Live Art Development Agency

Live Art Development Agency, known by its acronym LADA, is an arts organisation and registered charity founded in London in 1999 by Lois Keidan and Catherine Ugwu. LADA provides professional advice for artists as well as producing events and publications intended to enhance the understanding of and access to Live Art. They are an Arts Council England's National Portfolio Organisations. In 2021 Lois Keidan stood down as director, and Barak adé Soleil and Chinasa Vivian Ezugha were appointed as joint co-directors.

Activities
LADA is responsible for funding and co-ordinating Live Art UK, a network for bringing together organisations to support and develop Live Art infrastructures.

The LADA Study Room is an open access research facility for artists, students, curators, academics and other arts professionals. The Study Room houses a collection of more than 8,000 items ranging from theoretical texts to DVDs, videos, CDs and digital files of performance documents and documentation. This resource was described by The Independent as one of the UK's 50 best museums and galleries.

Selected Projects and Initiatives

 * LADA Screens - a series of free, online screenings of seminal performance documentation, works to camera, short films/video and archival footage.
 * Performance Magazine Online, is an online archive created by LADA in collaboration with the original editor Robert La Frenais, of Performance Magazine. Published between 1979 and 1992, the magazine documents a significant period in the development of art in the UK.
 * "15 Minutes With…" podcasts launched in 2014 to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Live Art Development Agency. Short dialogues with some of the artists and thinkers that LADA has worked with, including Lois Weaver, French & Mottershead, Maddy Costa and Mary Paterson, Joshua Sofaer and Stacy Makishi.
 * FRESH AiR - is an initiative from Queen Mary, University of London, produced in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency, offering recent graduates and emergent artists support, advice and professional development, features the FRESH AiR PLATFORM (an open submissions performance platform, mentoring, and critical feedback for programmed artists) and FRESH TIPS (a day of information and advice from experienced artists).
 * DIY: an opportunity for artists working in Live Art to conceive and run professional development projects for other artists.
 * Restock, Rethink, Reflect - An ongoing series of initiatives for, and about, artists who are engaging with issues of identity politics and cultural diversity in innovative and radical ways. Each RRR project is under a different theme: race (2006–08), disability (2009–12), feminism (2013–14), privilege (2016–18) and Managing the Radical (2019–21).
 * Life Lecture - An online resource which structures and directs an audience to deliver a lecture to themselves about themselves. Life Lecture has been created by Joshua Sofaer, published and distributed by the Live Art Development Agency and the dramaturg and editor in chief is Sibylle Peters in cooperation with the Interactive-Science-Program/ ZMI Geissen. Webdesign and authoring by Platform3.
 * Live Culture (2003) an event at Tate Modern which included performances from Franko B, Forced Entertainment and a lecture by Marina Abramović.

LADA produces projects to help develop the visibility of, and opportunities for, artists making live work from diverse backgrounds.

Publications
LADA has published and co-published a number of titles relating to Live Art:

Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh, edited by Adrian Heathfield, with the MIT Press, Perform Repeat Record edited by Adrian Heathfield and Amelia Jones with Intellect. Intellect Live book series a collaboration with Intellect Books on influential artists working at the edge of performance: The Live Art Almanac is an edited collection of writing on Live Art, gathered and re-published as a volume on an occasional basis since 2008.
 * Joshua Sofaer (2020) edited by Roberta Mock and Mary Paterson
 * Anne Bean (2019) edited by Rob La Frenais
 * Kira O'Reilly (2018) edited by Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves
 * Adrian Howells (2016) edited by Deirdre Heddon and Dominic Johnson
 * Lois Weaver (2016) edited by Lois Weaver and Jen Harvie
 * Ron Athey (2015) edited by Dominic Johnson
 * Raimond Hoghe (2013) edited by Mary Kate Connolly


 * The Live Art Almanac (2008).

Patrons
LADA has a board of patrons composed of 10 established artists who have contributed significantly to the development of Live Art.


 * Marina Abramović
 * Ron Athey
 * Anne Bean
 * Sonia Boyce
 * Tim Etchells
 * Guillermo Gómez-Peña
 * Raimund Hoghe
 * Tehching Hsieh
 * Isaac Julien
 * La Ribot

Key reading

 * Keiden, L, Mitchell, CJ. 'In Time: A Collection of Live Art Case Studies'Eds. Live Art Development Agency in collaboration with Live Art UK