Today, Creative Minds asked Gavin Stride, the Director of Farnham Maltings: You have said that you are interested in: ‘the special and ordinary place of the arts in all our lives and in exploring all of the ways in which people express who they are’. Do you think that the best art is about expressing who you are?

Gavin Stride said: Yes I do. I think we express ourselves in all sorts of ways, not only through what we might term ‘the arts’ but through the food that we eat, the stories we tell our children at bedtime, the songs that we sing at funerals or the way we tend our gardens. I am interested in all of the ways we describe who we are. Which is why some of my own theatre work often feels less like a play and more like an event. My view is that art is an exploration by the artist to make sense of the world and, if they are lucky, to communicate that to an audience. Even in the more overtly political work or in so called light entertainment, playwrights, directors and actors will be making choices. To decide to say nothing says something about the person making the work…