our practice not ‘best’ practice

Here at Terra Nova, we’ve spent 18 years learning from trial-and-error and building our practice as people from around the globe. We don’t say it’s the best practice, just our best, based on Terra Nova’s experience.

We look at ways to be creative, to create an safe fair room, to manage who has power so that we are equitable, and we share our lived experience of all the unspoken ways in which different cultures express the big things we all care about: honesty, happiness, respect, kindness, excellence, growth.

Our way of doing things, of bringing people together evolved in Northern Ireland, which is a post-conflict society. It is influenced by our founder and Artistic Director who is from the global north, and grew up largely in the global south, as a third culture individual influenced by United Nations policy. We offer our ideas and system of exercises and games when we work in other places around the globe, underpinned by our ethics and adapt to suit the context we find ourselves in.

You can peek into ‘the room where it happens’ with this video of our professional team exploring with community members on A Midsummer Night’s Dream at https://youtu.be/UwQ5vJw4rFc, or by watching…

We haven’t been alone in this journey. We’ve run projects in many languages, and co-created with colleagues in Hong-Kong, Macau, Greenland, Iran, Egypt, Canada.

Our methodologies have featured in a range of academic articles, as well as books on intercultural performing arts from the University of Galway and the University of Melbourne.  In 2015 Belfast City Council chose us as the subject of their presentation on innovative practice in Belfast, at that year’s Eurocities conference in Slovenia. For four years we worked hand-in-hand with EastSideArts to deliver the HOME project supporting co-creation by intercultural artists working with inner East communities. In 2018 we shared our methodology at a research intensive organised at the University of Galway by Academic, Charlotte McIvor, in 2023 we did the same in Zwickau, in 2024 in Valenciennes.

We were shortlisted for the excellence of our community engagement at the 2017 National Diversity Awards, and the 2020 National Campaign for the Arts’ Heart of the Arts Awards.  

What Is Interculturality?

For us, interculturality asks people to come together and forge a new shared culture, as a way of working together, for however long the group decides. It is always driven by participants’ values which have to be overtly explored and asks us to manage our feelings wisely where there is value dissonance between ourselves and others. It isn’t the same as artistic practice but it can sit along side it to make wonderful things happen.