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Creative Explorations: Art in the Public Realm and Climate ChangeA Snapshot of Current Practice
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CONTENTS Page NoIntroduction 3acta 4Deborah Aguirre Jones 5The Bicycle Ballet Company 6Bucket Club 7Burn the Curtain 8Can’t Sit Still 9Cirque Bijou 11Anne-Marie Culhane 14Desperate Men 16Encounters Arts 17Léa Guzzo 18Invisible Dust 20Kilter Theatre 21Knowle West Media Centre & Cirque Bijou 23Karen Poley 24Subathra Subramaniam 25Tidal Recall 27T.R.A.I.L 29Emma Williams 30Anthony Wilson: Scraptors Sculpture Group 31
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Introduction Below is a snapshot collection of existing work that relates to the theme of outdoor arts/climate change and sustainability, collected by Quest and partners in January/Feb 2014. The collection came about through existing connections and networks. It is not an audit or curated choice of work - simply a collection of work sent in by artists and producers to muse on and be aware of, which we hope will help discussions at the event. We will post this on the Quest website for reference at www.questsouthwest.co.uk
If you would like your work to be included in the online version of this booklet, please send your submission to [email protected]
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acta is a community theatre organisation which is committed to increasing access to quality arts experiences for the most disengaged and diverse sections of the community. Our mission is to make theatre and the arts part of people’s lives, both as audiences and as active creative participants. acta’s USP is the ability to reach and engage the hardest to reach and most excluded groups within society, developing positive connections between people of different generations and cultures.
Based at the acta centre in Bedminster, acta delivers much of its work in the communities of Bedminster and Redcliffe, but also works in neighbourhoods across the City, working with local people to deliver fun, free participatory arts activities that celebrate communities and the people who live there.
acta is currently delivering the Get Together programme in Bedminster & Redcliffe, with funding from BIG Lottery Reaching Communities. As part of the first year of this programme, in December 11, acta delivered the first ever Bedminster Winter Lantern parade, and in December 12 & 13 has supported an independent organisation to continue to develop the initiative as an annual event. With the launch of Bristol Green Capital in January 15, acta will be delivering a lantern parade in Redcliffe, enabling local people of all ages to share learning about energy and sustainability, whilst illuminating and celebrating their community.
Please visit the acta website for more information about our work and how to get involved.
Website: www.acta-bristol.com Email: Helen Tomlin, Executive Director [email protected]
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Deborah Aguirre Jones works with experiences of territory, home and un-belonging, making artworks which consider the relationships with landscapes we invent and yearn for as well as those we are given or grow through time. Social processes are integral to her practice alongside drawing, sculpture and performance.
The work often happens outdoors, in a wide range of contexts including landscape management, the criminal justice system, urban and rural regeneration, youth provision, organisational development, pedagogy, the construction industry, leisure and tourism.
Email: [email protected] Websites: www.deborahaguirrejones.co.uk www.davisandjones.co.uk
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I/Pen Trumau
Responding to an area of eroding peat in the Black Mountains which was damaged by a mountain fire in 1976, the artist walked up to the site on Pen Trumau repeatedly with an image of home (a chair) on her back. This pilgrimage of sorts offered chances for dialogue with other walkers, the mountain, sky and bog, leading to a publication.
Drawing Together
Exploring the capacities we have to make and sustain relationships in unusual circumstances, Deborah set up conversations through drawing between women involved with the criminal justice system and contemporary women artists in Bristol and surrounding areas. A bit like having a penpal, the women didn’t meet while they were corresponding. www.drawingtogether.org.uk
The Bicycle Ballet Company creates exhilarating outdoor dance performances on bikes exploring the joyful highs and gritty lows of cycling. The choreographies fuse dance and physical performance with visual spectacle, comedy and striking soundtracks.
There are currently three shows in the repertoire:
Strictly Cycling: a highly visual, surreal and comical cycle-about performance. Part choreographed, part improvised, it plays with the everyday events and experiences of riding a bike and will change the way you think about cycling and your city spaces. Inspired by flash mobs, we’re looking to run workshops & take over spaces & towns from 2014.
Everyday Hero: On a quest for adventure Vanity, Fear, Happiness, Frustation, Bravery & Curiosity cross the threshold and plunge into a forest of fear. A unique dance theatre performance by an integrated cast of sighted and visually impaired performers. The show features a rich soundscape of music and sound, with a descriptive narrative text containing elements of audio description.
