Brace! Brace! Brace!

That eye catching title has hopefully lured you in. And now, let me explain. There's a lot to tell, so brace yourselves. We've had a very busy month! Also, I have just noticed that we've had well over 600 page views to our humble blog, so I'm feeling rather pleased that these words are not just being lost in the ether, but that someone somewhere might be having a little read. So without further ado...

What happened?

Since we last posted, some rather brilliant things have happened. Firstly, we found out that we had got our full Arts Council funding. Secondly, our Sponsume campaign surpassed all our hopes and with all that wonderful support we went just over our target. And thirdly, the project has just got underway. I know I've said this before, but the support we have received in getting this thing off the ground continues to humble and astound us. Thank you all so much.

But it's not all been about The Story Exchange, as Chloe and I recently spent a wonderful week in Dartington, supported by the Immerse programme. It was the start of Lines of Sight, a
collaboration with Chris Jones, and we spent the week sewing the first seeds of our idea and watching them grow a little bit. In brief, our week involved lots of walking, pinhole cameras, paint charts, camera obscura and drain pipes. Here are a few thoughts and images that we gathered along the way.

Sometimes we walked together, all three. Sometimes in pairs. Sometimes we walked hand in hand.

Sometime we talked complete crap. Sometimes it was profound. 

Often, it wasn’t.

We went to the Leechwell, where in centuries past lepers came to be healed. We left a token there. I didn’t see the white witch filling her empty coke bottle with spring water.

We saw a donkey with a skin complaint, an alleyway that had once teemed with frogs, a blackbird bathing in a puddle, Ash House, which had been renamed HASH house with one added letter.

We took some things. We took Vicky’s dog Jess, but when she was younger. We forgot Jess a lot. Sometimes we remembered and threw sticks for her. Sometimes we forgot her, and when someone else asked we pretended we had thrown sticks for her.

We took a paint chart made by English Heritage called 'Colours of England'.

Sometimes we played God and we moved millennia, one volcanic slate at a time down a deep lane.

Sometimes we left clues for one another, arrows made of twigs, notes, dandelion shrines, a glove holding a flower. 

Once we walked blind, with one seeing person leading, and we saw the journey in our minds eye. Sometimes we were so dizzy it felt that we were falling off the face of the earth.

I drew you a map….

What's happening?

The project is finally underway- in fact, we are nearly at the end of phase one- DESIGN. The lovely people at Kaleider have been supporting us right from the very beginning, and they very generously funded our dream space- three days in a creative space dreaming up ideas for the new barrow with our designer Sophia Clist, our maker Richard Pulman and our Production Assistant, Jemma Cholawo. And, just in case you were wondering, this is what three days in two different rooms with 6 artists, a lot of cardboard and two glue guns looks like....

 We don't want to give too much away, but suffice to say that we do have a new design, and as I type, the marvellous Sophia Clist is making a model, incorporating all the weird and wonderful things we have been playing with over the last two weeks. We are so fortunate to have such a lovely team working with us on this and with one more production meeting to go before the BUILD phase starts, we are feeling very very excited indeed.

But that's not all, oh no, because this past week has been a week of firsts, with our first tour date and our first Story Exchange workshop. So last Monday we popped off to Salisbury to open Theatre Fest West, with the help of an army of new recruits. Members of the Playhouse youth and Senior Theatre groups joined us for a fantastic two hour workshop, where characters were created, flash mobs were dreamed up and many great games were played, before we all hit the streets to inspire some creativity on a very rainy, grey Monday. We were so impressed by our workshop participants, they were absolutely up for everything we threw at them.

What on earth is going to happen next?

We have loads more coming up, including our launch party on 31st May for all our supporters where the new barrow shall finally be revealed. Then we will be starting our PLAY phase where we will be developing new work for different spaces and for our community workshops (we will also be inviting Kilter Theatre down to run a workshop for us). And of course, we have a busy summer of touring ahead, so if you would like to catch us in action, here is where you can find us.

• 25th May Exmouth Festival
• 26th May Braunton Fair
• 31st May Family Saturday Exeter Phoenix
• 4-7th June Ignite, Exeter Library
• 14th June Lord Mayors Party, Birmingham City Centre
• 15th June Fuse Festival, Kent
• 20th-21st June Barnstaple Fringe
• 6th July Cornbury Festival, Oxfordshire
• 18th-20th Larmerr Tree, Devon (TBC)
• 30th and 31st August Mint Fest, Kendal

There, I do believe that's about it. Hope you're enjoying a bit of sunshine wherever you are.