RAW: Winchester’s Contemporary Performance Week

This brand-new creative initiative for Winchester was piloted in March 2025 with a view to it becoming an annual addition to Winchester’s calendar of special events and festivals.

RAW arose out of a shared commitment to contemporary performance, even in the face of the growing pressure to present only sure-fire sellers in these financially constrained times for live event venues.

The A stands for Arts and the W for Winchester…as for the R?

Well, it could be Radical, Real, Risky, Rising, Relevant, Rebellious, Redefining, Remarkable …or just RAW!

It can be whatever you choose to make it in fact, because in so many ways ‘contemporary performance’ is subjective and meets every audience member in their own place before taking us on a journey to elsewhere.

For us, RAW is a place for live performance which sits between traditional art form boundaries and is indeed difficult to define or label. What it often does, though, is cut through and surprise you, encouraging you to see the world just a little bit differently – which can only be a good thing, right?

So often in the present climate we observe audiences who are more risk averse than some years ago and who tend to stick to things they know rather than parting with money for something they don’t know or are not sure of the experience they are going to get.

It is beholden to us, as programmers of live performance venues, to make sure we continue to provide opportunities for people to take a risk and try something new, or the tendencies of audiences will become a self-fulfilling prophecy for us in the arts and a doom loop for innovation and experimentation in performing arts.

With a little support from the Government’s ‘Shared Prosperity’ fund, administered by Winchester City Council, three organisations, all with professional venues in Winchester, have come together to gently push against this and make something new happen.

It shows the power, indeed the necessity, of generous collaboration when times are tough. Discarded Nut, Hampshire Cultural Trust and Play to the Crowd run The Nutshell, The Arc and Theatre Royal Winchester respectively. Together, we committed to programming a week of contemporary performance in the last week of March each year, starting in 2025.

The three organisations are different in scale but were able to work in harness to make a special thing a reality, mainly because of the generous spirit of the people involved and the empowerment of the leadership behind the people.

10 performances by eight different companies happened across five evenings and three venues, attracting more than 700 people to try something different. Not bad for a first go!

In future years the key will be making RAW feel like a thing to try and a talking point locally. It is not that there are not culturally curious people in and around Winchester, it is just that they are used to going into London to get their contemporary performance fix. Why shell out for a train fare when you can taste new experiences on your doorstep!

We are also keen to grow the partnership and continue to celebrate the power of collaboration to make possible things that we just couldn’t do on our own. When times are tough, and you are taking risks, it is good to hold hands with friends before you leap, as we have discovered as we launched RAW together this year. Let us know if you are interested in participating as a venue or producer in Winchester and are prepared to take a bit of a risk with us.

We are looking forward to exploring Edinburgh Fringe and further afield this summer to bring back some of the most interesting and ‘RAW’ live performances to Winchester between 22 and 28 March 2026.

Keep an eye on RAW | Winchester’s Contemporary Performance Week for updates.