We had such a great week of R&D (radicalism & dissent), working on Gerrard Winstanley’s True and Righteous Mobile Incitement Unit with The Black Smock Band and Gerrard himself, who kindly joined us from the C17th.
A massive thank you to Ovalhouse. And thanks to the team: Alex Swift, Andy Bannister, Dan Cox, Maeve O’Neill, Matt Beattie, Paul Burgess, Rhiannon Kelly and Sarah Jeanpierre.
Things are taking shape. Lots more to come…
GERRARD WINSTANLEY’S TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS MOBILE INCITEMENT UNIT is the name for the collaborations with The Black Smock Band that we were developing under the working title of The Radical History Project.
There’s a project page here, plus there’s loads more info to come as we put the project together… In the meantime, we made a little video about it.
We had a great session yesterday working in collaboration with The Black Smock Band and Rhiannon Kelly on our new project exploring England’s history of protest, radicalism and dissent.
Exciting things to come. Watch this space…!
Paul, our artistic director and also one of the organisers of East, wrote a piece about the evolution of the East project for the Apples and Snakes Blog. You can read it here.
As you will see from the blogpost, Apples and Snakes helped get the project off the ground in the first place. So it’s great to have its continued support!
The three arts professionals who initially got East off the ground, Sef, Shamim and Paul, also ran an East storytelling tent at Tower Hamlets council’s flagship event for families; The Great Day Out, which takes place in Victoria Park every summer. A lot of fun was had by all. Here’s a photo of the ‘East Three’ (in E3) by Simon Daw.
The East Archive is an ongoing project and we’ve just added two new pieces by the celebrated local poet, novelist and storyteller Shamim Azad. Shamim’s also one of the key figures in our partner organisation for the project, BSK.
We have also re-organised the Archive so you can search by genre, teller/singer etc (using categories and tags).
Take a look, and please share it too!
A selection of some of the wonderful photos taken by visiting Thai photographer Tan Nidhivir of our Woodland Walk tryout the other week in Butcher’s Wood, Hassocks. Led by Dan Cox, the walk links natural history, folklore and mental health and is a collaboration with The Brightwood Project. We were very pleased with how it went and got some great feedback from our invited audience.
More about this rather exciting project as it develops…
We were honoured to be invited, as partners in the East project, to participate in BSK’s Boi-Lit Festival, the annual Bangla Literature Festival at Rich Mix. It’s a wonderful event, which combines creativity and intellect.
On Day 1, Families Day, Sef Townsend, Shamim Azad, Farah Naz and Paul Burgess presented an interactive programme of stories and songs. On Day 2, which focussed on the Bangla Renaissance, Paul presented a segment on the Illiad, as part of a section directed by Khadijah Rahman that explored the links between Valmiki’s Ramayan and Homer’s epic.
BSK’s official photographer, Shoayeeb Chamak took lots of great photos: here are a selection.
We had a really delightful launch for the East Archive at Rich Mix. Here are some photos from Farah Naz. And don’t forget to take a look at the archive itself: www.eastarchive.com!
It’s here. We had a lovely launch event at Rich Mix last night (photos to follow) and the East Archive, featuring videos of stories and songs from our East storytelling project, is now live. You can find it at www.eastarchive.com.
It’s all very new, so please let us know if you spot any teething problems.
It’s an ongoing project too, so if you have any stories that are linked to East London, and you’re interested in sharing them, drop us a line.
We’re pretty excited about it all! Big thanks to the Arts Council, Rich Mix, Tower Hamlets, Apples and Snakes, and our generous crowd-funders. And congratulations to all our contributors!
We had such a great time with our Easter holiday storytelling workshops, led by Sef Townsend, Shamim Azad and Paul Burgess: very keen and creative kids, supportive parents, and a lovely visit from the young cast of Rapture to support their younger colleagues. Big thanks to everyone involved!
Here are some pictures from Farah:
These workshops were part of the East storytelling project, a partnership between Daedalus Theatre Company and Bishwo Shahitto Kendro. They were funded by Arts Council England and crowdfunding, with support from Tower Hamlets Arts & Events and Rich Mix. For further information please email contact@daedalustheatre.co.uk