She added: "These projects all send clear and strong messages about the urgency of the need for change, actually not by shouting but by being creative, emotional and considered."
Up next as part of Back Lane West outreach R&D....
with a chance to see this in a new setting....
Thank you to Anna Willis for poster design
and Good news that the Live Stream project to Tretyakov Moscow (although it's not achieved Creative Bridges funding still) has a go ahead from all involved so off we go 28th January!
Looking forward to it and thank you to the resilience and vision of all those involved.
I likened it recently to eating: you need to eat bread -basics to make it happen, if you can have a wedding cake - extra funding, "with bells and whistles", then great but as long as you can eat, lets do it! so always plan for bread know you can deliver and work, apply hope for cake, but art isn't just about funding... it's about community and sharing and working, creating together. We all want this to happen. We need to maintain those connections and grow relationships and sharing good practice.
What is it?
It's Embodied Space ES with light artist Pete Freeman and musician George Clement Peer and dancers Shallal Dance Theatre in the upper gallery at Newlyn Art Gallery,
live streaming to Tretyakov Gallery Education department in Moscow and others
Friday 28 January 5pm time tbc
with Q & A tbc
we successfully did ES at the same venue but smaller space in 2020 so this is an expanded version larger space and bigger international national audience.
Many thanks to all the wonderful artists and performers who made this happen, many of whom have to overcome unseen obstacles to create such wonderful work.
It's, as always, a privilege to work with you all..thank you and well done for pulling this all together is such a tight time line. And thank you to Feast for amplifying the voices of Cornish creative communities.
that wonderful time of year our Annual Back Lane West Residency.
These times are for R& D, play, new collaborations, new ideas.
November
PLAY - with Anna Willis and Megan Burrifield - currently interning with Falmouth Cultural Services, we are grateful for their ongoing support and the partnership this year.
2 Tuesday Anna & Megan, Sam While & George Clement Peer?
11.30-12.30 joining with Art Zoom to discuss and R&D online Art showcasing, especially for Shallal artists still 'sheltering'
3 Wednesday Eddie Callis & Stuart Blackmore revisiting their music and exploring it via Zoom with dancers 1.30-2.30pm
4 Thursday Anna & Jo Lumber and Coats! - lots of them
5 Friday Studio Marianna Lasalle - exploration in illustration
outreach R& D 'Showcasing & Sharing' Shallal Dance Theatre at St Peter's Church, Newlyn 2-3pm
6 Saturday Anna & Zoe Osmond ( Shallal2) collaboration exploring movement and marks
7 Sunday
8 Monday Marianna Lasalle - exploration in illustration
9 Tuesday Sam & George & ?
10 Wednesday Lisa Mortensen unknown in discussion- Eddie & Stuart
11 Thursday Studio Marianna Lasalle - exploration in illustration
outreach Passmore Podcasts R&D Anna & Jo Willis
12 Friday Dressing up Caps & Coats Shallal Dance Theatre
New venues, bring new opportunities and I wouldn't have forseen what moving Shallal Dance Theatre back to rehearse at St Peters Church Newlyn, (not the Hall which was our home for many many years, and is now sold,) would bring.
A wooden floor, vast high ceiling space, ideal for covid precautions as a minimal risk airy environment, with access would bring.
The first 2-3 weeks we settled in and created A Call to Home, then watching the improvising standard a thought was born, to do more, share more and the space is lovely, inviting and interesting, you can work in a near round, room for safely spaced audience and so...
Showcasing and Sharing is our new offer.
Showcasing - Open Improvisation spontaneous performance, Embodied Space ES style
and
Sharing - last time we did a an ES at Newlyn Art Gallery the audience wanted to try it and join in afterwards and they did, with joy! If we get tired? we can do 'chat to the performers' and a Questions & Answers Q&A time at the end.
The space has arches, depth, views through and a piano!! so the live music is wonderful
and we are Research & Developing R&D it
FridayNovember 5th 2-3pm.
An outreach Back Lane West Residency initiative, so much good comes from these research times.