The Mass Show: performed by 10-100 participants in each location, who dance and cycle between set formations pieces reminiscent of Busby Berkeley’s film choreography.
Website: www.bicycleballet.co.uk
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Bucket Club are a young theatre company making adventurous new work in association with the Farnham Maltings. As a company it is very important for us to make work that engages with the environment with characters who are involved with the natural world. Our designer Rebecca Wood is dedicated to using recycled materials and making our work as sustainable as possible.
What we makeLorraine & Alan - This show is a modern re-telling of the Selkie myth told with live sound design, song and several hundred plastic bottles. With our protagonists being a seal and a marine biologist, the set of used plastic bottles make a statement about our attitude to the seas and waste.
The Beast - Our next commissioned project looks at the British countryside and the beasts that we’ve made up to live there. The show will be an outdoors show for festivals using a set of salvaged camping gear.
Website: www.bucketclub.co.uk Email: [email protected]
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Burn the Curtain are a ‘Hands On’ site specific theatre company in the South West where audience and performers travel together, work together, and build the performance together. Performances for the whole family, where you might least expect it, and will most appreciate it.
We aim to encourage: intergenerational play, engagement with the great outdoors, enjoyment of theatre and performance, active participation in theatre and performance at a number of different levels, the combination of crafts, theatre and physical activity, the use of theatre as a tool to educate, and to create real world, opportunities for education, the idea that culture can be ‘hands on’ and accessible, not out of reach. We work with new audiences.
When a performance is found outside a traditional performance space it becomes an event, a pleasant surprise. We don’t expect our audiences to come to us- we go to them. We want to engage with people who share a passion for something, whether it be bird watching, canoeing, cycling or book collecting, and we want to create work for them that will bring them to a communal space, on their terms.
Previous work includes:
'Henry's Quest' Adapted from the book of the same name by Graham Oakley.'Alice at Anthony House' “this new combination of party and show is pure delight” The Guardian'The Adventures of Uncle Lubin' Adapted from the book of the same nameby Heath Robinson. An ‘ingenious and charming production….. Burn the Curtain has brought this fabulous tale back to life’ The Guardian .'The Adventures of Don Quixote by Bicycle' “An inventive form of theatre, a different kind of bike ride and a great way of introducing youngsters to a classic tale.”The Guardian. Winner of an Argus Art Angel award at Brighton Festival 2013.
Website: www.burnthecurtain.co.uk Email: [email protected]
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is an emerging physical and circus theatre company, creating new, devised, mostly outdoor work. We like telling stories, being silly, taking physical risks, playing, failing and trying again, being honest, being imperfect, pushing ourselves to the boundaries of what we think is possible and then pushing a little bit more.
Can't Sit Still is a curious collective of directors, circus and physical performers, designers and composers, and was founded by graduates of Circomedia, Centre for Contemporary Circus and Physical Theatre in Bristol.
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A Small Chance of Showers“It’s raining, it’s pouring, and it hasn’t stopped for months, maybe even years. People all over the country are leaving their flooded homes in the search for higher ground. But Lil and Dylan are bored of walking, and so instead invite you to share in their tales of boats, goldfish and how to cure a girl whose tears have turned to glass.
Using a mixture of clowning, physical theatre, circus, puppetry, and quite a few buckets of water, Can’t Sit Still take you on a journey of rain and storms, weather reports and wellies to tell a true story of the future (which we might have made up).”
A Small Chance of Showers is an outdoor show for family audiences that explores the themes of friendship and coping, set against the background of climate change. It is told by two performer/jugglers using non-verbal physical story-telling, and an original composed soundtrack.
The creation of this production has been generously funded by Arts Council England, with support from Circomedia, Lakeside Arts Centre, Derby Feste and Greentop Circus. The show will be available to tour from summer 2014 onwards.
Artistic Director – Catherine Boot
Email: [email protected]
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Cirque Bijou are Bristol-based producers of world-class outdoor theatre, spectacle and contemporary circus for the public and commercial sectors. From co-production of the South West’s largest Cultural Olympiad Project, Battle for the Winds, to the UK’s only professional integrated circus company, Extraordinary Bodies, to our renowned digital and urban circus show Project 3Sixty, Cirque Bijou are working at the forefront of outdoor arts, creating highly accessible, highly visible work that inspires a diverse audience across the country. With unique experience in the commercial, TV and rock and roll industries, we bring very high production values and a wide range of specialists to all our work, ensuring it is innovative, exciting and engaging.
