Originally trained in dance, Paula has been making live events as a co-devisor, director and dramaturg with performers, visual artists and technologists in the UK and internationally since 1996. A founder member of Blind Ditch, she has been a co-visioner, director, workshop facilitator, producer and occasional performer with the group. She has an MA in Devised Theatre from Dartington College of Arts where she was an Associate Lecturer in Theatre 2001-10. As a cultural geographer, Paula was awarded a doctorate in Human Geography from the University of Exeter in 2019, with an art geography research project investigating relationships between data, trade, place and values. She is currently an ESRC funded Research Fellow, extending this research into publication, and working with the JUST AI network at the Ada Lovelace institute.

Image: Paula working on This City’s Centre, empty office space in Princesshay, Exeter 2013. Photograph by Benjamin J. Borley.

Formally trained in Arts Education at Stuttgart State Academy of Arts and Design, Volkhardt works across media as a maker of objects, installations, print and video work, and as collaborator on performance and educational projects. As a member of Blind Ditch since 2002 he has worked collaboratively as a designer/ conceptual artist for theatre & performance as well as key facilitator on the award winning VANLAND project. His affinity with site and context specific approaches coincides with a long-standing interest in how landscapes are created and proliferated. Since moving to Britain this broad interest has increasingly focused on the ways rural and urban concepts are interconnected; how notions of landscape contribute to the construction of cultural identity and the enshrinement of societal status quo. Volkhardt runs the artist-led space TOPOS in central Exeter.

Links: volkhardtmueller.com toposexeter.uk

Image: Volkhardt as the dancing robot in ‘Funkenstein’ 2007. Photograph by Tim Dollimore.

Graduating in Performance Writing from Dartington College of Arts, Heiko was a founder member of Blind Ditch and thought up the company name, which is a common landscape feature in Devon.  He is currently Produktmanager at Franckh-Kosmos Verlag.

Image: Heiko (centre) with Cat and Henning, getting ready to perform Land Marked at Mousonturm, Frankfurt, 2001. Photography by Paula Crutchlow.

Henning has been working as an artist, performer, and director since 1997 in New York and Europe. As a founder member of Blind Ditch, he co-devised and performed work for theatre and gallery spaces. His directorial work ranges from re-imagining classics to collaborating with playwrights on new work, from devised theatre to opera. He has appeared on television and films as a performer as well as on stages in the US, UK and Europe including a featured role in UNDERSTUDIES, a mockumentary web series written by Elisabeth Grey and Daniel Zimbler and directed by Daniel Zimbler, where he plays the Broadway director Knut Balke. Henning has an MFA in directing from Columbia University where he trained under the tutelage of Anne Bogart and Brian Kulick. He holds an MA in devised theatre from Dartington College of Arts in Devon, England, and a BA in theatre from Middlebury College in Vermont. He is an Artistic Director and a Founder of Scandinavian American Theater Company (www.satcnyc.org) in NYC.

Image: Henning performing in Wishes for a Better Future, 2002.

A graduate of i-DAT in Plymouth, Dan joined us to develop VANLAND in 2004. He contributed design, animation and coding expertise to our collaborations, devising work with us that began to engage artistically with the possibilities of digital networks. He is currently Experience Strategy Director at CX Partners.

Image: Dan working on VANLAND project Framing the Forest, 2006.