We sat down for a quick chat with BAC’s Programme Producer Ella Gamble. Battersea Arts Centre will present the third iteration of Bloom between 7 – 16 May. The festival offers a rare, intentional space for innovation, encouraging and supporting artists to make new work that experiments with form and ideas, and helping them take risks to create bold, groundbreaking art.
What first drew you to programming Bloom, and what kinds of artistic risk were you most keen for the festival to protect and enable?
Bloom was conceived in response to a shared interest among BAC’s producing team in critically rigorous and experimental performance forms, and a shared frustration that BAC’s programming model wasn’t always able to facilitate their presentation. Often, the works that leave us feeling most exhilarated are the ones that need to be presented in unconventional ways, such as durational pieces, one-to-one encounters, or performances that move through space.
Bloom was designed as an intervention in the season: a pause in the usual programming where space is opened to allow these kinds of formal experiments to flourish.
Crucially, Bloom isn’t about showcasing the most extreme or outrageous work. What matters is the clarity and urgency of an artist’s intention. When form deepens that intention, that’s where the work becomes most exciting. Bloom exists to hold space for precisely that kind of risk.
How do you approach curating a programme that intentionally sits in that “in-between” space of work that is unfinished, experimental or uncategorisable?
The curatorial thinking behind Bloom begins long before programming the festival itself. At BAC, our Creative Development model invites artists into the building for residencies without any expectation of a finished outcome, creating space for early ideas, experimentation and risk. This often allows us to encounter work in its most open and exploratory stages.
Programming Bloom grows directly from that relationship. Over the year, through residencies and conversations, we develop a deeper understanding of both the artists and their work. Offers of space aren’t just about practical support; they’re a commitment to building dialogue and connection.
When shaping the Bloom programme, it’s not simply about selecting the most exciting work, but recognising which projects are at the right moment to benefit from a public encounter, and where that encounter might meaningfully support the artist’s development.
You speak about the loss of spaces for risk in UK theatre — what does that loss look like on the ground for artists and audiences right now?
For artists, the loss is deeply frustrating. The UK has an incredibly rich and innovative performance ecology, but work of real ambition depends on sustained belief and investment from the outset. You don’t arrive at something like Cade & MacAskill’s The Making of Pinocchio without institutions willing to support a process that includes uncertainty, failure and risk.
Artistic development isn’t linear—it requires time, unanswered questions and the freedom to experiment. If we want groundbreaking work, institutions must meet that process with equal risk in how they support and invest in artists.
For audiences, the impact is both artistic and social. Programmes become less adventurous, but there’s also a loss of community. Fewer grassroots, mixed-bill nights mean fewer spaces to gather, encounter new work and feel part of a shared cultural scene.
How do you balance creating a coherent festival identity while still leaving room for radically different forms and approaches across the programme?
I think the ambition is for the festival’s identity to be defined less by a theme and more by the quality of experience, presenting surprising work, moving and leaving a lasting impression. Ideally, there’s a sense of “only at Bloom” in the unique combination of performance audiences encounter.
That approach keeps the curatorial frame deliberately open. The programme isn’t built around a single provocation or line of enquiry but is shaped through a shared sensibility. What connects the work is not form or genre, but a commitment to bold, distinctive live experiences that resonate beyond the moment of presentation.
What kinds of conversations or collisions do you hope Bloom creates between artists and audiences that might not happen in more traditional settings?
I hope the encounters Bloom creates invite both artists and audiences to see the world differently, to imagine new ways of existing and connecting with one another. One of live performance’s greatest strengths is its ability to open up those possibilities, to create a shared space where we can speculate, reflect and reimagine together.
When we talk about the Bloom programme defying genre or expectation, I hope that spirit of resistance extends beyond the work itself into the conversations it sparks and the ways people carry those ideas into their everyday lives.
I also think the spaces between performances are just as important for idea generation. The structure of the Bloom programme is designed to encourage people to linger in the building, to return, and to find their own moments for exchange and reflection. In that way, the festival becomes a creative and generative process for audiences too.
When you think about the future of experimental work, what gives you hope that spaces like Bloom can shift the wider ecology, even in a small way?
Hope is found in the artists. There is no shortage of innovation or creativity in the UK performance scene, and I’m consistently blown away by the artists I encounter at BAC. As a producer and programmer, my role is to listen closely and actively to what infrastructures of support those artists need to do their work and realise ambitious ideas, and to respond accordingly.
Bloom is not a radical idea in itself, but it is designed to hold up and illuminate radical practices and ways of making, in a context where that support is not always guaranteed. The wider ecology is shaped by the art being produced within it, so the more space we create for experimentation, the richer and more generative that work becomes, and the more the ecosystem can grow.