Innovators in Residence join the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Innovation Studio

Published: 12/08/2022

Two creative innovators will help drive experimentation, skills development and collaboration at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Artist, cultural producer and activist Lora Krasteva and multi-reality director Leonie Rae Gasson have been appointed Innovators in Residence at Scotland’s national conservatoire, where they’ll support students, staff and alumni in the two-year pilot project, Innovation Studio.

Launched earlier this year, Innovation Studio facilitates new opportunities for knowledge exchange at RCS. The Innovators in Residence roles aim to bolster and support Innovation Studio’s programme though one-to-one mentoring, community engagement and rigorous reflective practices on the evolution of the innovation community.

Lora Krasteva is an artist, cultural producer and activist. She is part of Global Voices Theatre, a female, non-binary and immigrant-led company introducing international work by historically marginalised creatives in the UK.

Leonie Rae Gasson is a queer, neurodivergent multi-reality director based in Glasgow whose work spans theatre, games, digital art and mixed reality projects.

Lora and Leoni will work alongside the Innovation Studio team throughout the two-year pilot, seeking to unlock new ways of working and generating supportive exchange networks across, and beyond, the institutional body.

The roles have been made possible through an anonymous donation from an RCS supporter who wishes to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation in the arts.

Deborah Keogh, Innovation Studio Project Director said: “We warmly welcome Lora Krasteva and Leonie Rae Gasson to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland community. Both bring a wealth of experience and insight and we’re excited about the opportunities that they’ll help develop for our community of artists at RCS.

“We’d also like to say a huge thank you to our donor who has generously supported the creation of these new roles.”

Lora creates devised, socially engaged work with professionals and other community members and has worked with Arts & Homelessness International advocating for a place for creativity in homelessness provision.

Lora is a steering group member of What Next?  and a founding member of Migrants in Theatre, the movement advocating for a better representation of first-generation immigrants. She is training to be a coach and NLP practitioner and currently lives in Sheffield where she sits on the board of the Sheffield Creative Guild. Her latest project, Becoming […], is a series of creative residencies in four different countries interrogating national identities from the perspective of local migrant artists and communities.

Lora said: “I am delighted to join the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and support its ambition to unlock the huge potential of their performing and producing artists. As a self-taught, immigrant artist and activist, it is a huge honour for me to be working with one of the leading cultural institutions in Scotland in what feels like such an intersectional and timely programme.”

Leonie Rae Gasson’s current work includes lead artist on Gloaming, a Scottish-Canadian co-production that fuses VR, dance, motion capture, live performance and ritual, where an audience at sunrise meet an audience on the other side of the world at sunset.

As joint Artistic Director of Produced Moon, she is creating a mixed reality response to international bestseller Einstein’s Dreams exploring particle physics and experiences of time. Recent work includes HOTLINE for the Tron Theatre, The One with the Lockdown, a short film as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scene’s for Survival, and Death Becomes Us, an immersive experience involving blindfolds, binaural soundscapes, interviews with a dominatrix, live music and a community chorus of European migrants to explore the Brexit campaign’s rhetoric of ‘taking back control’.

Leonie said: “I’m really excited to be joining the Innovation Studio, and for the opportunity to dissect, challenge and celebrate what it means to innovate in the arts in the 21st century. What new worlds can be imagined? What structures can be destroyed?
“I am looking forward to celebrating the innovation of the staff and students, whilst collaborating with the RCS community to explore more ways in which we can work outside traditional structures.”

Visit Innovation Studio for more information.

For more about Lora’s work visit www.lorakrasteva.com and follow on @lorakrasteva

For more on Leonie’s work visit leonieraegasson.com and follow on Instagram @leonie_rae @producedmoon and on Twitter  @LeoRaeGasson and @producedmoon