Video Flats: Cirque Bijou
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DEAD: A play/performance about CLIMATE CHANGE, written by Hattie Naylor for Gallivant and Cirque Bijou.
The Wife of Usher Well: A mother is complicit in the death of her children. Overwhelmed with grief, she wishes them back from the dead. It is Martinmas (harvest festival, November 11th). But when they return they cannot eat and they cannot drink, and they wish themselves DEAD AGAIN. This ballad was written in the sixteenth century and an outstandingly version arranged by Pete Flood for Bellowhead is on the album Broadsides (2012): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueocbcKFKUU.
Writers and companies alike have been attempting to write a convincing play/performance that moves and encourages action concerning climate change. None of us have succeeded. We know the facts and the productions are preaching to the converted. They do not leave hope. Any production concerning CLIMATE CHANGE has to leave us with the possibility of a feasible solution.
Taking this story as the drama in the production, giving an emotional heart, a woman wishes her children (both 20+) back from the dead, at a time where we are on the verge of running out of food and water. A time when the planet has been depleted and the permafrost has melted. We then run this scenario three more times, each with an emotional heart with moving the timeframe back, looking at whose responsibility the loss of the planet’s resources are, and when and how the decisions that led to the worst scenario were made. We refer to the conglomerates that provide easy cheap purchases, to car and plane journeys, to leaving a light on. These are examined, while never losing the simply emotional heart of the story, in visual metaphor (circus) and in text, humour, song, and dance.
GALLIVANT AND CIRQUE BIJOU
HATTIE NAYLOR is an award-winning writer and a co-founder with Lee Lyford of the company Gallivant: Bluebeard, Bristol Old Vic and Soho Theatre 2013. Other credits include the opera Piccard In Space (composer Will Gregory (Goldfrapp), conductor Charles Hazlewood, director Jude Kelly) - The Southbank 2012, broadcast on Radio 3; Ivan And The Dogs (nominated in the Olivier Awards, and winner of the Tinniswood Award 2010); The Diaries Of Samuel Pepys for Radio 4 (nominated Best Radio Drama 2012); Mother Savage, directed by Craig Edwards; Going Dark, co-written with Sound&Fury: Critics Choice in both the Guardian and Time Out, London, Young Vic 2012; Moominland Midwinter, directed by Alison Duddle and Lee Lyford for The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath, Christmas 2013. Naylor was studying painting at the Slade School of Art when her first play was accepted in the BBC Radio Young
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Playwrights Festival. She has had over forty plays and three short stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Ivan And The Dogs is about to go on the syllabus and has been translated into seven languages with new productions in New York, Tbilisi, Athens, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires. Going Dark will tour this year across the country including the Science Museum.
Work in development include: two main house commissions one for Manchester Royal Exchange directed by Sarah Frankcom, and another for Bristol Old Vic directed by Melly Still, The Hayavadana with Bellowhead and Ragu Dixit Project for The Southbank and British Council India, The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak with the puppet company Wattle and Daub, and A Northern Soul for Radio 4 directed by Marc Jobst. Bluebeard by Gallivant will be touring in 2014.
LEE LYFORD is Associate Director of The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath. Plays directed at the Theatre Royal Bath and The Egg include: Hedi - a Goat's Tale (ad. Andrew Pollard), The Judgement of Macbeth (Hattie Naylor), The French Detective and the Blue Dog (Hattie Naylor), Alice Through The Looking Glass (ad. Hattie Naylor), Ben Hur (ad. Hattie Naylor) His Dark Materials (ad. Nicholas Wright), Peter Pan, Around the World in 80 Days (ad.Toby Hulse) Guys and Dolls, A Midsummer Night's Dream, My Life as a Fairytale (Hattie Naylor), Broken Hallelujah (Sharman Macdonald), Broken Wings (Sarah Daniels), War Daddy (Jim Grimsley) The Nutcracker (ad. Hattie Naylor), My Life in the Silents (Timothy Mason),The Odyssey (ad.Hattie Naylor), Animal Farm (ad. Peter Hall) Plays directed for other organisations: Muscle (Tom Wainwright) for Bristol Old Vic and Hull Truck Movement Direction:The Witch of Edmonton (Southwark Playhouse), Fen and Far Away (Sheffield Crucible), When Harry Met Sally (national tour), Mother Savage Travelling Light. Choreography: We're Going on a Bear Hunt (Bristol Old Vic) The Ugly Duckling (Tobacco Factory and Travelling Light).
