been chosen for the prestigious 2025 Mudlarks International Residency run by the pioneering theatre company, Complicité. Joining this year’s cohort will be experimental disciplinary artist LINTD, one of Opera North’s current Resonance artists, and co-creative experimental film and art director Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh.
Mudlarks is Complicité’s ideas development programme, providing space and resources for exceptional early-mid career artists to interrogate their ideas. It encourages creativity without the constraints of rigid methodologies and target-driven pressures. The programme is made up of three interlinked strands which all have internationalism and environmental sustainability at their heart.
LINTD and Tibyan are planning on using their time to focus on blending movement with their sound and film practices to address the issue of climate change through a single word provocation: ‘Spinning’.
Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh (R) at King's Place, London
Tibyan explains: “When we talk about the theme of ‘spinning’, it’s that childlike feeling of pushing us to our limits by movement – but it’s fun or silly as well. We want to use the R&D process to focus and experiment specifically with the movement aspect of the idea of ‘spinning’ and how that word relates to how we experience climate change. It’s such a serious topic, but ‘spinning’ asks questions like: why do we want to do that? why do we spin on our chairs or go on waltzers? Let’s go into that whimsical space and then switch into the vulnerable serious side.”
The Mudlarks International Residency is a week-long residency for both UK and International artists. Bespoke support includes time with mentors, provocations, material resources and access to collaborators. Artists also benefit from the wider Mudlarks Artist network. This will be the third residency in the programme’s history.
“This residency interested me because, particularly as people of colour, we have to think of climate change unconsciously as something that’s in our lives anyway,” adds Tibyan. “This residency lets us explore that and ask if we want to tackle it explicitly in a hands-on way or address it in a more abstract or indirect way”
“Mudlarks is exciting to me because as POC we don’t want to be put in a box and always have to explore things related to our heritage. We wanted to explore broad ideas that we resonate with that sit outside of that question”
LINTD © Timon Benson
The residency will enable the two artists to work together on their own terms for the first time. LINTD explains: “I want to work with Tibyan because I love learning about the artistic community that I’m around naturally and reintegrating these people into my practice and vice versa. Because we share similar vision and approaches, we should grow together. A key part of my practice is knowing who or what exists at a moment in time that can bring about creation and then putting us in a space so we can do what we do best – together.”
Tibyan says: “We’ve got a week there and I think I want to use the time to read and lean into the rural environment, particularly to go off alone for reflection and then come back together with the whole group. We don’t get to do that in the city.”
I’m excited to develop the idea into concrete outputs after the residency,” adds LINTD. “A kinetic musical piece, a film-work, but also developing this new framework for exploring things”
The Mudlarks International Residency is taking place from 10 to 14 March at Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking in Gloucestershire.
