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Brave New World Producties
Photos © Henri Vos (Fuerza Bruta) Marc de Fotograaf (CARGO)
Arjen Jan Stada (Gender matters) John Kouskoutis (metamorphSEA)
Brave New World Producties
Brave New World Productions (BNWP) was founded in January 2019 by two former colleagues from Leeuwarden-Friesland European Cultural Capital 2018 - Claudia Woolgar and Jan van Erve.
The year 2018 was a fantastic cultural year for everyone in Friesland, but it is now behind us and we are looking to the future. What do we want to keep alive in the years leading up to the cultural capital anniversary in 2028? What we now go on to dream, create and realise must be the on-going proof of how successful LF2018 was.
BNWP wants to be part of the post-2018 movement and our mission is threefold:
1) to programme international projects in Friesland with
2) strong ties to young and new artists in the region, and
3) always in a unique location to reach as broad a public as possible.
Who are we?
Claudia Woolgar
Claudia Woolgar is co-founder of Brave New World Productions and is the artistic heart behind the organisation.
From 2015 - 2018 she worked as a Co-Artistic Leader and member of the programming team for Leeuwarden-Fryslan 2018 European Capital of Culture and was the producer of The Giants from Royal de Luxe. Since 2019 she has been workign as the international programmer of Oulu European Capital of Culture 2026.
Her previous positions include: international programmer for Limerick National City of Culture 2014, artistic director and CEO of The Source Arts Centre, and AD & CEO of Kilkenny Arts Festival, an international multi-arts festival, both in Ireland. Before that, Woolgar produced and toured the work of directors such as Rimas Tuminas (Lithuania), Silviu Purcarete (Romania), Lev Dodin (Russia) and Declan Donnellan (UK), and from 1994 - 1997 ran a British-Romanian theater exchange programme, Noroc, including the managing and programming the first British theatre festival in Bucharest.
She has worked in the Caucasus, training young art managers and is an art journalist and theatre critic, with work published in The Spectator, The Guardian, The Times Magazine, The Economist, The European, Plays International, The Stage, The Washington Times Magazine, Theater Ireland and The Irish Times, among others. She also reviewed for BBC Radio Ulster, Kaleidoscope and Radio 2.
Jan van Erve
Jan van Erve is co-founder of Brave New World Productions and is the business brain of the organisation.
In 2012 he founded his company Van Erve | Sport & Commerce on. Before that he worked for 12 and a half years in the commercial department at SC Heerenveen, where he was commercial director from 2007 to 2012. Through Van Erve | Sport & Commerce he handled a numbers of great projects in the sports' world.
Jan has been involved in the cultural sector since August 2015. From then until December 2018 he was head of partnership and commerce at Leeuwarden-Friesland European Cultural Capital 2018 and responsible for all the sponsor contracts. During this period he remained active in sports, including advising companies in relation to sports sponsorship, and he is a member of the KNKB commerce team (handball) and that of Formula 2 driver, Nyck de Vries.
In January 2019, together with Claudia Woolgar, he founded Brave New World Productions and together they are responsible for their first major production, "Fuerza Bruta".
"Nothing is impossible, it's just potential".