KORO LAB

Koro Lab supports migrant and Global Majority creatives to develop bold immersive, interactive and site-specific work through artist development and R&D commissions.

Taking place in spring-summer 2026, the programme includes training, mentoring, production support and seed funding, delivered in partnership with arts and heritage venues.

It will culminate in Koro Festival, a new biennial festival of socially engaged immersive and site-specific performance in May 2027.
Four women looking at a game board

The programme

Between April and October 2026, nine artists or companies receive:

Training: A two-day programme of workshops on immersive and site-specific theatre-making

Space: One week of free R&D space at Shoreditch Town Hall, Theatre Deli or Wellcome Collection

Seed funding: A £2,500 bursary

Showcasing opportunities: A public sharing with professional filming and photography

Production support: Mentoring, production and fundraising support from the Koro team and collaboration with an access consultant
A group of artists inside the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall

Meet the artists

Black woman wearing a black and white furry hat and glasses staring at the camera
Munotida Chinyanga is an anti-disciplinary director and immersive performance maker creating socially engaged, audience-centred work that blends theatre, installation, and game structures.

Don’t Talk to Strangers, a participatory pop up café where goods are social risks. Disguised as familiar vendors, performers invite audiences to choose from a menu of interactions, and pay by exchanging memories, favours, confessions, or small acts of care.
A headshot of Leo Doulton in a black suit, white shirt, glasses, and shoulder-length black hair, smiling at the camera in front of some plants.
Leo Doulton is an interactive theatre-maker creating game-based, audience-led performances that explore power, choice, and collective storytelling.

Of The Free is an immersive game-show set on an imagined island inviting audiences to shape new narratives of the British Empire. Participants are divided into groups - metropole and periphery, rulers and dissenters - and collaboratively build stories of resistance through negotiation, play and collective imagination.
Matilda is a Black person who sits facing the camera, with a slight smile, against a red backdrop, wearing glasses, a dark top, and a green cardigan. Their braids are styled back with a headband, and they wear small hoop earrings. A wheelchair headrest is visible behind them.
Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini is a theatre-maker and filmmaker whose work centres disabled, Black and queer lives through storytelling that interrogates systems of power and care.

A.I.D.A.И is a science-fiction theatrical exploration of the intersection of artificial intelligence, disability and the future of care. Set in a near-future UK, the show follows a disabled woman assigned a humanoid robotic carer through a government cost-saving scheme, and draws on lived experiences of navigating the UK adult social care system.
A headshot of Pepa, she has short, dark hair tucked behind her ears. She’s looking directly at the camera with a calm, subtle smile. She wears large gold hoop earrings, bold red lipstick and a vibrant pink button-up blouse with a delicate, textured pattern. The background is a solid dark charcoal grey.
Pepa Duarte is an actor, improviser, and theatre-maker working across participatory and socially engaged performance.

El Trueque is an interactive show that transforms a traditional market stall into a portal for memory and migration. Two actor-improvisers open an auction house that rejects money in favour of barter, where audience members are invited to "buy" valuable home objects in exchange of their own stories.
Two chunky people in front of an art gallery background are looking at each other holding hands. One of them is a white transfem person with curly red hair and a red satin dress, they have one of their legs mid high kick and the satin dress is floating under it. The other one is a non-binary masc person with olive skin wearing dark grey waistcoat and trousers and their short curly hair is slicked back
Gilded Tongue are a multidisciplinary performance duo creating politically engaged work that draws on movement, ritual, and queer/trans perspectives.

A Family Gathering is a site-specific performance set around a dinner table, exploring family structures. Audience members are assigned roles through prompts and directly shape the interaction. The piece shifts from recognisable family dynamics into a surreal, glitching environment, combining live interaction and movement.
Elena Nenasheva is a theatre director with a strong focus on political and socially engaged site-specific theatre.

Being (b)old is new immersive  performance exploring ageing from scientific, bodily and social perspectives. The show is inspired by interviews of older people and explore generational dynamics and youth representation in contemporary culture. Taking place across multiple rooms, the piece explores social and psychological questions related to ageing through audience participation.
A medium close-up, front-facing portrait of a woman - Margot - standing against a plain, off-white wall. They have light-colored eyes and brown, shoulder-length hair that is tucked behind their ears, with a few loose strands framing their face. The person is wearing a black, ribbed turtleneck sweater and a small gold hoop earring is visible in their right ear. They have a neutral, direct expression, looking straight into the camera. The lighting is bright and even, casting a soft shadow against the wall behind them.
Margot Przymierska's work sits at the intersection of participatory performance and community engagement, and aims to amplify migrant and working-class voices.

Monument is an interactive performance weaving between two worlds: post-WWII Czechoslovakia, where a failed artist-turned-apparatchik oversees construction of the world's largest Stalin monument; and contemporary London, where a Polish builder constructs luxury flats while navigating exploitation, isolation, and the hollow promise of success in Europe.
Two East Asian women wearing black and beige outfits, smiling
Victoria Yuan-Yi Ying & Arati Kang Ting Ho are a duo working at the intersection of food, performance, and participatory practice.

A Spoon of…?! is a participatory performance centred on the live making of broth. Drawing on early modern recipe books from the Wellcome Collection, the work explores how women’s healing knowledge has been recorded, erased, or controlled. Through silent, embodied action, layered sound, and audience participation, the piece examines gender, migration, and the politics of care.
South Asian woman with long hair smiling at the camera in an outdoor, sunny location with water in the background
Devanshi Rungta is an interdisciplinary artist and curator working across participatory performance and community storytelling.

The Price of Leaving transforms Leadenhall Market into a temporary migrant marketplace and asks: what do migrants carry that has no market value? Pop-up stalls are staffed by migrant performers selling the unmeasurable: a grandmother’s recipe, the smell of a city you can’t return to, a lullaby in a language your children don’t speak. Audience members receive tokens and spend them at stalls, entering intimate exchanges.

Types of bursaries

Open Spaces bursaries: For four artists creating new immersive or interactive performances responding to current social, political, economic, or climate challenges, culminating in a joint sharing at Shoreditch Town Hall on 30th September.

Wellcome Collection bursary: For an artist developing a new immersive or interactive piece exploring questions of health, inspired by Wellcome Collection’s archives or collections, with a sharing at Wellcome Collection's studio space.

Marketplace bursaries: For three migrant artists creating new interactive work for high streets, marketplaces, and outdoor public spaces, leading to a weekend of short public performances at Leadenhall Market on 18-19th September.

Site-specific bursary: For an artist developing work for a particular place, e.g. public libraries, cafés, museum galleries or green spaces, with a site-specific sharing in September.
A person wearing headphones looking at a pile of brown archive boxes

Project partners

Koro Lab is funded by Arts Council England, The City of London Corporation’s Community Inspiring London Through Culture Fund and Unity Theatre Trust, and is developed in partnership with:
Shoreditch Town Hall logoWellcome Collection logoTheatre Deli logo
Arts Council England logoCity of London logoUnity Theatre Trust logoLeadenhall Market logo