Surge

SURGE is Scotland’s leading developer of outdoors arts, physical theatre and circus.

SURGE runs projects to develop street arts, physical theatre and circus in Scotland. We work with artists, performance companies and educators at all levels of experience. We also run SURGE Festival, our annual event, which takes place each July, which brings new Scottish work and cutting edge international performances to the streets, theatres and unusual spaces of Glasgow.

We nurture talented artists at all levels of experience working across these fields to make challenging, genre-defying work. We then unleash this bounty of outlandish, spectacular artwork on the public through festivals and events across Scotland and beyond.

SURGE was set up in Scotland in 2009 as a Legacy Trust UK project as a part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. At the time, the outdoor arts, circus and physical theatre sector was vastly underdeveloped and way behind the other home nations. It was very difficult for artists in the field to have a sustainable career in Scotland and most relocated to London or abroad to find opportunities elsewhere. Those artists that stayed in Scotland largely worked in isolation with little training or professional development and very few avenues to show work; those platforms that did exist were populated almost exclusively by work made outside Scotland.

In less than a decade, SURGE has established itself as a highly regarded national company – with Creative Scotland Revenue Funded Organisation status – and is the backbone of outdoor arts, circus and physical theatre in Scotland. To date, we have supported over 1000 artists and shown their work to over half a million people.