CIRQUE BIJOU’S co-artistic director BILLY ALWEN worked with Hattie Naylor and Lee Lyford in early 2012 on an early stage physical adaptation of Macbeth for the egg, Theatre Royal Bath’s Shakespeare Unplugged Festival. His other directing credits include Sequins and Sawdust (Cirque Bijou, Desperate Men, Circus Space and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School), Bristol and South Bank; Happy Families for Circus Space at Jackson’s Lane, which he toured to Southsea, Bristol Harbour Festival and Bestival (2012); and Weighting by his integrated circus company Extraordinary Bodies - a collaboration between Cirque Bijou and Diverse City (2013).
Website: www.cirquebijou.co.uk Telephone: 0117 902 9730
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Anne-Marie Culhane My work is motivated by a love for and fascination with the abundance and complexity of our world and an urgency to respond to the accelerating damage to our planetary ecosystems.
I create projects that offer alternative ways of doing and being. My practice involves (deep) listening, observation and responding to or with people or places often in collaboration and through dialogue. This is often with existing communities or bringing a new community together around a common theme. These ‘communities of interest’ very often grow and develop beyond the duration of the project.
My practice includes working with the visual arts, installation, performance, film, text, design and food. I work with whichever media feels appropriate to the project. I work as artist, activist, mentor, collaborator and co-ordinator.
My practice is improvisational, allowing time for ideas to develop and adapt to the particulars of each situation – changes in tack are permitted! I’m increasingly interested in longer-term projects and any making or doing includes consideration of the environmental impacts.
Joanna Macy (eco-philosopher) outlines three ways of working towards a life-sustaining society. I find these categories useful in helping define my practice. My work moves between and often combines more than one:
Holding action or creative activism eg Corn Masks project supported (so far) by ACE, Newlyn Gallery and Castlefield Gallery
Creating structural alternatives to the Industrial Growth Society eg Abundance Project - Grow Sheffield, Fruit Routes/Eat Your Campus. These projects supported by ACE, National Lottery, Exeter University Arts & Culture, Kaleider and the Sustainability Unit and School of the Arts at Loughborough University
Shifting perceptions of reality to realise our interdependence eg Field Sensing, Timeframe and A Little Patch of Ground. These projects supported by National Media Museum, ArtsAdmin, BosArts, Dark Mountain Project, Bluecoat, Dartington Arts, Take A Part, Plymouth and ACE.
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In 2010 Abundance (co founded by Stephen Watts) was awarded the Observer Ethical Award, 2010, Grassroots Category and In 2012 I was selected for the Happy Index by the Independent on Sunday (100 people who make Britain a better place to live). I am an associate artist with Encounters Arts and have been commissioned by or had residencies with Tamar Valley AONB Cordiale Project (EU funded); Groundwork; Scottish Natural Heritage; Exmoor National Park; Historic Scotland and National Trust.
Telephone: 01208 871767 Mobile: 0784 9073394 Email: [email protected] Website: www.amculhane.co.uk
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Anne-Marie creates work that encourages people to sense again their own intuitions. She knows that forces shaping contemporary culture subvert or distort important human impulses towards generosity, gratitude and celebration. Her work draws those latent instincts into action, through projects that alongside their aesthetic power offer different ways of being in the world. This demands of her, in addition to being a visual artist and maker, that she must be a choreographer, creating scores and situations for sometimes large numbers of people to live in often over extended durations. Her work is necessarily communal – a word that describes her relationships with her audiences, associates, and human and non-human collaborators. Part
of her gift as an artist lies in her ability to welcome others into the work. She brings people together into affirmative ways of living by setting in motion dynamic frames of ecology and connection.
Wayne Hill, writer & associate editor – Performance Research
Desperate Men One of the UK’s most versatile and inventive outdoor arts companies, Desperate Men’s mischievous, warm-hearted work invites audiences to ask serious questions about the world. Desperate Men have been creating, performing and producing ground-breaking outdoor theatre in the UK and internationally for over 30 years.
As creative producers, we work on large-scale outdoor art projects and collaborate with other partners and arts organisations. We also create bespoke performances, street animations and education projects on commission and still find time for our own creative work. Collaboration is at the heart of what we do, from working with local authorities to engage communities to setting up partnerships with other artists.
