More than 5,000 people from the local community joined the St George’s Festival in March, Fenland on Sunday 23 April 2023. MarketPlace partnered with Fenland District Council, 20Twenty productions, March Library and Cambridgeshire Skills to organise the event, including a range of activities and performances staged by local artists and groups.
In the month-long run up, MarketPlace delivered creative projects and workshops for adults and young people within the community. Artist Ricki Outis visited 9 local groups including Scouts, Cubs and Beavers, Hereward Community Rail Partnership, Macmillan Fundraising Committee, the Recovery Café and Edgy Women, to run screen printing workshops where over 500 participants created scales to decorate the parade dragon. Many participants had never imagined they might be able to take part in this type of creative experience. “I have never seen the Cubs so engaged in an art activity’ said Scout Leader, Gary Barnett.
Two walking poetry workshops were organised with contemporary poet Charley Genever for members of the public. On the day she performed two poems at the start and end of the festival.
Artist Cary Outis went around the town and drew his original dragon drawings on the windows of local shops, teasing the community into what was happening on St George’s Day. On the day, festival visitors drew their own dragons on the pavements while watching Cary draw a large dragon onto the window of the library.
Designed and created by the communities of Wisbech, Chatteris & March, the parade dragon became a magical moment of community creation and interaction, with the scales created in the workshops adorning the dragons’ bodies. The other MarketPlace activities throughout the day for families included storytelling with The Yarnsmith of Norwich, inspired by the dragon and medieval themes of the day, tote bag colouring, and a colouring competition.
“I’ve come to this event every year and this is the best it’s ever been”
A very successful St George’s Day Festival, showing how co-creation and co-operation with local organisations and community groups can work.
Over a series of workshops, the Kids Business project enabled a group of young people in March to grow ideas, cultivate skills and create a new business, conjured up through their imagination. They came up with the entrepreneurial idea of escape sheds based on Harry Potter and Willy Wonka.
All the decisions were handed over to young people aged 5 – 15. They worked together in a creative environment across a range of ages and backgrounds. The project gave them space to think through ideas and select the nature of the business, making creative and practical decisions. The budding entrepreneurs were empowered to design and come up with wildly imaginative ideas. The project saw amazing young people designing, creating and running micro escape sheds in the town of March.
“The creative space gave rise to friendships that can’t and don’t usually happen in the school situation“
With the decision to place the sheds in West Park, there was a great deal of curiosity and enthusiasm from members of the public passing through. The sheds were open to the public for two weekends, both of which were fully booked with a variety of family audiences, teenagers and young adults.
The project was playful with many creative aspects, but also combined with some serious learning curves about entrepreneurship and thinking about future aims and ambitions. The sense of ownership was a huge part of the success of the project – all the elements were thought through by the young people, including the key task of targeting certain audiences. Lots of work went into focusing on who their target audience were, and how they might make their escape sheds appealing to that audience.
Katherine Nightingale from 20Twenty Productions who co-created the project along with Hunt & Darton said: “This process of continual discussion and decision making was a genuine example of having young people have their say and being empowered to act on their voices being heard.”
“Creating new ideas and working with young people in our rural town settings is vital“
The young people openly said that the project had a positive impact on their daily lives, including family and school difficulties. It also helped them to think about their futures without fear. Parents were able to have some involvement too; some acted as a focus group where the young people pitched their ideas and invited them to vote for their favourite concept.
“The project allowed the young people to play within the structure and have fun being imaginative together. The creative space gave rise to friendships that can’t and don’t usually happen in the school situation – the intergenerational aspect of Kids Business with 5yr olds working with 14yr olds is delightful and so productive in terms of their learning how to work together.” – Hunt & Darton
“The project emphasised how important our work with young people is. Being able to offer new and varied projects that stimulate their minds and encourage them to interact with their community was brilliant. Creating new ideas and working with young people in our rural town settings is vital.” – 20Twenty Productions
The project was run by Hunt & Darton in partnership with 20Twenty Productions and commissioned by MarketPlace Creative People and Places.
This case study is part of our project evaluation for Phase 2.
