British Council to organise Shakespearean road show in state, six other cities

Alongside with this will be the Globe Theatre’s Complete Walk, an immersive multi screen experience with 37 shorts of Shakespeare’s 37 plays being shown at festivals and public spaces in the city. The films have been screened along the iconic 2.5 mile stretch between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge. Each film explores one of Shakespeare’s plays and includes scenes shot in the locations Shakespeare imagined when he wrote them. Picture Cleopatra in front of the pyramids, Shylock in Venice’s former Jewish Ghetto, Hamlet on the rocks of Elsinore and much more. 

These scenes will be combined with extracts from the BFI’s silent Shakespeare series and our Globe on Screen filmed stage productions. Featuring a host of world’s greatest actors, the complete walk is an accessible, interactive way to celebrate Shakespeare’s life, work and legacy, exactly 400 years after his death.

Gemmell also discussed the India Wales fund where Welsh artists can bid for grants from a 450,000 pound project fund that aims to help build relationships with India. It is a joint project between Wales Arts International and the British Council which will promote artistic partnerships between creative professionals and arts organisations in the two countries. It will support projects taking place in India and Wales in 2017 and 2018.

Another interesting initiative, he spoke about was the Reimagine India cultural exchange programme. The UK has awarded funding to 17 projects. The purpose of the programme is to create a new work and to build sustainable networks and partnerships between artists and cultural leaders in both the countries.

Two of the Reimagine projects in East India are Silk River and Writing Places II. Led by Kinetika (UK) and Think Arts (Kolkata), Silk River explores the unique relationship between London and Kolkata through a year’s artistic exchange between 20 communities along the Thames Estuary and Hooghly river. Artistic director Ali Pretty working is collaboration with associate artistic director Ruchira Das, fashion designer Neishaa Gharat and an international team of contemporary and traditional artists, writers and photographers will capture and interpret the experience of journeying along these mighty rivers through the creation of 20 scrolls hand painted Bengal silk.