We have previously produced several shows that engage with themes of ecology and the environment, from Everything Gets Eaten, produced to celebrate the International Year of Diversity, to Carbonopoly (like Monopoly, but instead of making money you see how far you can get round the board without using up all your carbon allowance.)
We are currently artistic directors for the Wye Valley River Festival, a new initiative by the Wye Valley AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) that will celebrate the area’s history and heritage while stimulating serious debate about topical and environmental issues affecting the river and valley landscape. A series of events will take place along the river in May 2014, with our draft programme putting nature on trial as Ratty the water-vole and other Wye Valley animals are arrested and accused, with a Grand Assizes in Monmouth’s 16th century courthouse.
Directors: Richard Headon & Jon Beedell
Website: www.desperatemen.com Telephone: 0117 9393902 Mobile: 07775911620 Email: [email protected]
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Encounters Arts specialise in designing participatory arts projects & interventions that inspire creativity, dialogue & exchange between people of all ages & cultures. Since 2003 we have used the transformational power of the arts to work creatively with thousands of people in arts, community, education, reconciliation, rehabilitation, regeneration and environmental contexts.
We create spaces and processes for people from all walks of life to explore their relationship with themselves, each other, where they live and the wider world. Through performances, workshops, public interventions, co-authored exhibitions, publications and uniquely tailored events, the invitation is to re-look at who and how we are in the world at this time of crisis and opportunity and together to explore new stories to live by on individual, local, city wide and global levels.
Encounters was formed by artists Ruth Ben-Tovim and Trish O’Shea in 2003 when they took over and created the first Encounters Shops in Sharrow, Sheffield.
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A Little Patch of Ground is an inter-generational food growing and performance project that culminates in a permaculture inspired vegetable garden and a multi-media performance about relationships with the natural world.
Since 2009 Encounters have been delivering A Little Patch of Ground in communities across the UK: in Liverpool then Doncaster followed by a twinned Urban/Rural Patch in the East End of London and Totnes, Devon.
We are now a group of artists, facilitators, sustainability innovators, creative educators, cultural translators & change agents. Based in Totnes, Devon, we work locally, nationally & internationally.
Work with us...
Encounters is led by Creative Director Ruth Ben-Tovim working with a team of freelance Creative Associates and specialists who come together to devise and deliver a wide range of socially and ecologically engaged projects with diverse partners reaching thousands ofpeople of all ages and backgrounds.
We can adapt our programme strands to your context, & design new projects to work with you.
Website: www.encounters-arts.org.uk Twitter: @Encounters_Arts Facebook: www.facebook.com/EncountersArtsEmail: [email protected] Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/encountersart
Léa Guzzo is currently undertaking a PhD in Arts Management at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her practice-based research focuses on the role that facilitators play in artists/scientists collaborations. She enjoys the challenge of facilitating
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interdisciplinary collaborations and is keen on developing her practice with new organisations, so do not hesitate to contact her to find out more. Léa was awarded the Train and Engage Award 2011 (University College London) for her work in that field.
Léa is also a Director/Trustee of Art Space Portsmouth, a charity which promotes contemporary art and provides affordable studios to artists in financial needs. She is also committed to make arts accessible to a wider audience and previously managed the Outreach department of Towner, the contemporary arts museum of the South-East of England.
Email: [email protected] Mobile: 07804 321 767
Invisible DustAlice Sharp, Curator and Director: Isobel Tarr, HighWaterLine Project Manager
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Alice Sharp set up Invisible Dust, an art and science organisation in 2009 involving artists, scientists and creative technologists in producing exciting commissions exploring the environment and climate change. As an Independent curator she managed the Fourth Plinth with Antony Gormley and Yinka Shonibare in 2008, and co curated an international touring exhibition to Istanbul, Berlin and London in 2010. Invisible Dust previous projects include artworks on air pollution with Dryden Goodwin, HeHe and Faisal Abdu’Allah and with Jeremy Deller on bat biodiversity. In March 2012 Invisible Dust won the Lord Mayor of London’s UK Sustainable City Award.
For the British Science Festival in Newcastle last September Mariele Neudecker’s St Thomas’ Church video installation uncovered the deep ocean and Adam Chodzko’s performance gave a blade runner like future on flooding (co commissioned with Great North Run Culture). In October we organised ‘Ways of Seeing Climate Change’ with Chodzko and Ellie Harrison’s performances and talks by filmmaker David Malone and John Vidal Environment Editor of the Guardian.
