Heading for the Holidays

So much going on..i think i have started many blogs now with this phrase!

Tabs on my desktop this evening include

1.Tweeking edits on our new website about to be launched, congratulations and thank you to Nick, Lou, Phoebe and Barbara and Ann for archiving

2.Watching new promo film from Adam for Kresen Kernow performance as yet untitled! 24 Sept

3.Thanking Arinda for the fabulous time working with her, sending her a short look round at the Private view filmed by Anna for the Wheelers. 

4.Facebook post for the show...including...feedback in bold I went to see it yesterday afternoon, and LOVED it... it's a wow.... Well done everybody . And thank you for hanging my drawings - I found them and thought 'where's the light switch?' and then laughed and thought yes, they are so much more exciting in the dark.  I am so proud and happy to have been included.  Thank you I

.."really enjoyed it and was impressed.  I found it inspiring and soothing
thanks so much for all you do with
Shallal and thanks for inviting me to be part of this."

5.Upshot our new exciting - when its fully up and running - monitoring and evaluation system  

                                                Dylan and George at the Private View

not open but tasks:

Finish Feast ...Shout louder application so excited for this, but so want to get to holidays

no rush but from excellent Business plan mentoring meeting with Charlotte Bond today (and in 3D)  and we met Chris our manager, I have a task to do around Creative ethos in bullet points

Henry Smith charity second stage interviews just over and a really enjoyable last Zoom on Tuesday morning

More background a potential trustee via Claire, a donor to meet and chat with and a holiday to have!

Colin is planning lovely holiday events with community groups.

Cornwall gets congested in summer and except for visiting visiting friends, you can find yourself nicely holed up at home and emerging at quiet times of day.

Personally as a mum and wife in my 'holidays' i have a list of chores to do...and the joy of living and working somewhere i love with wonderful people - thank you!

So many people to thank and our AGM is in September which promises to be hyper busy month, partly as many thanks to the Ordinalia we can get to all 3 plays in one week, along with filming - if we get Feast, making show for Kresen Kernow in 2 weeks! it will be a narrative Open improv!

And again more Well done to Shallal Studios whose Underworld project has been successful in acquiring Arts Council Funding!!!

Foraging Nectar ...'In Your Hands' at Newlyn Art Gallery

 “Foraging Nectar” 

Arinda, "I have tried to think all day and I feel this ( Foraging Nectar - title) captures the essence of the art at the exhibition. 

Everything in there from the different spaces we have created to the art itself is an encounter with a search for sweetness. It can be ugly, it can take us to ugly places and it can take us to gardens. We really are butterflies. Beautiful but always finding ourselves in spaces where we may not like, where we are reminded of our past but where, we nevertheless, search for sweetness." 

So much to say about the joy of this work, sitting back and watching the extraordinary creativity in Shallal.

Peoples response to the prompt and themes Arinda shared with us, being filtered through the depth of creative vision and personnel experience, to create new work.

I hope she will write more about it.

Part of the joy was to be in a respectful, creative, communicative team with Blair and Arinda, and not having total responsibility for the outputs choice and final framing/shaping of the work.

Thank you to Anna W who went down to help lay out work, to Colin and others who scurried around collecting and delivering work, and with Sapphire organised the opportunities for filming.

Big thank you to new artist/dancer Bobby who took a simple beautiful idea and ran with it, creating a beautiful film, a compilation of piano music by Darcy, voice by Arinda and dance by Shallal.

And to all the artists, they are named below.

And to here also include the Shallal dancers:

Kerry Jackson

Anna Penhaligon

David and Esme Willoughby

Peter Kirby

Sapphire Sumpter 

Al Way Owl

Lily Harvey

Tina Butler

Katherine Gidding

Becky Smith

Sammy Avery

Kresen Kernow visit

 Kresen Kernow visit went so smoothly thanks to funding for participant support in the budget, everyone assists each other anyway, but to know those people were there really helped, plus new Shallal friends Becky and Julie and Anna back helping.

Johnathan, Justin, Al and Anna P all came along and people who had only met on Zoom saw each other in 3D.

Creatively...So much to do, so little time and so many ideas floating around, George back with music and Adam quietly weaving in and out filming in the afternoon.

We waved to Lily in Spain for this photo, we are so glad to have Tuesday zooms happening. 

