Mission statement

We are a group of three artists, each with a different area of expertise. Our practice is based on non-hierarchical collaboration. As a collective, we are also open to working with other artists, performers and non-performers. Methodologically, our work is heavily process-lead. The product is important, but the process by which it is created is often an integral and visible part of the finished piece.
Our work hybridises art forms and straddles experimental theatre and live art. Whether producing performances, events or public interventions, we play with familiar frameworks (a beauty parlour, a shop window, playing hide and seek, a candlelit vigil, etc) in order to subvert expectations. In doing so we seek to provoke the audience to question assumed boundaries: within society, between art and life, or fiction and reality.
Our projects aim to make certain binaries permeable: performance/the everyday, performer/audience, failure/success, creation/destruction, beginning/end. As a result, they often exist outside the limits of art and spill into people's everyday existence.

The role of the audience is an important focus of our practice. Aiming give people 'space' - both literal and conceptual - we make work that unpicks something ostensibly simple and invites audiences to pull the loose thread. Audiences have been made voyeurs, complicit performers, protagonists, and co-creators in order that they may acknowledge the shared responsibility in creative action, and make a personal investment in the work.

We continually push ourselves as creators and performers – which is more clearly expressed in the inclination towards endurance in the work we produce. We seek to 'test' ourselves in some way with each piece; to a certain extent, we also seek to test our audience. We occasionally create something which is entirely unrehearsable. Often, this means embracing the unknown – something with which we are very comfortable. We are drawn to the unexpected. At the same time we always work at a high standard. This doesn’t just mean we pay close attention to the details of the audience’s experience and our performance skills, but we also create work which is conceptually tight and aesthetically polished. Moreover, our projects – visually stimulating, socially and politically engaged – ask something more of ourselves and our audiences. We want to make work that raises questions and reaches towards answers, but does not necessarily expect them.

Company history

Accidental Collective formed in 2006. The company is a sum of its parts: Rick Bolinger; Daisy Orton and Pablo Pakula – hailing from East London, Yorkshire and Spain, respectively. One day in 2005, they all sat down together and decided that they couldn't imagine doing anything other than making performance work, so they all signed a piece of lined notebook paper agreeing that they would give it their best shot. Since then Accidental Collective has constantly been growing and developing.

From the offset the company established strong links with PANek (Performing Arts Network Kent), Canterbury City Council, Kent County Council, and the University of Kent. The company is based in Canterbury and continues to be committed to enriching the performing arts scene in the region through performance, participation, evaluation of process, networking, mentoring and peer support.

Accidental Collective has performed on home territory across Kent (Canterbury, Herne Bay and Folkestone) and further afield at Hazard Festival (Manchester), St George's Hall (Liverpool), NRLA (Glasgow), and The Basement (Brighton) to name a few examples.

Since the company's formation it has, at various times, been kindly funded by Kent County Council, Canterbury City Council, Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England amongst others.
Accidental Collective is the Associate Theatre Company of The University of Kent’s School of Arts.