Hope you can come along and join us entry free, donations encouraged
sthese will be shared between St Peters Church and Shallal and if over £100,
we will donate the extra to Penwith Welcomes Refugees
https://penwithwelcomesrefugees.org/news/
It feels a real coming of age and a really necessary part of the performers development to have a regular performance slot ( approx every month, if it works out) and a really interesting bridge between performance and participation and sharing the 'weird and wonderful' creative way which is Shallal, more often and openly with the wider community, all ages, all abilities, all giving their best, working without words ( although we just have another actor so that might change, Shallal changes with each artist who joins us) and in gesture with playfulness and as a person said play is serious work for children and spans so much...oops stopping now! before i ramble on we will leave that for another blog .....
Access to a healthy environment, declared a human right by UN rights council
Activist links in them all.
Foraging Nectar is now up on YouTube
Thank you to Sapphire for her hard work is best said by Arinda:
"I have enjoyed the exhibition video so much. Sapphire did great work. My regards and gratitude to her. I love it."
I ended up doing a little side project, ( aided by feedback from Anna and Jo) to allow everyone to hear Jo L's recording in full...
Back to Film
Manda's spoken word for "Voices at the table"- is that the title?? i'm trying to decide as i write this and reply to Bobby who is finishing it this weekend.
We have ended up with 2 versions one with Makaton and one with BSL.
In conversation and our limited time frame we weren't able to explore or be more creative with the placing of these languages on screen and so have kept to their traditional placement lower right corner, but we want to continue this and so we need to develop stronger bonds and understanding.
Interestingly a friend who is a founder in https://falmouthandpenrynwelcome.org/wants training in Makaton to support conversations with young children who are learning English :)
This spoken word by Manda is the basis for the film.
"So the question is: what is Doughnut Economics?
Doughnut economics is a way of looking at economics in a way that is fit for the 21st Century.
Up to now, economics, which actually has nothing to do with numbers, is about really managing what we have and where we live – well that’s what economics actually means; but somehow the economics up to now has managed to leave out the planet in that thinking, and it’s also left out people who don’t have a fair share.
So right now economics is a pyramid, the few at the top have the most and everyone else at the bottom has the least. So instead of that pyramid, imagine a doughnut, the sort with the hole in the middle. The vision of doughnut economics is to have a sort of economics that leaves no one behind in the middle, in the hole, in the gap, making sure that everybody has the essentials of a life: enough food and water and housing, healthcare, good company, joy, laughter and culture.
But as we create those systems we need to make sure we don’t use more than we have the right to take. If one person takes too much, it risks someone else not having enough, and busting through that outer ring of the doughnut, the one where we start going into overdraft, in terms of the impact on the climate that’s how we cause a climate breakdown – where we make the oceans acidic, and full of plastic, we destroy our forests, we break down our living planet, which really isn’t the wisest thing we can do.
So in actual fact, all doughnut economics is, is about making sure we build economic systems that are fair, that make sure that everybody can shop and travel, and take a break, and have a future and have a present that means that everybody has a fair share on a healthy planet. That nobody has not enough, that nobody is in the hole in the middle, but what we have built doesn’t end up busting through those limits, the planetary limits, it’s a finite system. We can’t carry on taking more than the planet can sustain, we can’t carry on poisoning our rivers and burning down our forests and depleting our resources. We can’t do that, what we’re looking for is planetary and human health, where everyone has a fair share on a healthy planet, that’s what doughnut economics is. It’s an economics for everyone, and for the planet.
So if economics is about the management of what we have and where we are, not just about money,then doughnut economics is about everyone, and ensuring that human health and planetary health is a priority, it invites a new way of thinking where we join the dots between people and place, between food and culture, between well being and caring, between homes and community, where we prioritise human and planetary health and where we invite all those voices to the table, especially those who have never been invited before or who have been excluded. This is about all of us, for us all to listen to the diversity of views and to make an economic system that hears everyone."
Onto Back Lane West BLW ( our annual residency)
coming soon, the timetable filling with fabulous, crazy and interesting collaborations investigations. I so love process!
I made a decision in Shallal Dance Theatre SDT and then was unsure of the detail rolling it out so have put it under R&D BLW.
Showcasing & Sharing
more about that in another blog...
