Our work in the arts aims to promote overseas the diversity of UK culture, creativity, innovation and excellence in all artistic disciplines. We work across all art forms and with the best of British talent to develop artistic programmes and opportunities for collaboration.

 

Theatre and Dance

We promote the best of the UK’s performing arts sector through a range of activities and events including tours of new productions, workshops and residencies, seminars and conferences, showcases and UK study visits for overseas practitioners.

Our main projects

  • Dance Dance Dance, the best of British dance in Spain.
  • Big Dance 2016. Find out about this innovative initiative by reading this chronicle. You can also watch the videos of the events held in Valencia and San Sebastián (European Capital of Culture 2016), in the framework of the OlatuTalka festival.
  • DV8 tour of Spain. 
  • Golem, the latest production by 1927 theatre company, took to the Madrid stage last December. 
  • 3,2,1:  the international meeting for new performing arts was held in the Alhóndiga Bilbao centre in May 2015. 
  • The table: learn all about this work presented by Blind Summit Puppet Company by reading this chronicle.
  • The renowned English National Ballet production Lest we Forget visited Madrid to great public acclaim in June 2015.

We also advise and support festival producers to attend major British artistic events, such as the Edinburgh International Festival. Another aspect of our work is giving advice to festivals and cultural organisations on the latest artistic tendencies with a view to contributing towards their development of innovative programmes.

Find out more about our global work in theatre and dance.

Music

Electronic, jazz, traditional, folk, classical and indie: our music team work across all genres of music to promote British artists in Spain

Our main projects

The Selector 

The British Council produces this weekly radio programme in association with Radio 3 (Radio Nacional de España) to promote the best music from the UK scene. Thanks to The Selector, Spanish listeners have the opportunity to discover the latest bands succeeding on global stages.

Find out more about the programme and listen to its podcasts here.

Sign up to our monthly newsletter here.

Discover our monthly playlist of the best of UK music. 

North By Southwest

We started our worldwide broadcast of this radio programme in 2009. North by Southwest is a joint project between the British Council and Radio Exterior (Radio Nacional de España) through which we promote the English language and the most outstanding UK cultural initiatives.

Find out more about the programme and listen its podcasts here.

For more information about our global work in music, please read this page.

Literature

We work with British and Spanish publishing communities to promote UK literature in online and face to face programmes and activities throughout the year.

One of the most remarkable examples of our work in this area is our cooperation with the Hay Festival Segovia team that spans more than a decade. Don’t miss out on our chronicle of its 2015 edition. 

Our global literature website gathers together information about our main activities and projects, news from the British publishing and literature community, a worldwide festivals directory as well as learning resources nourished from major UK writers, plays and themes from contemporary British literature.   

Visual arts

We promote British plastic arts through activities and events such as touring exhibitions, workshops, seminaries and conferences. We also develop ad-hoc projects for cultural centres across Spain.

Our main projects

  • PHotoEspaña 2016-Transitions, 10 years that transformed Europe. Discover the main highlights of this photo exhibition currently available at the Bellas Artes Centre (Madrid).
  • Cold Stones: the CAC Málaga presented this exhibition by Richard Long: a good starting point to get to know his Land Art creations. Read more details here.
  • D*FACE  is the first retrospective in Spain of this British street artist.
  • Sacrilege by Jeremy Deller: over 50,000 people visited the full-scale replica of the Stonehenge megalithic monument, reproduced as an "inflatable castle" in Móstoles (Madrid).
  • Gillian Wearing designed this collection of portraits with the IVAM exhibition hall specifically in mind. Photography, video and sculpture are used to explore the complexity of human relations.

If you are interested in Visual arts, discover the over 8,500 works of British art included in our Collection.

Cinema

Our cinema team promotes the latest works by British directors in order to showcase the innovation, diversity and excellence of UK cinema overseas and to generate creative exchange opportunities.

Our main projects

  • We support cinema and documentaries festivals such as DOCS Barcelona, where we presented the documentary production A city of dreams- A musical in the 2016 edition of the festival.
  • Cooperation with the IN-Edit network of festivals.
  • Live screening of a selection of productions from the Royal Opera House in over 100 Spanish cinemas.

Other activities

  • Tour of the shorts nominated for the BAFTA SHORTS AWARDS since 2013. If you want to run this project in your centre, please contact us by e-mail. You can also read this chronicle about its 2015 edition.
  • Screening of the Grierson documentaries. Read here to find out more about our Memory is life project at the CAC in Málaga.
  • Screening of shorts for schools and colleges.

Please, find out more about our global programmes in the audiovisual field.

See also