Currently Invisible Dust is preparing artist Eve Mosher’s HighWaterLine Bristol with project manager Isobel Tarr. This aims to generate community flooding resilience and ending with a public chalking of the actual flood line round buildings and streets in July 2014. Other new projects include Invisible Heat on the health affects of Climate Change and ‘Invisible Dust in Museums.’ In this Elizabeth Price 2012 Turner Prize winner will exhibit at the National Maritime Museum, Laura Harrington at the Woodhorn Museum and Owl Project at the Manchester Museum.
Website: www.invisibledust.com Twitter: @Invisible_Dust
was established in Bath in 2006 to make thought-provoking performance with an ecological eye. Very quickly it established itself as an industry leader for not only creating insightful and impactful performances but also integrating production techniques that massively reduced the carbon footprint of the theatre making process.
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In 2007, the company won the Debut Award for its first production in Bath Abbey Cemetery, considering the issue of peak resources and pioneering its ground-breaking approach to recycled props, sets & costumes.
In 2008, Kilter won several commissions and, with the support of Sustrans, mounted a bicycle promenade on the Bristol to Bath cycle path. Rehearsals took place in situ to engage incidental ambient audiences. The company began to make films to share their innovative approach to 'walking-the-talk' online at kiltertheatre.org.
With a commission from 'the egg', Kilter began working with families and young people on a durational project - the little month - in the understanding that extended audience relationships are key to sustained behaviour changes brought about by the company's inspiring work.
Kilter began to work with corporate organisations who enjoyed the allegory and metaphor Kilter employed to help share their corporate social responsibility messages.
In 2009/10, Kilter began touring a theatrical contemplation on the future of food. 'Roots' was adaptable to a series of community gardens and allotments and incorporated stories donated by local people at each site. This audience involvement in the creation of new work was introduced as another Kilter lode-star and a way to implement lasting legacies from ephemeral productions.
In 2011 Kilter ran a season-specific podcasting channel and taught their theatre-making practise in schools, universities and industry conferences for artists and sustainable development practitioners.
Bath & North East Somerset Council awarded Kilter Key Strategic Organisation Status. Kilter continues to run workshops in various creative disciplines in under-serviced areas around B&NES with the aim or raising community cohesion and united approaches to the changing world.
For the last two years, Kilter has additionally been touring a mobile 'vanatorium' (a converted Luton lorry equipped with a wind turbine to power lights and sound). Kilter's production of The Last Post, which takes place inside the van, embraces the slow movement through the lens of the declining postal industry. The touring model is also a show case of low-carbon theatre production, demonstrating the reduced number of car miles achieved by touring a single vehicle to rural audiences.
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Rape Bikes: Kilter Theatre
Website: www.kiltertheatre.org Email: Oliver Langdon, Artistic Director [email protected] Mobile: 07980 882010Twitter: @kiltertheatre Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Kilter-theatre
Knowle West Media Centre & Cirque Bijou The Kitchen Circus Project is a collaboration between Knowle West Media Centre & Cirque Bijou. Join us on a playful and magical journey through Knowle West as we illuminate its hidden riches and personal stories. Kitchens become theatres, living rooms become stages, through open windows and doors are glimpsed moments of personal revelation.
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The performances are created by the local community and artists from circus, visual art and music, and co-produced by Knowle West Media Centre and Cirque Bijou.
This is a pilot of a larger project planned for late 2014-2015, which will join circus and visual/digital artists with urban communities to create a series of performative journeys through the neighbourhood, into people’s streets, gardens and homes. A mixture of intimacy, spectacle, surprise and community spirit awaits in this exploration of identity, tourism, hospitality and sustainability.Supported by Knowle West Media Centre and Cirque Bijou through Bristol City Council’s Key Arts Provider funding.
Websites: www.cirquebijou.co.uk www.kwmc.org.uk Telephone: Cirque Bijou: 0117 902 9730 KWMC: 01179030444
Karen Poley, Creative Producer reCyculture – www.recyculture.co.uk – is a sculptural installation project which literally puts the bike on a pedestal. It is rooted in local communities and people’s creative responses, and upCycles disused or abandoned bikes, rescued from people’s gardens and local tips.