Sharing our timetable for SDT and knowing there is so much more going on in Shallal
Open improv performance approx 30 mins and 20 mins audience invitation to join in.
we hope to do these regularly/ monthly in the round
free/donation
please invite family and friends and artists/dancers
12 November
afternoon trip to Back Lane West Residency Redruth (run by Anna Willis and Megan Burridge for 2-15 Nov) to play 'dressing up' with costume ie. jackets, hats etc
26 November
2pm A Call to Home
St Peters Church Newlyn
donation
We had a good Artists meeting last week, just so good to be in touch, share practice and explorations especially the new world of Blended Delivery. Many thanks to Duchy Health Trust for supportive digital equipment.
Last not least remembering dear Trevor
and best wishes and thanks to John who is running the half marathon for his Memorial Fund tomorrow!
"Trevor is a shining creative soul. May his cheeky spirit continue to resonate in this wonder-filled world."
One more highlight: joy of reconnecting with Leigh Jacobs and being invited to have conversations re Shallal working with 3rd year Fine Art students at Falmouth for their campus gallery! Which links back to Artist meeting conversations and Liskeard group investigations with Janice re movement and tracing pathways etc.
Everything connects ( which echoes in Doughnut Economics and UN statement ) as Phil Jacobs, Leigh's younger brother, was drama facilitator in Shallal when we restarted, 2002/3 and I remember Leigh acting in The Ordinalia approx 20 yrs ago.
Great that the Studio beach venue Seaweed workshops had fine and even warm weather, lots of good feedback about them. A bat walk was cancelled tonight but there are more to come.
Shallal Dance Theatre (SDT) and Shallal 2 (S2) are settling into our new homes this term.
SDT, love being back in Newlyn, in the heart of a community, which although 'gentrifying' fast is still home!
S2 were reallocated to the theatre floor space for our session at Gyllyngdune Gardens this week. There are so many wonderful spaces to work in: the gardens, a large light clean cafe/social space cleared with light windows and a theatre/ social dance space. Ben from Falmouth food coop https://falmouthfood.coop/ was locking up and very helpful and Hennie is Director of Cultural services as well as our chairperson.https://www.falmouthartgallery.com/Gallery/AboutUs
Thinking about what we do next:
St Peters venue...
1 November our first SDT sharing performance open improv event, yet to be named tbc
26 A Call to Home 2pm fundraiser for St Peters and Shallal
14 October Thursday live stream of 'Foraging Nectar' as show ends 16 October
and possible 28 Jan live stream Embodied Space from Newlyn Gallery to Tretyakov Gallery, funding not acquired but in discussion to do it anyway.
Kerry & Debs from last time, photo Steve Tanner
Live streams, filming, some new wonderful photos in from Steve Tanner made me look at:
'A live performance, whether captured in still photography, video or on-line, has many lives, circulating to those not present at the actual event, each person forming new and different memories from the original, wherever they may be. Artists each have their own position as to how they wish their work to circulate, indeed, some have refused photography altogether....................... Today, rehearsals are attended by journalists and Instagrammers, recorded by a director of photography, live broadcaster, photo journalist, or fashion photographer. These radical performances, once attended only by small groups, now beam from Vimeo into the palm of one’s hand from across the globe.
With portable compact cameras and tiny cameras installed in desktop monitors, laptops and mobile phones, came a new method of creating abbreviated notes in the studio, making video an integral part of the rehearsal process. .......... the approach to documentation is as distinctive as the work of the artists themselves.'
Thinking about COP26 Shout LOUDER film and conversations yesterday about
"now we are political as now it's about everybody"...
For many people in Shallal ...
"We know what it's like to be marginalised and excluded and we know how much we need community. We know that in community diverse voices bring better and more dynamic creative solutions under a generous ethos."
This week i attended the Rank 'Take Stock and Reset' Conference, and was grateful for some insights from
Foresights panel of experts discussing how communities and the sector might look in a post-pandemic world. The panel will explore ways to harness the renewed sense of community leadership, volunteering and the use of technology.
I struggle a little with 'leadership' but do believe in serving
and also grateful to be reminded of Ubuntu
a quick google search gives you
Ubuntu (Zulu pronunciation: [ùɓúntʼù]) is a Nguni Bantu term meaning "humanity". It is sometimes translated as "I am because we are" (also "I am because you are"), or "humanity towards others" (in Zulu, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu).
ubuntu is said to include the following values: communality, respect, dignity, value, acceptance, sharing, co-responsibility, humaneness, social justice, fairness, personhood, morality, group solidarity, compassion, joy, love, fulfilment, conciliation, et cetera
