Lanternhouse International

Welfare State International is a company of artists who pioneer new approaches to the arts of celebration and ceremony in the U.K. and internationally. 
We are seeking a culture which may well be less materially based but where more people will actively participate and gain power to celebrate moments that are wonderful and significant in their lives. 

We advocate a role for art that weaves it more fully into the fabric of our lives; that allows us to be collaborators rather than spectators: Building our own houses, naming our children, burying our dead, announcing partnerships, marking anniversaries, creating new sacred spaces and producing whatever drama, stories, songs, ceremonies, pageants and jokes that are relevant to these new values and iconography.

We design and construct performances that are specific to place, people and occasion.
Special festivals of celebration that reach a wide audience, collaborative exhibitions and installations, original songs and soundscapes, and ceremonies for important occasions in people's lives. 

WSI's artists are deeply concerned for the survival of the imagination and the individual within a media-dominated consumer society, in which art too has become a commodity. All our work - especially our generation of primary artwork - takes a holistic and educational perspective. 

Our long-term aim is to establish creative communities on our doorstep: to work in partnerships to develop a creative society where the full potential of each individual may be realised in a supportive environment, through active participation and imaginative play. 

We offer full access and opportunity, and seek a multi-generational and multi-ethnic congregation. Art has a central and radical role in our lives. In the everyday, it's about what we value, how and why we celebrate.