Matt Peacock
Total Breakthrough Fund support: £83,157
Matt’s Breakthrough Fund grant supported him to investigate a new artistic strategy for Streetwise Opera, the company that he founded in 2002. At the time of the grant, Matt’s interest was to explore much further the relationship between film and live performance that he had begun to work with in earlier performance projects. He wanted to test further how this approach could support the aims of the live performances to create ambitious new opera productions, to give affirming experiences to performers, and to spread awareness and exposure for theirs and the company’s achievements.
Awarded in 2010, Matt’s Breakthrough grant allowed him new time and space to research film production and distribution, and he was able to appoint an Associate Artistic Director and in-house Producer experienced in film to develop plans with him for what became the company’s most ambitious project combining film and live performance to date. Streetwise had never had the opportunity to create its work through an R&D of this kind before. The Answer to Everything was produced in 2013, premiering at the BFI in London, receiving 4-star reviews in The Guardian and The Times and has been on tour in the UK since then. Matt and Streetwise have been able to learn an enormous amount from the ambitions and challenges of this project – this learning has helped to mould a new Artistic Strategy for the charity. The grant concluded in autumn 2013.
