“If there are barriers, we will find a way to break them…” – Slung Low’s Joanna Resnick – interview

Slung Low venue The Warehouse in Holbeck. Credit: Tom Arber

It’s been a busy few years for innovative Leeds theatre company, Slung Low. TSOTA arranged an interview with Chief Exec, Joanna Resnick, to check in on the organisation and find out what’s in store for its next phase.

Back in February 2020, TSOTA hosted a guest article from one of the more outspoken and respected voices in Leeds’ arts landscape –  Alan Lane, the then-Artistic Director of theatre company Slung Low. It’s a wonderful little piece that captures some pre-pandemic optimism about the potential of public arts funding, told through the lens of his organisation’s distinct approach to theatre and community making.

Nearly half a decade on, and I’m catching up with Joanna Resnick, who finds herself at the helm of Slung Low following a team reshuffle, with Alan moving North to work at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and making space for Joanna to step up from Executive Producer to Chief Exec – a promotion a decade in the making.

“I still think of Slung Low as my first proper job,” says Joanna, referring to the internship she did with the company after her studies. She’d written to them after seeing their “desire to try new things” and openness, and was invited to spend three months with the team, in which time she worked on a play in a swimming pool and helped insulate their shipping container office. Not your traditional theatre experience, but a good insight into the Slung Low way. They invited her back, before she eventually took on a role in place of a departing producer: “I found my people early and clung on for dear life!”

11 years on, Joanna is leading the organisation into its next phase. 

The Warehouse in Holbeck. Credit: Tom Arber

Slung Low started in Leeds in 2000 to create site-specific, ambitious productions of outdoor theatre. They operated out of The Holbeck, the oldest working men’s club in Britain, from 2018, making the district of Holbeck their home. Since then they’ve opened The Warehouse and a venue in Temple, used for making work, hosting community events and as a rehearsal space for other performers in Leeds. They’ve done everything from produce an outdoor multimedia show at Hull 2017 to setting up a training programme for arts leaders and a pay-what-you-feel annual Christmas Fayre (returning this Saturday 14th December).

2023 was big for Slung Low, described by Joanna as a “horizon” – something they spent years preparing for. They started it with their move into The Warehouse, then began rehearsals for the opening event of the LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture programme, which Alan co-directed. Slung Low played a decent part in the Year of Culture, working on the events that bookended 2023, a film project involving 200 community members, and an opera featuring a cast of 180 schoolchildren from Holbeck’s Ingram Road Primary School. The year lingers in the Slung Low world – the kids who took part in the opera still talk about it, volunteers from LEEDS 2023 are now helping out with the company, speakers and set design from the Year of Culture are now in their possession, which they lend out to others. 

Community meal at The Warehouse in Holbeck. Credit: Tom Arber

2024 has been the reset year; the time to breathe and ask: “what is that new horizon, what’s that next big thing.” With Alan moving on from his AD role (though staying involved as co-chair of the board), I ask Joanna what this looks like. She rattles through what they want to work on: the leadership programme, a big show in the city at some point, building up Leeds People’s Theatre (their sister charity), improvements to the physical venues, and hopefully more international work. 

Their next show, ‘The Storm and the Minotaur’, will tour schools in South Leeds through Spring 2025. But it’s interesting how little of Joanna’s to-do list is about ‘theatre’. Slung Low started as the company that, in Joanna’s words, you’d find on “the list of 10 interesting places to go on a date” due to their experimental work. They’ve become much more than that.

“People would go ‘oh yes, you did that show, you did that thing on the moor’ then it became ‘oh yes, you delivered our food’”, says Joanna, referring to lockdown when Slung Low turned their venue into a food bank for Holbeck residents. “When we set up the food bank, there were so many similarities to making a big show,” she says of the project, which involved 90 volunteers ready to serve 10,000 households. “Everyone had their part, the need for communication, everyone coming together… It was a different outcome, but the same people who set up the food bank or run a leadership programme are the ones that made the opening ceremony for the Year of Culture.”

Joanna working on Slung Low’s leadership programme. Credit: James Phillips

All of us in the arts are storytellers. But Joanna and the Slung Low team are exceptional in their commitment to platforming unexpected storytellers, and not just to produce shows. They’ve built a classroom and a touring bus to deliver workshops; they listen to a local community advisory board and a steering group of primary school pupils. They believe in working with those on your doorstep as much as those with the funding. Their ways could inspire plenty of others in the arts, and generally in society, but Joanna doesn’t want to condescend to anyone. “We just try to demonstrate other ways of being”, though she acknowledges they have a unique “ability to imagine” which drives their approach.

Revisiting Alan’s article from 2020 and considering Joanna’s vision for the company today, there is a clear thread of purpose running through Slung Low. The values that drew Joanna in are the same ones that have stood Slung Low apart, robust enough to help them navigate change and retain their essence. Though there’s still lots for them to explore, and plenty of projects round the corner, Joanna is doubling down on how to make it happen: 

“The idea of ‘radical generosity’. Saying ‘yes’ all the time. If there are barriers to people getting into the arts, we will find a way to break them.” And for Joanna, their ability – and their responsibility – to continue problem-solving and involving people throughout all of their projects, be it art or community outreach, comes from a simple fact: “We’re theatre-makers.”

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