In 2017 we became associate artists with the New Work Department at the National Theatre Studio.  This was to explore ideas around a project that we had tried to get off the ground some years previously about the conscientious objectors community of Holton cum Beckering.  With Damon Albarn offering his support we developed a range of large scale community touring models with Rufus Norris that embraced the ethos shown by the national theatres of Wales and Scotland in moving work out of the capital.

As part of this we worked with Ian Sharp to provide assistance for a show at the Broadbent Theatre that was hoping to be a launch pad for the larger project.

Unfortunately the larger project never came to fruition, as we explain here. 

Over 2016 and into 2017 we worked with the University of Nottingham’s Hidden Histories project and the Red Cross, to create a small scale touring show that examined the history of borders in the Middle East and the impact of their recent dissolution.

The show was performed by a cast of those who have found themselves moving to Nottingham from countries in that part of the world – from Iran, Bakur (Turkish Kurdistan) and from Syria. Using large scale projections and live music throughout it interweaved three monologues – the history of the secretive Sykes Picot agreement which led to the creation of Iraq and Transjordan (and which is still hotly contested in Kurdistan); the story of a Kurdish woman whose sisters all live in one nation and yet are separated by three borders; and the story of a young man (Adel, telling his own story) who travelled from the Golan Heights to Nottingham via the Sahara Desert, the Mediterranean, and the Jungle at Calais.

Proceeds from the performances of the show were used to buy guitars so that the Red Cross could offer music lessons, or lend the instruments, to those who have come to Nottingham seeking refuge.

On May 29th 1967, the Tulip Bulb Auction Hall in Spalding staged one of the greatest concerts in the history of rock and in the process inadvertantly launched the Summer of Love. This HLF funded project gathered stories and memories of those who were part of this incredible event (featuring The Move, Geno Washington, Pink Floyd, Cream and Jimi Hendrix)  to create a touring show and exhibition. Premiered at the South Holland Centre on election night to a large audience the show was a funny, playful, and energetic seventy minute performance full of great music. This was a show about pirate radio stations and coffee shops; about Jimi Hendrix dangling bedsheets out of the window of his room in the Red Lion; of the football ground becoming a camp for a hippy invasion; and of the magical moment when Spalding was the coolest place on Planet Earth.

The exhibition – comprising of fourteen panels and six MP3 players with interviews with those who were there – is still out and about in the area (last seen at Uptown Vinyl in Pinchbeck). You can hear one of these here.

This show was commissioned by Right Up Our Street as a follow up to our work in Thorne and Moorends two years before, and was a development of our Bolsover Bingo show for another Creative People and Places project, First Art.

Gathering stories from Balby, Mexborough and Rossington we created three separate shows that were performed at Labour clubs in these three communities in South Yorkshire. As before it was a chaotic mix of bingo, pub quiz and theatre (with live music throughout) with guest appearances from a range of local groups (including a choir of twenty five people in Rossington) and a series of films in which shopkeepers, pigeon fanciers, hairdressers and others asked questions that required the audience to display their ‘local knowledge’.

With stories of Amazon fulfillment centre workers, German pork butchers, competitive anglers, pottery loving guitar heroes, and feminist leek growers (amongst others) it was a show that really seemed to hit the mark with the audiences that we played it to. And in Mexborough we were very lucky to attract the involvement of one of Britain’s best loved actors, whose contribution can be heard here.

Three Doors Down was a year long project for the Aspley housing estate to the north west of Nottingham funded by Creative Nottingham North. Working alongside school groups, the Keverne Close housing unit, and people who live on the estate we ran a range of workshops and held a series of performances (including the Minver Crescent Nosh Up that combined storytelling and jacket spuds) concluding with a final show in July.

Combining film, music, theatre and games the shows were enjoyed by an audience of all ages. An example of one of the stories can be heard here.

Commissioned by Arts for Rutland this play followed the lives of four Rutland women and their families from the end of the First World War through until the mid-twenties; a period during which old social hierarchies began to crumble and the promises of a new world were confronted with the realities of post war life.

With a cast of around thirty, live music and original songs, the play toured over five days to a number of Rutland villages to an audience of around six hundred people. Every performance was packed, we could easily have sold out many more shows, and the responses from the audience were wonderful.

These performances were followed by the recording of an audio version of the play which Radio Rutland played over four Sundays at the end of 2019. An education pack was also created and the script is available for sale at Rutland County Museum.

This was one of the strongest pieces of drama that we’ve made for many years and also, sadly, was the last project that we were able to work on with the much missed and wonderfully talented composer and musician Matt Marks.