During the first summer of the pandemic in 2020, MarketPlace supported Wisbech photographers Jenna Bristow and Steve Hubbard of Click Therapy CIC to create a collection of images that tell a story of a town coping with Covid19. The project developed into an exploration into the connection between the medium of photography to support people’s wellbeing and mental health.
During the first summer of the pandemic in 2020, Wisbech photographers Jenna Bristow and Steve Hubbard of Click Therapy CIC created a collection of images that tell a story of a town coping with Covid19. As photographers interested in using digital cameras to support people’s wellbeing and mental health, they invited local residents to contribute three words that summed up their life experiences during lockdown as a portrait and record of Wisbech in that time. The Creative Conversations in Lockdown commission created a book of resident feelings and stories left over a dedicated phone and text service called Lockdown Easedown. They were capturing a universal moment in time this project was revisited for further development.
As the pandemic continued, a further investment was made to continue to evolve this project idea and document the impact of the latest lockdown on residents. The power of sharing and telling stories that resonated from the first book, ‘Lockdown Easedown’, was highlighted as a development opportunity to be embedded from the beginning of this second commission. Partnering with writer Bel Greenwood, lunchtime online workshops developed the creative writing skills and contributions of Wisbech residents, the Click Therapy artists and community organisers to reflect upon their experiences.
The participants wanted to share their stories more widely, they lent themselves to being performed but the participants didn’t want to do that themselves, so a connection with the local theatre group was made. The vulnerable nature of some of the stories being shared could have left participants increasingly vulnerable by sharing them directly, alongside developing new skills to adapt and perform their work. Drawing upon the skills and interests of community producer Jodie Hicks, she reformed her theatre troupe to bring the experiences of selected stories to life and launch the second book, ‘Surviving Lockdown’.
“I’ve been in a theatre group with my friends Chris and Glenn for a couple of years. So we haven’t actually done anything for a long time, and then I started working for MarketPlace. Colin, Creative Agent, spoke about my interests, and I said my primary interest is theatre and stuff like that. Colin, just kind of, came up to me and said, ‘I have an idea I’ve been working on with Click Therapy that would lend itself quite well to kind of theatrical reading. And would you, or know anyone, [who would] be up for it?’ And I kind of thought, well, it seemed quite ideal for us and to see them as kind of monologues.” – Jodie Hicks, Alternate Orbit Theatre
Casson & Friends, an award-winning dance company based in London spent early Summer 2021 bringing their own unique style of dance and ‘people powered performance’ to our area. The goal? To speak to as many people as possible to create a dance inspired by what people love about where they live.
Dancers engaging with community members, especially young people, to create a bespoke dance for their towns and districts resulting in a Collaborative Choreography
The Community Producer POV
We asked Jodie Hicks, our Community Producer, to give her point of view about her summer worling with Casson & Friends.
Events in March, Wisbech, Brandon and Newmarket
Across four events in Fenland and West Suffolk two teams of dancers had the chance to engage with people of all ages, to dig deep and mine their thoughts and memories for choreography ideas and inspiration. It was a real joy to observe someone, with great animation, describe a cherished memory about their town or a certain place within it, and then to see the dancers transform these words into fluid movements.
Casson & Friends brought their dance moves to Forest Heath in Brandon and Newmarket in August 2021, inspiring choreography moves with creative people in their creative places. Photography credit: Malachy Luckie.
A moment which stood out for me was at National Play Day at The Spinney Adventure Playground in Wisbech. Not only did the parents and children speak to the dancers, but they actually got involved physically to help create these moves alongside them.
On a couple of occasions, some of the children would correct the dancers and suggest their own alterations to more accurately capture what they loved about their hometown. The connections and collaborative process was a truly wonderful watch after we have all spent the past two years keeping distance from each other.
Slowly but surely, as each day would draw to a close, singular movements would grow into short sequences and in turn develop into a dance performance lasting a few minutes long. Alongside this, MarketPlace was on hand to invite people to also write down thoughts, feelings and also provide some suggestions for filming locations for the final stage of the project, producing a dance film.
Casson & Friends dancers performing their finished #TinyDance in Fenland for the final film. Filming day photography: Jodie Hicks.