Painted to highlight the often neglected perfection of their design, in local residencies the bikes are conspicuously hidden in the landscape. They are dada-esque in nature, surprising, unexpected and surreal interventions in the everyday, and are created to respond to specific sites.
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27th February 2014 following Quest South West’s creative exploration event: ‘Art in the public realm
and climate change’Knowle West Media Centre
5.30pmWear warm clothes, bring an umbrella, a handheld torch and
a story from homePlaces are free but are very strictly limited so please email
[email protected] if you wish to attend.
An online aspect linked to the installations explores people’s thoughts, ideas and experiences of cycling, issues, facts, the good, the bad and the imaginary, through spoken word, stop motion animation film, and interviews.
Commissions include:
Night Bikes, alternative Xmas lights for SHINE On London Road, commissioned by Brighton & Hove City Council and Portas Pilot.
reCyculture Kent, a county-wide, Cultural Olympiad project in response to the Paralympic Road Cycling Races which took place at Brands Hatch in 2012.
Green Horses on the Wall, commissioned by Wandsworth Arts Festival 2011 & 2012 around the Alton Estate, Roehampton, and by Wandsworth Council and the Mayor of London presents, 2012 on the Olympic Road Race route.
Website: www.kp-projects.co.uk Mobile: 07909976910 Email: [email protected]
Subathra Subramaniam, Choreographer and Artistic Director of Sadhana Elixir is a new interactive, cross-art form project that sees Subathra Subramaniam continue her explorations into the meeting points between arts and science.
The work is the result of a number of recent journeys Suba has made around the world as part of her role as Co-Director of Education for Cape Farewell. In 2010 she travelled across India on board the Tata Jagriti Yatra train, stopping off at communities and projects across the country, and subsequent trips where she witnessed first hand some of the groundbreaking work being carried out by Water Aid to deliver clean, safe water to rural villages.
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A year earlier she visited a number of Inuit communities in Nunavut, Canada and Greenland, and from these visits to different ends of the earth Suba has been inspired to create Elixir - a thought-provoking and powerful response to our relationship with water in the world today and its importance as a shrinking global resource. Might water be the next oil?
Sadhana will bring together a team of artists from a range of disciplines to present a series of creative responses in the form of the following menu, from which you are invited to choose an event, or events, that best suits your needs:
Elixir – the performance: this is a live performance of contemporary Bharata Natyam dance interwoven with stories, music and film, featuring 3 dancers and a live storyteller, who together relate different encounters with water from around the world. The performance is accompanied by a Café Scientifique, in which audience members are able to engage in discussion and debate with researchers, scientists and members of the company about their responses to the issues raised during the evening.
Elixir – the water installation: this is a digital/lenticular installation, which can be offered both separately to a range of
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"When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water." Benjamin Franklin
“Water, water everywhere Nor any drop to drink…” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Since the beginning of time, man has striven to find the elixir of life… Imagine that we had already found it but let it trickle away through our fingers… Imagine… water… elixir…
“We let a river shower its banks with a spirit that invades the people living there, and we protect that river, knowing without its blessings the people have no source of soul.” Thomas Moore
“All earth’s full rivers can not fill The sea that drinking thirsteth still” Christina Georgina Rossetti
venues, galleries, civic spaces, universities, schools, colleges, libraries and a range of other public places, or it can be installed in the foyer of a theatre presenting the live work. The installation will be in the form of a Water Sculpture and will be a combination of the voices of women from different cultures offering testimonies to the importance of water in our lives, film footage from around the world, digitally manipulated images and a lenticular, all responding to the passing by of people, creating a powerful, intriguing and interactive experience.
“A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” Thoreau
If you are interested in bringing one or more of the Elixir choices to your venue, please contact Producer, Helen Holden.Telephone: 07811 350 572 Email: [email protected] Website: www.sadhanadance.com
Tidal Recall revisits the absent tides on a canalised stretch of Tier Avon, between Bristol and Bath. This waterscape has been extensively engineered, but beyond the closely managed confines of the city, extreme weather events reassert the river’s former expansiveness.
Tidal Recall finds articulation in multiple ways, through wandering, conversation drawing, exhibition and ultimately the co-creation of new artworks with individuals and groups along the river. Using slow travel as a catalyst for conversations in situ, I aim to stimulate a renewed connection with the changeable and ‘more-than-human’ nature of the river, through an evocation of its turbulent and tidal past.
