Gary Gardiner is co-Artistic Director of 21Common, an arts collective based in Glasgow.
Their show Dancer was presented at UNLIMITED at Southbank and The Place, London (2015), then at Edinburgh Fringe 2016 (Made In Scotland Showcase / Total Theatre Award Nominee). It toured to GAM, Santiago, Chile, 2017; Nøtterøy Kulturhus, Ibsenhuset, Skien, Bølgen Kulturhus, Larvik and Drammens Teater, all Norway 2017 and was part of the Made in Scotland Festival, De Kriekelaar, Brussels in 2019.
The Ballad of the Apathetic Son and His Narcissistic Mother was presented at Tramway, Glasgow, The Place, London (2017) and part of the Made In Scotland Showcase, Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2018). It then toured to Kontrapunkt Festival, Szczecin; EUROPEAN BÜRGERBÜHNE FESTIVAL, Dresden; Taranaki Festival, New Zealand; Sydney Fringe Touring Hub Headline Act, Australia (all 2019) and tanzhaus nrw, Dusseldorf (2023).
IN THE INTEREST OF HEALTH AND SAFETY CAN PATRONS KINDLY SUPERVISE THEIR CHILDREN AT ALL TIMES was nominated for The Herald Culture Award for Best Dance Performance 2019, presented at Tramway, Glasgow (2019) and Made in Scotland Showcase, Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2022).
During lockdown, they created two new digital works. The first was a dance film called Anyone, an immersive experience about loneliness, love, boredom and TikTok, designed to be watched on a mobile phone. Then followed Non Optimum: When It's Safe To Do So, a dance collage and artistic enquiry revealed the lives of four learning disabled protagonists during COVID, commissioned by National Theatre of Scotland.
Common Is As Common Does: A Memoir was part of the Future Paisley Partnership (2023) and appeared in the Made in Scotland Showcase 2024 at ZOO Venues, Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2023, they launched Disruptive Pedagogy, a groundbreaking Social Practice in Schools programme, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. In 2024/25, they were commissioned by National Theatre of Scotland to create a new work Thank U, Next in 4 high schools across Scotland. Currently, they are developing Regina Caeli, a new performance chosen from over 2500 UK wide applications to receive an Immersive Arts Award.
