Rimika Solloway
I’m a Japanese British woman living and working in London, loving the arts and championing it where I can. I believe it helps with empowerment, education and social cohesion.
I’ve sharpened my skills working as a senior researcher for The Audience Agency also as a widening particiation researcher and evaluator for Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.
To be honest, the first time I truly felt like I belonged was as a teenager working backstage in a Punchdrunk show at the Battersea Arts Centre. Seeing immersive theatre burgeoning before my eyes was like being shown the machinery of magic.
I was on cloakroom duty when I took a jacket from the actor who played 'Mac' in Green Wing, and I was completely star-struck. In that moment, I realised I’d been invited into an imaginative, wild, and funny world built specifically for us to get lost in.
That was the moment I fell in love with theatre and its power to transform us, and the world we inhabit.
Or maybe it was when I was in the audience for The History Boys at the National Theatre, later discovering and dissecting each episode of Talking Heads by Alan Bennett. Or maybe it was working for alternative comedians like Josie Long and Adam Buxton, and trekking around Edinburgh Fringe with a backpack full of flyers.
I really believe in the power of the arts. Art makes us feel better and think harder. And I want everyone else – especially those with power – to support our artists. Data, research and evaluation helps make the case that the arts are vital for society.
Unfortunately, society doesn’t value the arts enough. Over the last decade we’ve seen a 42% decline in the number of Arts GCSE being taken up in England (Cultural Learning Alliance). That’s where the work I do comes in. I want to harness all sorts of data to help prove the importance of the arts.