In April 2024, founder Catriona MacLeod decided she wanted to host a night of new, courageous and entirely unfunded theatre by her friends and colleagues - and have fun doing it. That faff-around-and-find-out DIY passion project sold out in a number of weeks, has sold out every time since, and  _and friends has grown into an organisation that serves a huge number of artists and companies across our three offerings.

_and friends was created from a desire to remove gatekeeping from the process of presenting and developing new work. We have all received hard "No"s in our careers. We don't believe a No from one person is a No in general. We want new work to live and thrive.

We believe in ideas, creativity and imagination. Creating, strategising and promoting new work requires thinking outside the box now more than ever. _and friends will always live beyond the box. 

We support the city's vibrant network of independent venues - nightlife and culture belong together.

We seek to make our nights, space and offerings accessible, and promise to prove our allyship to the LGBTQIA+ community, and anti-racism and anti-genocide movements through action, not lip service. 

We deeply care about changing the landscape of the industry so individuals feel seen and heard, and are able to continue their creative practice in a mindful and sustainable way. 

We serve artists. 

They will always come first. 

As it should be.

TRANSPARENCY

We believe in integrity and honesty above all else. From our finances to our collaborations and artistic output, we will always tell you - our audiences, our collaborators and our community - how we spend ticket profits and donations, why and how we make our decisions, and how we expect skills share exchanges to operate. We are always open to feedback and to suggestions, and we will be honest about our capacities as individuals and professionals. We are all humans first. We will also always be upfront about our politics, what we believe in. We don’t believe you can create a safe space without doing so.

COMMUNITY

We cannot do what we do alone, and neither can you. The theatre industry is an ecosystem and every individual is vital. With this in mind, we believe in creating opportunities for creatives to connect - in our space, at our scratch nights, at events. It is also essential for us that these opportunities are accessible to underrepresented groups. For work to continue, we all need to be seen - by the industry, and by each other.

We also uphold the Federation of Scottish Theatre’s guidelines for navigating Harassment in the Performing Arts - equality and wellbeing in our community starts with you as an individual and continues with us as a collective.

FAIR PAY / EXCHANGE

Art is work, and no one should work without either pay or a meaningful exchange that aids their development without costing anything. We are a non-profit organisation, and we prioritise paying all artists who work with us. We aim to do this by keeping our overheads low, splitting profit shares as equitably as possible to sustain ourselves and adequately compensate all our collaborators, and offering in-kind resources wherever we can.

We also believe that, when the common choice is between making work with funding or not making it at all, we will choose to make the work. What does this mean? It means that, in the absence of funding that pays artists a standard rate of pay,  work can still happen if the exchange of skills is meaningful, mutually beneficial and free from exploitative practices. See our Skills Exchange manifesto for more information.