Barbara Touati-Evans

I’m Michael Woods, Managing Director of Solent Sky Services, which I run with my wife Sara from Portsmouth. I’ve always been creative and into tech, and drones brought the two together. Since 2017 I’ve been hooked on flying and telling stories from the air. I’m a CAA-qualified drone pilot, and I also shoot on the ground with cinema cameras, direct and edit. I love working with artists and have filmed with Olana Light and Roo Abrook, captured the Lido Lives dance film for Portsmouth 100 and cover Look Up Festival every year. I’ve run drone workshops, supported two apprentices through their courses and enjoy helping others into the industry. I’m always happy to talk ideas, collaborate and help artists see their work from a new perspective.

I am a theatre performer, movement practitioner, educator, and parent artist. I trained in the UK, Malta, and Greece, and have worked on performance projects and interdisciplinary collaborations in Europe and the UK for the past 15 years. My creative practice is informed by contemporary performance devising. The work is physical, visual and poetic; it shifts between presence and representation, layers mythologies with true stories and looks for surprising uses of movement, sound and objects. My current creative work focuses on the natural world, ecology and outdoor arts. In my research and projects, I look for meaningful ways to weave the natural world into my movement language, choreographies and performance artworks.

I am an audio-artist that uses music hardware (no laptop) to create music which I adapt live- effectively remixing my own music in real time. I tend towards the techno genre but relish the challenge of creating site-specific music such as I did as part of the Q121 project- playing music live in the historic wind tunnel in Farnborough to a paying audience. I also like to create unique sounding instruments or sound sources using contact microphones or by “circuit-bending” older electronic toys. By creating unique instruments this way- old, unwanted toys can be sustainably given new leases of life and become both sonically and artistically pleasing or interesting. I like to collaborate with other artists.