This Saturday – the 27th – saw the London branch of the Agency all gathered together for the first time in Providence House, the historic community centre and central Headquarters for our Saturday brain expansion, network exploration and self-orientation.

After some warm-up games, that included a incredibly competitive and awesome Z-Z-Boing, and a chance for everyone to give on the spot 1-minute introductions of themselves, we talked about the nature of the project, what it meant to be an Agent, what it meant to be part of the Agency, how to document the process for ourselves to look back on as well as keeping track of our ideas as we went along and also how to create ‘visibility’ for The Agency using social media.

We got an idea of all the Agents favoured online platforms – soundcloud, youtube, snappy (snap-chat), instagram, facebook, twitter etc and discussed how we could use these to draw attention to the work The Agency was doing and help share our journeys with the outside world.

After lunch we explored Faustini’s idea of The Compass, the tool by which Agents can orientate themselves, establish their Desire (what they hope to achieve as Creators and vocal protagonists in their own adventure) in their Territory, their locale and space for them to be, alter and create in a new Idea with it’s own Form, that will come out as the project progresses.

One of my favourite parts of the day was hearing how impassioned the Agents were when it came to discussing social identity and the privilege or disadvantage that came about with different aspects of Race, Gender, Sexuality, Class, Religion, Size & Ability.  Tawana and Elliot both seemed to totally come alive when exploring the factors of racial inequality and the work-ethics of different migrant communities in London, while Alaska educated us all on the categories of sexual orientation.

In reflection afterwards we – Roisin, Deanna, Jessica (one of the Agents from last year) and myself (Josh) – were all slightly in awe of just how awesome and on it the group were and also how attuned their ideas were with each other from the offset – many of them expressing interests in creating musical/theatrical/socially informed performance platforms. Rachelle wanted to do work on ideas to help boys in her territory who all seemed to be getting drawn into gangs, Elliot wanted to make a play/short spoken word piece on domestic violence, Arnold wanted to get funding to transform a community playground, Alaska wanted to make film documentaries with and about underrepresented communities, while Kristian offered his multi-talented assistance (in production, photography, film-making) to anyone in the group who might want them! It was quite incredible to hear them all share these early inspirations and catching little glimpses of how they might develop with each others help.

All in all lots to be excited about! Watch this space for what comes next!