This month Dash’s brand new production, The Reckoning, opens at The Arcola Theatre in Dalston. Co-Writer and Director Josephine Burton gives you a taste of what to expect from this vivid and powerful new play about war, survival and the fragile trust between those who uncover the truth and those who must live with it.

Join Dash’s Artistic Director, Josephine Burton, as she revisits our 2024 interview with critically acclaimed journalist Peter Pomerantsev and catch up with Georgian Artist and Activist Ana Riaboshenko on what it’s been like since the Georgian Dream party, widely seen as pro-Russian, maintained its majority in last year’s elections. Professor Alan Finlayson also shares his insights from his new book - Our Subversive Voice: The History and Politics of English Protest Songs, 1600–2020.

Join us round the kitchen table with acclaimed Ukrainian chef Olia Hercules and Dash’s Artistic Director Josephine Burton as they weave together cooking and storytelling in our latest production.

In this episode of the Dash Arts Podcast, Artistic Director Josephine Burton dives into two powerful exhibitions that challenge how we understand women, art, and mental health:
🖼 Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists – curated by Lisa Appignanesi and Bryony Davies
🎨 Charlotte Johnson Wahl: What It Felt Like – at Bethlem Museum of the Mind

Join us in the rehearsal room as we craft a new epic - an origin story that celebrates and redefines the migration experience. 

Songs of Solidarity (the current working title for Dash Arts and Projekt Europa’s new project) brings together artists, researchers, and refugees to co-create a powerful music-theatre performance.

How can the arts help us to encounter others?

In December 2024, we were part of a fantastic live discussion at the RSA (Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) discussing how the arts can unlock unheard voices. This podcast brings you some highlights from the event with some extra insights and updates from our Dash Arts Artistic Director Josephine Burton.

In the fourth episode on the journey towards our production, The Reckoning, Dash’s Artistic Director, Josephine Burton is in conversation with Author and Playwright Gillian Slovo discussing the power of theatre and the responsibilities involved in bringing real people’s stories to the stage.

In the third episode on the journey towards our production, The Reckoning, Dash’s Artistic Director, Josephine Burton is in conversation with Rory Finnin, Professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge. Interspersed by some short performances from the developing script, the two discuss the creative process behind the making of the production, rooted in testimonies taken from survivors from the Russian war in Ukraine.

More than half the world's population is voting in elections this year. Dash Arts dives into one of those elections, speaking to artists in Georgia about how they are responding to the political turmoil in their country. Josephine Burton speaks to three Georgian artist activists who are uniting artists from across the sector, shouting for democracy and pushing for change.

Join Dash’s Artistic Director, Josephine Burton as she travels to the Arvo Pärt Centre in Laulasmaa, Estonia to investigate the mystical musical relationship between nature and the people of Estonia

In this special episode Artistic Director, Josephine Burton, catches up with four former speech-making workshop participants across the country on how they are experiencing the election campaign, and analyses our political candidates and the quality of their speechmaking with Alan Finlayson, Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia, and collaborator on our national workshops.

Whilst the country builds up to a general election, we’re in the midst of creating Our Public House, Dash Arts’ state-of-the-nation theatre production. Hear from Artistic Director Josephine Burton and playwright Barney Norris on how our play weaves together the ideas and speeches of over 150 voices from across England and the ever shifting political landscape.

In the still of a spring night, we journey into the woods with musicians Sam Lee and Jack Durtnall to hear the beautiful and increasingly rare song of the nightingale with a concert and conversation around the campfire. 

“In many ways, I owe everything to the band.”

It’s been over 25 years since two students ran into each other on a street corner in Oxford and decided to set up a band. Oi Va Voi, rooted in Jewish and Eastern European musical traditions, would eventually reach hundreds and thousands of people across the world.

In this second episode on the journey towards our production, The Reckoning, we hear from journalist and author, Peter Pomerantsev who co-founded The Reckoning Project and who first shared with Dash the hundreds of witness testimonies from survivors of the Russian war in Ukraine.

Marie and Josephine chat outside a pub in South London after a week of development and rehearsals at the NTS - intercut with clips from the rehearsal room and questions from the audience

This year Dash Arts is developing a new theatre production, The Reckoning; based on personal accounts of survivors of the Russian war in Ukraine from the vast testimony archive shared by The Reckoning Project, who has been gathering testimony from survivors of detentions, torture and shelling. Journalists are working with lawyers and analysts to collect these stories that can be submitted as evidence in court.

As 2024 arrives we look back on a year of new beginnings for Dash Arts. Join Artistic Director Josephine Burton and Dash’s Podcast Producer Marie Horner as they explore what we’ve learnt and what we haven’t learnt…yet.

“Grasp the subject, the words will follow.”  Attributed to Cato The Elder

“Take a deep breath in, now think about the future you want” Heidi in Cornwall. 

What do you want to change? What do you want politicians to understand?