PERFORMANCE
Final Performance
The Encounters’ Shop at the Gallery, Dartington
In April 2011, Encounter’s shop at the Gallery on the Dartington Estate culminated in a day of multi-media verbatim performances. Each performance included a selection of the past reflections, present feelings and future aspirations gathered from over 800 people who had been through the shop over the preceding two months.
Five performances over the 13th April were presented to staff, shop visitors, volunteers and estate visitors to share a rich and diverse snapshot of Dartington at this moment of transition and change.
“Fantastic delivery of a kaleidoscope of memories, feelings, attitudes. The therapeutic scene evoked a sense of ritual for community expression and healing. The real completion of healing will come through the trusts listening and reaching out as suggested in this piece”
A Little Patch of Ground
Background
A Little Patch of ground is a growing and performance project that began its life in Liverpool in 2009 at the Bluecoat as part of Liverpools flagship creative communities programme, Four Corners. 2010 brought Patch to Yorkshire in a collaboration with darts in Doncaster funded by The Arts Council. In 2011 Patch will be seen in London. Patch has been devised by Encounters Creative Director Ruth Ben-Tovim with Associate Artist Anne¨CMarie Culhane.
2010 A Little Patch of Ground Yorkshire, at The Point, home of dArts
Project Process
Participants were recruited from across Doncaster by dArts and this intergenerational group of local residents met every Thursday evening for 12 weeks. since April. To mark the beginning of the project each participant was asked to bring a bag of soil from their own neighbourhood and we combined this soil together to provide the foundations for our collective vegetable patch. Summer Veg of all kinds were planted in a range of unusual and unexpected containers and the group developed new skills as they nurtured the garden, and fed the worms in the wormery. Each week participants, armed with a small budget, prepared meals to share and as the veg grew the group strengthened. Issues relating to sustainability, food, climate change and interdependency were explored through the watching of short films, through the honest sharing of fears about the world and ideal versions of the future and through imagined letters from descendants. The sharing of personal stories about moments of connection in nature, special places outdoors, and treasured natural objects were at core of the weekly experience.
Click for images and more infomation about the Vegetable growing process and Group creative process.
Performance
In the last weeks of the project these shared experiences were pulled together into a multi media performance. We explored different creative ways of translating this transformative personal process into a public event that could be shared with others. Equipped with new knowledge of growing and plants, new awareness of nature and our interdependence, new creative skills, confidence and resilience, the participants will take this unique experience back to their own lives and neighbourhoods as A Little Patch of Ground ripples out.
A Little Patch of Ground - Performance Running Order
INTRODUCTIONS
SECTION ONE - GRATITUDE
I am
Special places
Stories of connection
I am
I see
Nature Objects
Anyone who's
SECTION TWO - DESPAIR
Why Didn't you?
Whats it like to Live Now?
SECTION THREE - SEEING WITH NEW EYES
Letters from the future
Human nature: Nature human
SECTION FOUR - GOING FORTH
Seeds for the future
Compost
Human Nature, Nature Human
Stories of connection
Despair
Letters from the Future
Stories of connection
Nature Objects
Accompanying A Little Patch of Ground was Seeing With New Eyes, a day of Practical Living workshops, films, and participatory engagement activities.
Practical Living workshop: Wild Food
Transition and Climate change films
Book Corner
Drop In Participatory engagement activities
Practial Living workshop: permaculture
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What's the Spirit of Dewsbury?
Encounters' Shop in Dewsbury June 2010
In June 2010, Encounters' Ruth Ben-Tovim directed a performance of What's the Spirit of Dewsbury? at the culmination of our residency in the Encounters' Shop in Dewsbury. This verbatim performance of some of the past reflections, present feelings, and future aspirations gathered from almost 4,000 people of Dewsbury during our residency in the shop were brought to life by two Dewsbury performers.
Six performances of What's the Spirit of Dewsbury? were presented to Kirklees service providers, shop visitors and other stakeholders, either on its own or as part of wider presentations on public engagement, regeneration of the town centre and place-making.
Images of An Evening with Encounters, at the Encounters Shop on 9th June 2010, comprising a performance of What's the Spirit of Dewsbury?, a presentation of Encounters' findings and insights from our residency at the shop, a presentation on place-making by international place-making researcher Phil Wood, and a facilitated dialogue between audience members around perceptions, identity and difference:
Photography: Richard Brown
A Little Patch of Ground
Liverpool 2009
A Little Patch of Ground was a performance and growing project that brought together a new intergenerational group of residents age 6¨C84 from across the four corners of Liverpool, to create a unique performance that explored, unearthed and told stories of the relationships people develop with each other, with where they live and with the wider natural world around them.
Samples of soil, plant life and edible produce as well as samples of personal stories, images, ideas, and experiences were cross fertilised during the project that ran from May-July 09, key growing months in the natural calendar. We used photography and film, writing and drama, collecting, cooking and planting during the project.
The performance, premiered at the Bluecoat, served up and shared in full bloom the new varieties and combinations that emerged from the interaction between this unique gathering of people, where they live and the wider natural world around them.
View images of A Little Patch of Ground in Liverpool
Be My Guest
Liverpool 2008
Be My Guest formed part of the Four Corners Exhibition, a citywide creative neighbourhood's project supported by Liverpool Capital of Culture at the Bluecoat Art Gallery in Liverpool. The project resulted in a performance which told the story of groups of residents from across South Liverpool who volunteered to become Be My Guest Hosts, organising unique community events in their homes, social clubs, or community centres. Hosts gathered friends, family and neighbours together to witness an intimate multi¨Cmedia performance of stories and imagery collected from and inspired by the people of South Liverpool. As well as taking place in the Hosts chosen venues, performances were held in the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool. The performance, directed by Ruth Ben-Tovim, featured actor Paul Duckworth and audio visuals by artist Sam Meech and was divided into six sections each based on a different universal theme of everyday life; place, hurt, love, home, how it used to be, celebration.
View images of the Be My Guest performance
Sharrow Stories
Sheffield Studio
Thurs 14 - Sat 16 June 2007
Following their residency in the Crucible shop, Encounters returned
with Sharrow Stories, a unique one-off interactive performance
event that brought together Sharrow residents of all ages, four
professional performers and a team of young people who acted as guides.
From 2003-2005 Encounters took over three disused shops in the
diverse neighbourhood of Sharrow, Sheffield, opening the shop
to
Visitors. The performance event was inspired by the hundreds
of stories, memories, journeys, objects and images which visitors
left in the shops. With the seats taken out of the Studio, the
audience were invited to move around the space, witnessing
events and making decisions about what stories they wanted to
hear.
Click here to see images of the performance.
‘Encounters take art directly into the public so that
‘the public’ becomes all aspects of the work, providing
content, direction and audience simultaneously’ G
Robertson, Art Historian, Humbolt State University, USA
‘An outstanding demonstration of the force of ordinary
things, which is so easy to say but so hard to make vivid and
convincing’ Emily Campbell: Curator British Pavilion,
X Venice Biennale of Architecture (the shop collections were
part of Echo/City in the 2006 British exhibition)
‘Encounters let the flow of material come from the
local tap and changed the landscape’ A Deadman, Sharrow
Festival
Click here to find out more about the shop projects in general, and here for information about the residency at the Crucible Theatre.