I picked this card today on the aeroplane on my way to Chiang Mai, Thailand and as usual it seems perfectly fitting. After so much time being unable to travel, flying seems something beyond the obvious especially as long-distance journeys, at this moment in time, come with their own challenges regarding passes, tests and paperwork. But here I am, on a plane.

One of our ambitions over the next couple of years is to go beyond the obvious, beyond our own contexts and locations, and set up global artists training centres around the world. This will give us the opportunity to train local and regional artists in the ISTA ensemble method, diversify our artist pool and offer more artists the opportunity to work with us.

Having written that, it seems obvious that this would be a natural development of our work and I know that local artist training has been something that was being considered and developed at ISTA long before the pandemic hit. Prem Tinsulanonda International School, Chiang Mai has kindly provided us with the space, the resources, and the time to explore what a training centre might look like. We’ll be piloting a new two-day training programme with a group of Thai artists who are new to ISTA and I’m very excited by this.

Going beyond the obvious encourages us to look deeper and with new perspectives. Pulling away from the familiar, though sometimes challenging, is the only way we can develop and grow.