Bringing the moves together…
After our days in March, Wisbech, Brandon and Newmarket the dance teams went away and explored all of the information they’d gathered, narrowed down the filming locations to just three in each town, (no easy task) and put all of the choreographed motions together to create two distinct dances for Fenland and Forest Heath.
Casson & Friends dancers performing their finished #TinyDance in Forest Heath for the final film. Filming day photography: Jodie Hicks.
All that was left to do was film it. Our travels took us to all sorts of places from racetracks to mausoleums, and even a castle. The #TinyDance teams accomplished the astonishing feat of filming in 6 locations per day and performing the Tiny Dances a staggering 18 times over the course of each day!
It was exhausting just watching them! Not only this, but in true East Anglia fashion, the dancers and filmmakers had to compete with weather ranging from sunshine to wind and rain and back again and often in the space of an hour (which could be a little detail to look out for in the Forest Heath film).
Clips from the Casson & Friends performers creating the final video on location in Brandon, Suffolk (Forest Heath).
What was never lost was the sense of fun and wonder from the Casson & Friends team. They had the chance to visit all of these little gems we have in our towns, and really experience for themselves; what we are proud of and what is distinctively unique about living in Fenland and Forest Heath.
The #TinyDance films will be ready very soon so be sure to keep an out on our social media pages or sign up for our newsletter to have it sent direct to your inbox.
With all that said, where’s my popcorn…?
Written by MarketPlace Young Producer, Jodie Hicks.
On Thursday 10th and Friday 11th June 2021, I had the pleasure of accompanying the team behind the immersive theatre game Escape from Fort Lagoon, by Adam McGuigan (Wake the Beast) and Jude Jagger (Submersion Productions), around several towns in West Suffolk and Fenland. They were scouting out possible locations where they could produce their water-based immersive theatre game experience as part of their Research & Development. Alongside this, they were testing out an app which audience members would use during the performance, experimenting with original songs with a choir and meeting lots of local people who would be able to advise and assist them on this journey.
We started in Brandon and were guided around the town and their local riverside walk by members of Brandon Creative Forum who had some valuable insights into the town and the people who populate it. As the company would need access to a body of water to perform in, they could specify which places of the river were safe to swim in and where performers and audiences could enter the river. We discovered a series of jetty’s which could be ideal for little pockets of performance spaces.
Members of Brandon Creative Forum, the MarketPlace team and Submersion Productions gather together in Brandon to discuss the plan of the day.
Next, it was onto Mildenhall where the team met Imogen Radford, a regular ‘wild swimmer’ in the River Lark. She went into great depth about the different safety considerations for swimming in rivers. Safety tips such as wearing waterproof protective footwear and getting into the water slowly to ease your body in gently to the sudden change in temperature and prevent performers and audience members losing their breath.
Jude and Adam from Submersion Productions, and digital artist & app designer Jack get ready for wild swimming in the River Lark in Mildenhall.
Finally, we arrived in March and I helped Godfrey Smith show the team around the area surrounding the River Nene before meeting up with the March Can’t Sing Choir. I have lived and grown up in March my whole life and it was interesting to see it through the theatre company’s eyes. I think I forget to appreciate how green it is and how many open spaces we have on our doorstep. Coming from Manchester and London, they were amazed at just how far you can see and how many wide-open spaces we have.
When we met up with the choir, we split into two groups; one group was trialling the app which Jack Hardiker had designed to test if the choir members could learn some short phrases to sing from their mobile devices, and one group to be taught these singing parts by the choir master Sally Rose. Speaking with Jude and Jack who led the app group, I think they found this exercise especially enlightening as they realised that learning these short songs from an app was no replacement for a choir master who could correct things as she went along, and practise blending these different parts together to make a really beautiful sound.
The groups join together on the green for singing with Sally Rose and March Can’t Sing Choir in March.
On the second day, we met with David Johnson at the Empress Pool in Chatteris where the team experimented with the acoustics of indoor pools and used the time to reflect on what they had learned and brainstorm new ideas for how the show would need to adapt to what they now know. After this, David gave us a walking tour of Chatteris town centre. He provided the team with information on his experiences of how to organise events and arts projects in Chatteris.
