Something Outta Nothing: When Breakin' Comes to Torbay

In early February, Villages in Action was thrilled to welcome the Jamaal O'Driscoll Collective to Torbay for a week-long dance residency made possible through the Rural Touring Dance Initiative. Our role was a convening one, bringing together partners, spaces and people to help this extraordinary company put down roots in Paignton, even briefly, and let the town leave its mark on their work.

The collective, made up of Jamaal O'Driscoll, Dan, Liana and Halden, are in the midst of developing Something Outta Nothing (SON), an ambitious new performance that weaves together Breakin', audio technology and storytelling into a 60-minute piece designed to travel. Crucially, this isn't a show built for a conventional stage, it's made to transform the spaces communities already have, from village halls to housing estates. Torbay was both testing ground and inspiration.

We were glad to welcome the company to the Projection Room on Torbay Road in Paignton, a brilliant space belonging to the Paignton Picture House Trust, which gave the collective a proper base for their rehearsals. Mair, Creative Director at Villages in Action, joined them for a morning of work-in-progress rehearsals and came away genuinely moved, not just by the quality of the movement, but by the depth of reflection the artists brought to their process and the way they spoke about how each new place they visit shapes what the piece is becoming. Torbay was clearly getting under their skin.

And the collective got under Torbay's skin too. They ventured out into the town, absorbing its atmosphere and producing digital content that may well find its way into the finished show. One of the highlights was meeting Mike, a Paignton native and local breakdancer, whose interview about his life, his ties to the b-boy and breaking world, and what this town means to him gave the residency an extra dimension of local resonance.

Over the course of the week, the company worked with 109 young people across Torbay, and what struck everyone involved was just how warmly and enthusiastically those young people responded. There was real excitement in every room.

Young people at Doorstep Arts were central to the week. At their Stage Left space, members of DYT Training, DYT Rep and DAS Seniors spent a full four-hour evening session with the collective, far beyond a brief workshop, working through devising exercises, learning break fundamentals and filming short pieces together. This kind of extended, professional-style creative development gives young people a genuine sense of how the industry works and what it really takes to make a show. You can read Doorstep Arts' own account of the evening on their blog.

The collective also visited White Rock Primary School for a morning of break dance sessions with Year 3 classes. Pupils were wowed by head spins, balances and intricate footwork before having a go themselves, the session closing in a cypher, the traditional breaking circle, where every child had a moment to step in and share their moves. A heartfelt thank you to dance teacher Natasha Tyson and all the staff and children at White Rock who brought such energy and openness to the morning.

This residency mattered because it worked in every direction at once. The company developed their show. Young people experienced something genuinely stretching. Paignton left its fingerprints on a piece of art that will tour nationally.

That is at the heart of what Villages in Action believes creative residencies are for. Rather than artists parachuting into a community for a single night and moving on, residencies create the conditions for something more lasting: real creative exchange, where the place and its people genuinely shape the work, and where the work in turn plants seeds of curiosity, pride and appetite for more. For rural and coastal communities in Devon, where access to professional arts is too often limited by geography, this kind of sustained presence matters enormously. It builds relationships, bridges generations and makes clear to communities that extraordinary art belongs to them too, not just to cities.

The Rural Touring Dance Initiative makes this possible, and we are proud to have played our part in bringing it to Torbay. We cannot wait to follow Something Outta Nothing as it continues its journey to rural venues across the country, and we hope Torbay's spirit travels with it.

[Photos: young people at Doorstep Arts / White Rock Primary workshop / rehearsals at the Projection Room]

The Project In Numbers

• Artists: 4
• Youth workshop participants: 107
• Sessions and workshops: 8
• Adult participants: 4