Rimika Solloway
I’m a Japanese British woman living and working in London, loving the arts and championing it where I can. I believe it helps with empowerment, education, social cohesion.
I’ve sharpened my skills working as a senior researcher for The Audience Agency, and now as an evaluator at Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.
To be honest with you, the first time I felt like I belonged was when I was working at a Punchdrunk show at Battersea Arts Centre in my teens seeing immersive theatre burgeoning before my very eyes.
I was only working in the cloakroom but when I took the jacket off Mac from Green Wing, I was star-struck, and I think I realised then that I’d been allowed into this imaginative, weird and funny world, which had been built especially for us to get lost in. That’s probably when I fell in love with theatre and its transformative powers.
Or maybe it was when I was in the audience for The History Boys at the National Theatre, later discovering and dissecting each episode of Talking Heads by Alan Bennett. Or maybe it was working for alternative comedians like Josie Long and Adam Buxton, and trekking around Edinburgh Fringe with a backpack full of flyers.
I really believe in the power of the arts. Art makes us feel better and think harder. And I want everyone else – especially those with power – to support our artists. Data, research and evaluation helps make the case that the arts are vital for society.
Unfortunately, society doesn’t value the arts enough. Over the last decade we’ve seen a 42% decline in the number of Arts GCSE being taken up in England (Cultural Learning Alliance). That’s where the work I do comes in. I want to harness all sorts of data to help prove the importance of the arts.