From there we drove to Gildenburgh Water in Whittlesey where the team swam in the lake and learnt about the different safety measures that the owners would insist upon should performers and audience members need to go into the water. We walked around the area and found some quite interesting little patches of field which could be suitable for performance spaces.
The groups explore suitable performance areas in Chatteris and Whittlsey, including the local pool and green spaces.
At all of the places that we visited, the team were taking pictures of everything and making notes on what would work and what wouldn’t work at each location. They were taking into consideration factors like how accessible it would be for members of the public, how far people would have to walk, how loud the noise in the surrounding area would be, how enclosed it is and what (if any) access they would have to the water. I believe that actually trying out wild swimming for themselves and learning how they would need to adapt the show to take into consideration what they now know has been a crucial step towards putting on a show here.
Jodie, Colin and Buster the dog from MarketPlace stand together for a photo in Chatteris town centrewith David Johnson, a film maker based in Chatteris, Jude and Adam from Submersion Productions, digital artist & app designer Jack and theatre designer & costume maker Abby.
Also, testing the capabilities of the app they are developing with members of the public and learning what tweaks would need to be made, would not have been achievable without this Research and Development stage, supported by the Arts Council of England with National Lottery funding.
The project has the potential to be unlike anything Fenland and Suffolk have seen before, so now more than ever I have learnt how important this stage in the creative process is, and how it will now go on to inform so many decisions – both creatively and logistically in the future when Submersion Productions take the plunge and perform it.
Written by MarketPlace Young Producer, Jodie Hicks.
Across Summer 2021, MarketPlace teamed up with Casson and Friends to make Tiny Dance – short dance films inspired by conversations with communities in Fenland and Forest Heath. Collaborative Choreography you might say.
The dancers visited 4 market towns around Fenland and West Suffolk (Forest Heath) and chatted to residents about what they loved about where they live. They also encouraged people to collaborate on some moves – watching the dancers and helping to shape choreography.
Casson and Friends are a record-breaking dance theatre company that aims to always be accessible, interactive and joyful. The company believes in ‘people powered performance’ – dance that is co-created with the help of the public.
Tiny Dances are short dance films inspired by the shared conversations, stories and anecdotes, plus choreography ideas. Choreographer Tim and his team of dancers use the information shared to create a bespoke dance reflecting our unique rural landscape.
View the finished videos below and let us knowwhat you think.
Casson & Friends brought their dance moves to Wisbech Play Day at The Spinney Adventure Playground on Wednesday 4th August and March Market on Saturday 7th August, inspiring choreography moves with creative people in their creative places. Take a look at the final #TinyDance below and view the full album of photos here (credit Malacky Luckie).
Casson & Friends dancers performing their finished #TinyDance in Fenland for the final film. Filming day photography: Jodie Hicks.
Casson & Friends dancers spent a week focusing on Newmarket Memorial Gardens Earth Arts Festival (19th August) and Brandon Festival (21st August). Talking with local people helped them create a unique West Suffolk dance.
Escape from Fort Lagoon is an immersive ‘theatre game’ created by Wake the Beast (Adam McGuigan) and Submersion Productions (Jude Jagger). We have been an active partner in their Research & Development work since 2019. We’ve been lucky to have a group of local community members who have formed a ‘Creative Collective’ that has provided a springboard for feedback on ideas and the concept of the theatre production.
Escape from Fort Lagoon is set in the future where water is a precious commodity and is controlled by an oppressive government who restrict access to the water to the elite (a theme that surely resonates with many right now in the rollout of the pandemic).
Once the Covid19 conditions allowed, Adam and Jude invited the Collective to do some location scouting in their home towns and further afield. Towns with a nearby body of water being the main practical consideration for this piece.
The Collective members came up with different locations and devised their own maps, highlighting interesting features of their area. With local knowledge they fed ideas into many of the creative elements that will end up in the final show.
These included news reports, set design, crowd interactions and environmental issues that are highlighted within the theatre piece.
