Find and download contract templates and checklists for co-productions here:
At the annual meeting of Dansk Scenekunst on September 28, 2026, Dansk Scenekunst and the Development Platform for the Performing Arts will launch a set of new tools for co-productions in the performing arts industry.
The tools consist of two contract templates designed to ensure clear and sustainable agreements, as well as a checklist intended to make it easier for theatres and independent performing artists to align expectations regarding their collaboration—to the benefit of artists, theatres, and the productions they create together.
Over the past year, Dansk Scenekunst and UP have worked together with stakeholders from institutional theatres and the independent sector to develop a set of shared tools designed to strengthen collaboration between theatres with permanent venues, project-based theatres, and performing arts companies without their own venues.
UP, in collaboration with Dansk Scenekunst, is hosting a webinar on the new tools for co-productions and how they can be used in practice.
November 10, 9:15–10:00 a.m., with a Q&A session from 10:00–10:15 a.m.
The webinar is intended for independent performing artists and related organisations that work with co-productions in the performing arts industry.
UP’s director, Erik Pold, will participate in the webinar, along with Anne Dalby and Marianne Thorsen from Dansk Scenekunst.
It is free, and everyone is welcome.
At MYKA, we have worked closely over the years with both small and large dance companies, institutional theaters, and museums in Denmark and abroad, and have entered into co-production agreements. It’s great that there’s more focus on this now, and it’s positive that UP and Dansk Scenekunst have developed a contract template and checklist to help others enter into agreements.
My Grönholdt, artistic director and choreographer of the MYKA
A clear need for a common tool emerged, among other things, in the survey of the independent arts scene conducted by the Development Platform in 2024/25. The survey revealed that co-productions between independent companies and theatres are a very widespread form of production with room for improvement. This was also the theme of a dialogue meeting between independent performing artists and institutional theatres at the Development Platform in 2024, which resulted in the report The Good Co-Production Agreement: Inspiration for Best Practice.
We have identified a clear need to establish a common framework for the many different co-production collaborations taking place in the performing arts. In this way, we hope to prevent potential misunderstandings and support fair practices in the field. The strength of our proposal for a concrete solution is that it was developed through a collaboration between Dansk Scenekunst, the Development Platform for the Performing Arts, and practitioners from the independent sector. As such, it draws on the experiences and needs of both theaters and independent performing artists.
Erik Pold, Head of UP
Photo: Alexis Rodríguez Cancino from the performance HYPER CORAL by MYKA.