NDT Broadgate was our revolutionary civic space initiative, designed to supercharge the recovery of freelance artists post-pandemic. 

Running from August 2021 through July 2022, NDT Broadgate was a large rehearsal and artist development complex exclusively for independent artists, based in City of London.

The revolutionary space was completely FREE for freelance and independent artists to use throughout the year. Featuring more than 16 rehearsal spaces, 10 meeting rooms, project spaces, writers' offices and recording studios, multiple communal areas and a large designers’ studio with make-spaces, this ambitious project was the first of its kind in the world.

Here you can explore the context and legacy of NDT Broadgate, including an independent Economic Impact Assessment showing a value of £40m unlocked across the creative economy, and our own report on an extraordinary year Notes From an Impossible Space. It is our hope that this archive will inspire the next wave of radical reimagining for the future of artist development around the world.

'A generous and essential project'  Stephen Fry

School of Hope

What do you hope for the future?

In the summer of 2021, The Paper Birds and Theatre Centre invited young people and artists from South London to join the School of Hope to explore what hope and empathy meant to them. In the first week, the groups creatively unpacked what ‘hope’ and ‘empathy’ looked, sounded, and felt like. Week two saw them collaborating to create a piece of devised performance.