The Fort Lagoon team visited the region to gain an understanding of our area and the challenges that exist in putting on a large scale theatre event. During the few days spent in Chatteris, March, Brandon and Mildenhall, the team got to test out the mobile phone app that will act as a device for audience members to navigate the game.
They also went for a spot of wild swimming and tested the new choral parts with the Cant Sing Choir in March. Having that time to test out elements of the show was extremely valuable and having the time to explore the spaces meant that the piece can be influenced by the landscape and the people in those areas.
The team got a lot of inspiration from the décor at Johnsons of Old Hurst Tropical House near Chatteris, (marred only slightly by Jude dropping her phone into the crocodile enclosure). Residents of Mildenhall were calling out supportive comments as the gang tested swimming in their local river and Brandon’s Market Square was buzzing with activity. Many people chatting in the square wanted to know more about the project and how they could get involved.
Submersion Productions now plan to secure funding to present the piece in summer 2023 in the area and all our fingers are crossed and watch this space!
In the Autumn of 2020 photographer, Mercedes Rollason, had an idea.
To present a positive, colourful and flamboyant portrait of the LGBTQ community living in Fenland and Cambridgeshire.
However, at the end of 2020, it became obvious that this concept was not going to happen quite as planned. Why? Mercedes discovered an LGBTQ+ community feeling disheartened, isolated and not enthusiastic about living in Fenland.
Mercedes discussed the project with Creative Agent Colin and together they explored how it might continue. People were not feeling positive enough to show themselves publicly in photographic portraits. What if Mercedes could interview them and combine their words with a visual portrait of the landscape around them?
Mercedes pushed forward and the result is a stunning and moving collection of quotes and photographs that the reveal the lives of individuals living in Fenland.
For February 2022 the photographs were displayed in March Library (Ely also requested a display and presented it at their main doors). Mercedes did see a big shift in the attitude and spirit of those she interviewed in December and January 2021. She said at the time:
“Coming out of lockdown really does seem to have put some positivity back in people’s lives. Isolation can be an overwhelming situation. The LGBTQ community was already feeling isolated so the pandemic just reinforced that feeling. Something changed around April. Colour seemed to return”.
If confidence can grow we would love people to contact us about photography and other artforms that might explore and reflect the realities of living in the Fenland LGBTQ+ community.
It was a shock. I lost all my arts in education work and income overnight. At first, I pretty much panicked in that I applied for any work, anywhere with a sense of dread that I would end up having to leave behind a creative life I had spent so many years trying to put together. At the same time, suddenly there was a space which I couldn’t negotiate productively. I would have loved to have used the time that opened up before me creatively, but I was too anxious about money. And then I benefitted from an emergency grant from the Arts Council. I was so grateful and promised to use my time well, even as I disinfected everything in sight, even as I limited going out to an early morning gallop with the dog, even as I stressed about my keyworker daughter exposed to the public.
Developing Ideas
Gradually, my heartbeat slowed, and I began to think and write again – in that gloriously beautiful weather in the first year. I sealed off the world and zoomed. It has made me think of hybrid theatre forms and I have discovered the potential for intimacy, as well as theatre’s wider online reach, but still, a year on the yearning for the energy of live performance is very strong.
I count myself lucky. I was commissioned to write a play with funding put in place before the pandemic. It was a stop start experience for the theatre company – even as auditions, and script read throughs were held and rehearsals began, they were postponed, the project settling into a waiting time as theatres closed and new variants emerged and made being together impossible. I think we learnt patience this year.
There are limitations to not being in the same room. Part of my working life is spent in a writers’ room with two other scriptwriters where we develop television and radio drama. It is a crucible where we hammer out a series, it is so much harder to interrupt each other passionately, the creative energy is missing in action. We adapt but it is not evolution.
Belona Greenwood’s book The Flying Shop of Imagination, is full of inspiring ideas to get children writing and inventing.
Final Thoughts
It is a year since I have spent time in a school with real, 3D children. Delivering an arts project to six-year-olds for a day in maverick weather this week was brilliant. A real return. But I cannot forget. We all carry a sorrow for the suffering of then and now. I cannot but believe that as artists we are in a fragile peace, we live in uncertainty and with that there is a challenge. Out of chaos comes creation.
