In the wake of the excitement surrounding Coventry’s City of Culture win, there’s been something of a lull in new announcements, as people put their heads together to formulate new plans for the coming years. This month, however, the 2021 momentum will start building up again as the city centre comes alive with art and performance for the UK’s first ever Shop Front Festival. 

Supported by the City of Culture Trust and the Heritage Lottery’s Great Places scheme, this first major cultural happening to follow the 2021 announcement is being masterminded by Chris O’Connell and Julia Negus, the creative duo behind performance company Theatre Absolute and its distinctive Shop Front Theatre home in Coventry’s City Arcade. 

“What we’ve been developing is a kind of pilot festival that’s very much about experimenting and testing ideas to help us in the future,” explains Julia. “Although we’ve taken our own work to other festivals before, we’ve never actually created a festival ourselves, so even though we’ve been making theatre for a long time, we’re still learning new things from this process.”

Located in a repurposed chip shop formerly known as Fishy Moore’s, Britain’s only Shop Front Theatre was established in Coventry in 2009 after Chris toured his play Zero to Chicago. 

“There was a cluster of companies there working on what they called ‘storefront’ theatre,” he explains, “the idea being that companies embedded themselves in disused retail units to offer a different way of looking at the city and a different approach to theatre. The manifesto, if you like, is that you just work with what you have and don’t wish for any more. It’s not a terribly original idea - it’s something that’s been done all over Europe and America - but other than a few short-term, pop-up pieces, there’s not much of a scene here in the UK.”

“After we came back and set up Shop Front Theatre, we initially only expected to be here for 18 months, but nine years later we’re still here,” laughs Julia. “So even though we used to be a touring company, Shop Front has kind of become our comfort zone now, and the idea of taking work outside and applying our methodology to other spaces in the city is kind of scarily exciting!”

To assist them, the pair have enlisted the support of Lou Lomas and Orit Azaz, both experienced in producing outdoor work. They also intend to learn as much as possible from the international artists, producers and speakers flying in to appear alongside local talent at the event. 

“One of the key things to emphasise is that there’s a really good mix of local, regional, national and international people involved,” says Chris. “As well as learning from other people, we want to use the festival to really recognise the rockbed of talent here in the city as much as we can.”

Spread out in locations across the city centre, the eclectic programme they’ve assembled encompasses everything from DIY dance to soda bread baking, and from a city symphony to an interactive, improvised soap opera called Latherland. Three key original commissions will sit alongside established pieces, but even these will be adapted, responding directly to the architecture, history and people of the city. 

One example is The Empathy Museum’s A Mile In My Shoes, for which artist Clare Patey has collected shoes and stories from numerous donors. Participants drop into a pop-up ‘shoe shop’ and pick up a pair of shoes to walk around in, along with some headphones to listen to the donor’s story. As well as acquiring three new stories from local people which will continue to tour with the show elsewhere, the production will also be made to blend in with its surroundings with the help of Architecture students from Coventry University. 

Meanwhile, original work will include Made In Store - an interactive story trail created by Talking Birds’ Nick Walker, which will take audiences into shops and restaurants around the city and see their owners getting involved in the performance. 

“I think when we first arrived,” recalls Julia, “some of the shopkeepers were a bit like, ‘What’s a theatre doing in a chip shop?’ But over the years they’ve been to see our shows and we’ve developed great relationships, and discovered that they have some fantastic stories as well.

“For Made In Store, we put a call out, and straight away people were like, ‘Yeah, we want to be involved, just let us know what we need to do.’ James at Wagamama, for example, suggested putting out some special food samples that you had to take like a potion as part of the story, so they’ve been really buying into it and using their imaginations as well.” 

It seems like rather a lot to be getting along with, yet it’s also clear that this is really just a starting point for something that Chris and Julia are hoping will become a regular fixture in the city’s cultural calendar. So how often do they envisage it recurring, and where will it go from here?

“I think the idea is that by 2021 it should be something pretty much fully formed,” says Julia. “In some respects I think we should have a go at it again next year, just to keep the momentum going, but it depends. Obviously finance is a key thing - are we able to grow the budget at all? Also availability - not just of artists but also of ourselves, because we’re not really festival curators and we’re also making our own work here. Plus, there’ll have to be an evaluation period to see what worked and what didn’t this time. But eventually I think, maybe in two or three years’ time, we’d like to look beyond the city centre to other areas as well - maybe somewhere like Jubilee Crescent, for example.”

Shop Front Festival runs throughout Coventry city centre on Friday 23 & Saturday 24 March. Most events are free, with some ticketed performances. Visit the Shop Front Theatre website for full details.