TEN ‘YES, ANDS’ FIVE YEARS ON
Daniel Pitt joined Old Diorama Arts Centre as Creative Director & Chief Executive on 1st April 2021, knowing there was a challenge ahead. Over the past five years, ODAC has rebuilt its programme, redefined its role in the local community, and developed a growing network of creative and cross-sector partnerships. Five years on, Daniel reflects on that journey and why saying “yes, and” became a guiding principle for the organisation’s renewal.
I grew up in the London Borough of Hillingdon - a green but generally uninspiring portion of outer-London. The council had a great youth arts service though, based at the Compass Theatre in Ickenham, which was a weekly haven for me from age 11 onwards. In contrast to school plays (in which I was mostly not cast), the sessions were almost entirely improvisation-based, with a focus on both sketch comedy and long-form devised theatre. I had a bit of a stutter back then, particularly when reading out loud - but if I was making up my own lines then I was fine.
The foundational principle of improvisation is ‘Yes, and’. Go with it, and add.
As I was approaching adulthood, the council managed to secure some youth opportunities funding to take a group of us to Chicago, one of the ancestral homes of improv, to do a two-week boot camp at The Second City (famed comedy school and theatre which has seeded most big American comedy stars). I loved it, and Chicago.
Fast forward two decades. This week marks five years since I started as Creative Director & Chief Executive of ODAC. In April 2021, the organisation was in hibernation; hadn't earned any money in 18 months (due to the pandemic); and there were only a few part-time team left - furloughed. It’s not often that there's an opportunity to lead the reimagination of an organisation in such a wholesale way.
Considering the transformation and shift of reputation (locally, at least) of ODAC, I am often asked about what we did. One of the things I often say is that we started by saying yes. Initially, these yeses were mostly to potential hires clients - to make their experience the best it could be - and to the local groups that needed space which we could give for free. Our great Operations & Hires Team (under Claire Rivers’ and then Adam Colborne’s leadership) are the first people most people meet at the centre. The frequency of praise for their welcome and assistance is quite extraordinary - and attempting to say yes whenever possible is a key part of that.
But overall, looking back, actually, the strategy was always ‘yes, and’. ‘Yes, and’ is ‘accept and build’. Saying yes is how we began to rebuild: or invite and build, or collaborate.
ODAC survives by renting a large proportion of our studio use to external creative projects. In both our regular hires clients and Camden Collabs supported groups, ODAC is full of improv: from Hoopla to Camden Acting Workshop (formerly Camden Improvisation Workshop). Behind the grey doors, there's plenty of yes, anding happening.
We’re an arts centre interested in culture as a method for change, and we do this having built a lot of cross-sectoral partnerships and a key local community role. Hopefully our work is progressing the role of arts in society, in our small way. So when saying yes to relationships with non-arts sector partners, or community groups for whom culture is not the key driver, the ‘and’ is important. Beyond our sector, the art is in the ‘and’; and with arts colleagues, the ‘and’ is support, resource, infrastructure, connection.
Reflecting recently, I realised I have never worked professionally in an organisation that wasn't in flux in some way. I’ve always loved the new, and a challenge, and so I’ve become comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing exactly where something is going, as long as it feels like it’s going in the right direction. Maybe that’s the improv training (alongside a lot of other privilege).
These are some of the times we said ‘yes, and’ which helped change the course of ODAC’s future:
We said yes to the potential of not knowing, and the ‘and’ was trying things out. In 2022 we put in place a long-overdue interim vision, mission and values. As I learnt about the organisation, it was frequently reiterated by those who were involved in the past that Diorama’s past heyday was about artistic ‘process’. We made ‘Exploration’ one of our values and agreed to explore what worked and review in a year. A lot changed in the review, but exploration remains key to our strategy.
We said yes to giving Community Champions Regent’s Park a regular home, and the ‘and’ was a creative approach to social action. The offer was initially a commitment to space, a small amount of money to do a project together, collaborate on a mural, and to decorate a room together. The mural was with PiNS; room became the Neighbourhood Studio (which needs more decoration again); and the projects became numerous and central to the future of ODAC: Regent’s Park Estate Story Trail; Regent’s Roots; Community Kitchen; Neighbourhood Makeshop.
We said yes to embracing successful existing community arts practice in our hyperlocal community, bringing Remix Dance founded by Mariam Hassan 15 years prior into ODAC’s core programmes. The ‘and’ was in underwriting costs, fundraising, expanding to two days, expanding dance forms, and interweaving it with our other activity and plans.
We said yes to collaborating with Fitzrovia Youth in Action on producing Regent’s Park Estate Community Festival in 2022, and the ‘and’ was in contributing professional-led community-engaged arts programming. That became a long-term partnership through thick and thin, co-producing the renamed Regent’s Roots Festival. This year’s festival takes place on August 1st, for which we are still fundraising!
We said yes to local formerly-homeless artist (and later former Co-Director of Arts & Homelessness International) David Tovey who had run the One Festival of Homeless Arts on a shoestring hosted passively at ODAC, and the ‘and’ (with former Centre Manager Claire Rivers) was to support it properly, fundraise for it, adapt it, bring it in-house, and explore what it means to be an arts centre that is truly welcoming to the homelessness-experienced community. That festival morphed into One Roof, which is year-round, and funded by The Linbury Trust and John Laing Charitable Trust, and had Arts Council England funding last year.
We said yes to an emergency request for space to host a coffee-morning and then English Lessons for displaced Ukranians, being organised by HealthProm. The ‘and’ was in long-term relationships with several arts-led groups and projects led by the Ukranian community in London (currently seven!), including Dash Dance, Spivanka and Hromada who all performed at Regent’s Roots last year.
We said yes to being the lead producer for Regent’s Park Estate Story Trail, which had had its first phase developed by Central Saint Martin’s, Community Champions and Camden Council. The ‘and’ was in the detail of how we worked with artists; how we enabled community curatorial leadership and the ambition of what we made possible. It remains ODAC’s biggest project and achievement, and proved our potential in the local area.
We said yes to understanding the impact of HS2 and the regeneration of Euston, and building relationships with the multiple stakeholders in this complex locale. And the ‘and’ was in how we can use the arts, and our programmes, and our wider local role, to engage residents better and be empowered in this system. This led to our recent Camden Council and Euston Housing Delivery Group-commissioned community research.
We said yes to being part of the Knowledge Quarter, with the ‘and’ being the power of cross-sectoral partnerships and networks, and knowing the role of art in innovation. ODAC’s an active member of the network and KQ CEO Jodie Eastwood became a Trustee of ODAC in 2023.
We said yes to developing our ‘community centre’ role, in response to the need we saw, while keeping Arts Centre written on the door. The ‘and’ was the potential of new relationships and new peers that grew from it. In May 2025, I ended up as Co-Chair of Camden Community Centres Consortium, co-leading the development of our roles as place-based community anchors.
These are just ten examples that seem significant now, with the clarity of hindsight and their impact over years. Some obviously felt big at the time, but if you don’t say yes to the small things, then how do you know which will only seem big later?
Our fantastic team are still saying hundreds of yeses each week, big and small, to people from across an exceptionally diverse range of communities and sectors - and still quite a few ‘ands’.
With time and further definition comes the clarity of when to say no. We can’t be everything to everyone - and those that attempt to be can seem like they are for no-one in particular. People come to us, and crucially, return to us, because they know what we might say yes to.
My favourite questions these days are the ones that come to us because we are known to inhabit an ambitiously expanded, civic definition of an arts centre. This is where the future of arts centres is. I can’t wait to hear the next few years of questions that we might answer ‘yes, and’ to.
