Vision, Mission & Values

Fierce’s Vision, Mission and Values guide all our work being a valuable reference point when we approach new projects and encounter challenges in our work. When uncertain what to do next we look to these principles to find the way.

FIERCE’S VISION

To transform the national performing arts landscape so that:

  • Audiences are broader and more confident
  • Artists take greater risks and aspire to higher standards of excellence
  • Live Art is the life blood of our culture

FIERCE’s MISSION

Fierce is Birmingham’s cultivator of artists, audiences and contexts for new intersectional performance, [curating the leading international Live Art Festival], guided by our core values, trust; rigour; disruption and joy.

FIERCE’S VALUES

Trust

  • We trust our audience to have their own response
  • We curate a range of unusual and international experiences offering a variety of ways in which to engage
  • We allow audiences to be themselves
  • We allow artists to make the work they want to make
  • We always say yes until it’s impossible
  • We are open and accountable to our values
  • We publicly advocate for people to trust their instincts

Joy

  • We have fun and we want our audiences and artists to have fun as well
  • We disregard genre and art form: we enjoy the work for what it is
  • Our relationships are a source of joy for us and our work is a celebration
  • We bring people together physically as an antidote to a digitally saturated age
  • We present beautiful work with an exquisite, sublime or contemplative sensibility

Disruption

  • We ascribe equal value to a party as to a traditionally presented programme
  • We put marginalised/ outsider/alternative voices centre stage
  • We create a legitimate context for what some might consider to be illegitimate work
  • We disrupt expectations of what art can be, who can make it and where it can happen
  • We present outrageous work with a punk, camp or trash sensibility
  • We have a cheeky and irreverent tone of voice

Rigour

Programme

  • We research and travel extensively so that we don’t miss anything
  • We do things first because we see things first
  • Our programme is directly informed by our research

Artists

  • We work holistically with artists
  • We do not see the work as a product
  • We work with artists who display a similar level of rigour

Audiences

  • We communicate the offer with clarity in an accessible, plain English form
  • We consider the audience experience in its totality

Partners/ funders

  • Our rigour allows partners and funders to take a risk with us
  • We seek out funding opportunities with funders where our criteria are aligned

People

  • We ascertain the needs of our People and meet them wherever possible
  • We have systems and procedures in place to support individuals