Lots to reflect on in zoom and real room experience, there is a strange freedom, equality and space to develop for some people in zoom, despite distance and detachment that many feel.

We negotiated our spacing and personal and health needs and that added another dimension - not so easy when dance is so often a contact activity, and many of us like hugs, but many thanks to everyone for their awareness and sensitivity.

Thanks to Ian and Amanda on the day and Chloe and Tamsin for making this possible.

A beautiful building and wonderful exhibition / project, do go to see it!

FRIENDS DANCING

 Joy

I woke wanting to blog the joy of meeting up yesterday 

(Shallal 2 first meet up since pandemic at Gyllyngvase Gardens, Princess Pavillions, Falmouth)

seen in Yvonne's painting

Yvonne has an exhibition in September!

Friends Dancing at Princess Pavillions

but today rolled out wonderfully, starting with nearly forgetting our new early start business meeting! so jumped into that and the day rolled on now its the next day just and we go to Kresen Kernow in 10 hours!

so much going on

new people and old faces! such a joy to dance in the sun at Gyllyngdune Gardens yesterday

so many people to thank

and news to share it will have to wait now

never mind the art and costume, songs? film and content "to bake or not to bake/" for Eddies birthday which was on Wednesday

Than k you to Star and Anna for these great cards

One more image

so enjoyed this so far and looking forward to the Opening in 8  days! 

Inspiration - Victor Jara, Passmore Edwards, Doughnut Economics

 Lou asked me to write a few lines for Victor Jara dance film from Shallal2 and i found this https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/us/victor-jara.html.

So much to consider as the world goes through intense times and it reminded me of Passmore Edwards, "Fund the ladder and the poor will climb it themselves" 

https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/leisure/theatre/15372034.shallal-brings-show-of-many-creative-talents-to-falmouth/

The need for systems change is so vital now, and we look to those who have gone before for inspiration.

https://environmentjournal.online/articles/cornwall-aims-to-achieve-a-doughnut-economy/

Shallal2 start again soon hoping to make another film for COP26. They have an established relationship with Falmouth filmmaker Adam Drake and we are pleased to have been working in Shallal dance Theatre with Bobby as well and so we hope to continue extending a platform for unique film voices as well as in all the other arts we touch on.  

A Thank you to our funder and partners in Shallal Dance Theatre

 A thank you letter

Thank you to Reaching Communities for our funding for three years pre-Covid, it came in just before the pandemic was fully recognised and meant we could continue our two well established performance groups and maintain our rental for our new art studio.

It led to even greater opportunities, recommending us to Rank foundation who then have funded our Time to Shine leader, Sapphire

Last year we all were so concerned to keep in touch,  maintain provision creativity opportunities..and this hasn't left us, we are now doing a doodle poll across Shallal to capture our responses and needs for groups 

Last year we experimented with film, and zoom and ... within it Barbara made a great short film, the Studios did Picture Post and Shallal Sketchbooks came into their own, showing a huge need especially via Social Prescribing and doing a Christmas card share from children to those in care homes.

So much

And yet our creative juices were rumbling to perform, to connect, as we normally do, so Big Thank you

To Newlyn Art Gallery

to Blair for working with Akullah together they identified Arinda Daphine and Shallal as a potential pairing

Re, Artistic Director, Jo and I understand you to be the Lead Artist, in collaboration with Shallal Dance Theatre. Its your project, developed with Shallal, who are directed by Jo, for an exhibition that I have curated. It’s a large multi-faceted collaboration 

and a providential commission as Lou and Phoebe had contacted Kresen Kernow, who had thought to contact us but hadn't yet and the thrill of being involved in a small way with The Homecoming Project and the wonderful Ordinalia, Community Arts, Cornish Culture and cross art form! what more can you want and though i don't like 'themes' ( many of Shallal do) I'm just more abstract, symbolic or humour/dramatic.

Without the funding to keep regularly meeting we wouldn't have been able to participate and enable these fantastic opportunities challenging and stretching us even in lockdown.

We have been able to commission Bobby and Pep both multi arts skilled and performers to explore their film making.

I'm so pleased with all the work produced so far, Arinda's prompts and themes have opened a glorious door of responses, Love and betrayal or loss, nature and our relationship responses, deep connections and chanting your family lineage. "Okwevuga' example... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vmw643XieU