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Policy-makers, land-owners, residents and academics have different frames of reference for assessing and interpreting wet landscapes. Through socially-engaged art practice, Tidal Recall seeks to draw out and bring together a diversity of voices to help shape how we live with the river’s wilder side.
Community mapping and creative workshops to elicit a sense of place. Extensive on-the-ground presence engaging and working with hard-to-reach groups and individuals, across generations. Raising the profile of the river, its rich and layered heritage and distinctive natural habitat. Linking urban and rural communities, bringing together formal and informal knowledge of the river, tides and floods. Unearthing hidden histories and voices-less-heard. Learning from the past to help shape future resilience. Artists will collaborate with groups and individuals along the river to explore new creative responses to aspects of the former
tidal landscape.
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Tidal Recall, 2012
Gouache and digital print on found paper
Historically, boats travelling this stretch would tie up at regular intervals along the banks to await the next favourable tide. In this project, current tidal tables will be used to programme and situate a series of community events on a ‘tidal’ journey along the river.
Email: [email protected] Mobile: 07810 847 970 Website: unrulywaters.wordpress.com Twitter: @jethrobrice
T.R.A.I.L. is an opportunity for Environmental Artists to showcase their work in flower-beds along Teignmouth seafront. 2014 marks the 10th Anniversary of T.R.A.I.L.
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View/Hide, 2008
Installation view (biodiversity workshop)
On residency at Growing Our Futures (Okehampton College, Devon) I worked with James Beer, a young conservationist with a visual impairment. Through sound walks we identified bird species visiting the site; this knowledge was then translated via tactile media into a visually instructive viewing hide.
Website: www.trail.org.uk Email: [email protected]
Emma Williams, Theatre Director I am a professional theatre director with 18 years experience. Over the last ten years I have developed a comprehensive knowledge of outdoor performance and puppetry. Last year I successfully
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received a commission from Inside Out Dorset to create a site responsive piece of interactive theatre celebrating the unique and vulnerable South Dorset Ridgeway. The product of this commission will be “The Butterfly Lady”, an interactive live performance incorporating elaborate costume design and puppetry. It will be performed in September 2014. It is a celebration of the butterfly experts past and present and a visually playful way of delivering information about declining butterfly species and changing habitat.
I am passionate about the environment and I wish to use my skills to deliver performances that are accessible entertaining and raise issues around our relationship to nature. I will be developing The Butterfly Lady into a touring performance for 2015
Mobile: 07791856089 Email: [email protected] Website: emmawilliamsdirector.weebly.comTwitter: @EmmaWilliamsHD
Anthony Wilson: Scraptors Sculpture Group Anthony Wilson, Paul Boswell and Rachel Macleay, specialists in recycled sculpture and trails, have collaborated informally for some five years and formally since 2011 when they created a sculpture trial at Stourhead, the 18th century landscape garden in Wiltshire owned by the National Trust. “Beyond the Garden Gate” related to classical mythology and wildlife.
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We are collaborating again with the National Trust at Stourhead on a series of installations between 2014 and 2017 to illustrate the effect of World War 1 on the community. There will be historical exhibits in the house. The Scraptors will make two large installations each year in the grounds, reflecting what happened 100 years before.
Other joint ventures: a sculpture trail in 2013 for Magdalen an educational eco farm in Dorset. In 2013 a sculpture, in collaboration with primary schools in Torbay, for Sustrans a charity that encourages sustainable transport.
Currently we are working on a Bird Henge which will feature giant birds associated with Wiltshire, such as the Great Bustard and the Lapwing. This will be visible free to the public by a public path near Warminster in the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Area of Outstanding Beauty. There will be an associated Bird Henge Trail for ramblers online. The Cranborne Chase A.O.N.B has given a grant to facilitate this project.
All three Scraptors have exhibited widely. Highlights: Rachel and Paul designed sets for the Mark Bruce Dance Company in 2009, 2010 and 2012, a company supported by the Arts Council. Paul has created large murals for commissions in England, Shanghai and California and holds graffiti workshops in Finland. Anthony’s commissions include a Frog for London Zoo in 2007 to publicise the plight of the world’s amphibians. Also works for Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival and Regenersis plc. He curated the Love London Recycled Sculpture Show at the Zoo in 2008 and at the London Wetland Centre in 2009.
Websites: www.scraptors.blogspot.co.uk www.sculpturemad.com www.boswellart.blogspot.comPinterest: www.pinterest.com/scraptors Email: [email protected] Telephone: 01985 840223
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