Title
Dialogue with E Numbers
Year
2014
Location
Created and filmed on various locations including Whitehaven Community Trust. Film premiere at Rosehill Theatre, Whitehaven
Partners and Coverage
Whitehaven Community Trust, Rosehill Theatre, Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust Early Intervention into Psychosis Team, Whitehaven News, Northern Rock Foundation
Description
Through a relationship with the NHS Early Intervention into Psychosis Team, I invited a group of young people to create a piece of work. Of need of an initial prompt, but not wishing to foreground my own knowledge and skills, I invited the practitioner Ali McCaw, to introduce us all to elements of object and shadow theatre. We conducted searches for driftwood and detritus in order to make simple but poetic puppet characters. The group elected to use a readymade story created by Ali and artist Helen Walsh as inspiration for a puppet animation film, using the driftwood characters, readymade objects and shadow theatre. I invited in a community composer, Russell Burbush, to introduce ways for the group to create soundscapes for the film.
This project was a collective search for forms of affect we could all agree upon, made possible by the armature of story. The film contains vestiges of joy, alienation, loss, and levity transmuted into story, objects, movements, and sounds.
Further notes
Between 2008 and 2018, I was involved in an intense period of collaborations and projects which I designed and delivered with composer Russell Burbush, under the banner of New Arts North; covering visual art, film, theatre, music, and publishing. We partnered with several other arts companies, such as Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Theatre by the Lake, Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, and Prism Arts.
The broad purpose was to provide opportunities for participation and education in the arts. The project design favoured long-term engagement with small groups. A record of its activity is held in the form of an archive of photos, film, clinical data, reports, and case studies. We worked with schools; arts venues; museums; the NHS (the Early Intervention into Psychosis teams); councils (long-term mental health programs, and rurally/socially isolated communities); and inclusive arts organisations (working with young people with learning disabilities and autism). We acquired £290,000 of social funding, including a research grant from Northern Rock Foundation of £60,000 over the period. Like many community projects, where the practitioner is also the fundraiser, strategist, marketing, accountant, evaluator etc, a full document of this time is still in the making!
This project was a collective search for forms of affect we could all agree upon, made possible by the armature of story. The film contains vestiges of joy, alienation, loss, and levity transmuted into story, objects, movements, and sounds.
Further notes
Between 2008 and 2018, I was involved in an intense period of collaborations and projects which I designed and delivered with composer Russell Burbush, under the banner of New Arts North; covering visual art, film, theatre, music, and publishing. We partnered with several other arts companies, such as Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Theatre by the Lake, Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, and Prism Arts.
The broad purpose was to provide opportunities for participation and education in the arts. The project design favoured long-term engagement with small groups. A record of its activity is held in the form of an archive of photos, film, clinical data, reports, and case studies. We worked with schools; arts venues; museums; the NHS (the Early Intervention into Psychosis teams); councils (long-term mental health programs, and rurally/socially isolated communities); and inclusive arts organisations (working with young people with learning disabilities and autism). We acquired £290,000 of social funding, including a research grant from Northern Rock Foundation of £60,000 over the period. Like many community projects, where the practitioner is also the fundraiser, strategist, marketing, accountant, evaluator etc, a full document of this time is still in the making!