We have made the longlist! 

Our project “A Different LENS” has been selected for the second round of the Digital Culture Awards in the Digital Storytelling category and we want to say thank you to all who have contributed to Thread and Word throughout 2020/2021. 

We are longlisted in the Digital Storytelling section:

"Use of digital for impactful storytelling to engage audiences. Achieved by the use of one or several connected narratives across digital media platforms with a strong audience-focused voice and story."

We are in good company :

• Chinese Arts Now and Two Temple Place – CAN X Two Temple Place Digital Exhibition and Immersive Performance
• Dante or Die Theatre – User Not Found Video Podcast
• Everything is Music (A collaboration between Crack Magazine and Landmark) – Everything Is Music – a new location-based digital tour for mobile
• Extant – Flight Paths
• 
  Focal Point Gallery and South Essex Homes – Contemporary Elders: Digital Connectivity
• Horniman Museum and Gardens – Afro Historyscapes
• M&C Saatchi x The Commonwealth War Graves Commission – CWGC – War Graves Week
• Manchester International Festival – MIF21 Online
• Rural Media – Rural Media’s Point Of View Project
• The Margate Bookie – A Different LENS
• Wild Rumpus CIC – Sounds of the Forest

We are proud to be included with so many incredible organizations that we admire and look forward to celebrating with you all.

Our project A Different Lens 

This is a collaborative project by twelve artists who co-created an interactive walking digital map of Margate in 2020. Each artist was asked to choose an author who is blind or became visually impaired during their lifetime. The initial project brief asked the artists to respond through a story presented as walks. These are located in Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate, and Seasalter in Kent. You can connect with these through a geolocative map.

 The initial project brief design was to create walking experiences that might illustrate how storytelling makes the inaccessible accessible. You can access the map through this link. 

This link takes you to our web page and provides an introduction to the project.

The connection to locative media was initially designed to widen access to the walking experience to enable disabled artists to participate. However, the lockdowns caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic meant that the co-creative experience for all contributing artists shifted from being a hybrid experience to a completely digital one.   

Our artists:

Virginia Fitch

James Frost

Phoebe McIndoe

Clare Jackson

Amy Johnson

Amanda Jones

Diana Lane

William Lewis

Jack Lowe

Sonia Overall

Elspeth Penfold

Sara Trillo

Catch up with Bookie events here:Margate Bookie

At Thread and Word, we acknowledge the sustaining impetus of creativity and the renewed interest in the health benefits of walking throughout the challenges of 2020/2021. 

We are grateful for our partnership with Margate Bookie.   

We were at The Ageless Thanet futures Fair last week.

Throughout lockdown, opening up and locking down again Thread and Word artists have been working hard in partnership with The Margate Bookie. 

It has been a rollercoaster ride for us all, and sadly it's not over yet. However, creativity and community projects have sustained us and will keep on doing so. 

Thank you for supporting us!

A Digital Box Set of Creative Walks by Thread and Word

 A Refracted View Workshops to be delivered by Thread and Word at EKM Scrapstore Ramsgate.

 

Thread and Word Walking Events is grateful to have received a micro-grant from Creative Lives. This support is helping us to develop our work for A Refracted View.

For more about this project please visit: https://linktr.ee/ThreadandWord

Through this funding, we are offering  3x workshops at The Scrapstore @EKM in Ramsgate. The funding for the workshops will cover materials from the ScrapStore for up to 10 people.

We will hold these workshops in time for the Margate NOW festival on the 26^th of September where we will be hosting a walk from Arcades to Arcadia with Billie Penfold (Thread and Word) and other artists. The walk will take place, from Margate Station, it includes a walk-through exhibition at The Nayland Rock Hotel before continuing to the sunken gardens in Westbrook. The walk is free but pre-booking is required through: www.margatenow.co.uk 

During the workshops, the participants will be supported to make items for the walk and exhibition: Details of the workshops will follow shortly.

By holding these workshops we hope to bring to life the walking cards and encourage participants to come along to the walk and exhibition. 

After the workshops, we will explore the viewfinders and walking cards in various walking groups for GOLD members. Participants in the workshops will be the ‘experts’ in A Refracted View and can share their insight with their peers.  

You can see a short introduction to our Walking Cards here :

        

   

A   Refracted  View                  

This is a project sharing local stories for The Margate Bookie as part of Estuary 2021.

Our focus is sustainability, environmental and social. Our project's ambition is to enact creative practices that move accessibility beyond how people navigate space and to recognise that universal access gives us a strong aesthetic that enriches all of our lives.

Local artists and the members of the Scrap Store @EKM, in Ramsgate, will co-create experiences that engage with their immediate surroundings. We will consider where we live, how we live and how we might live. These stories will be brought to life through A Refracted View.

So, why refracted? 

An image becomes refracted when light travelling in waves hits another medium, like water. This slows down its progress. Its natural inclination is to find the shortest route, diagonally through one medium to another which creates a different image. The most straightforward example of this is to half fill a glass with water and to stand a pencil in it, and then to look at it sideways. The pencil will appear fractured just above the waterline.

Our project, A Refracted View, presents different perspectives, new ways of looking at things. Our ambition is to disrupt socially constructed ideas of normality, excellence, and productivity.

How do we intend to do this?

We will trigger ideas using walking and thinking through craft. We will share our plans with you through regular podcasts. 

We hope to tinker with our imaginations to create new approaches by working together and engaging with our environment. Our materials will be people ( our artists and the East Kent Mencap members), places (Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Canterbury, Whitstable and Tankerton) and their stories crafted through a creative deck of walking prompts and flags signaling new directions and possibilities.

You can follow us and our podcast :

https://www.facebook.com/ThreadandWord

https://www.estuaryfestival.com/associated-programme.html

Our artists: Sharon Cavalier, Virginia Fitch, Amy Johnson, Diana Lane, Phoebe McIndoe, Sonia Overall, Elspeth Penfold.

 

 

A Different LENS: 

Terraqua

A Different LENS is a digital map. It uses locative media and literature to explore storytelling. Our materials are people, places, and stories. 

For Terraqua we are bringing you an exploration of estuary locations in Brazil and the UK. This will be uploaded onto our digital map A Different LENS in May 2021 as part of the associated program for Estuary Festival 2021. I am recording our storytelling through this blog and look forward to sharing our experiences with you.

Terraqua Co-creative estuary stories using locative media

Terraqua is a project delivered through Thread and Word a group led by the artist Elspeth ( Billie ) Penfold in Collaboration with the Brazilian artist Carlos Queiroz. The stories from Terraqua will be shared on the web app A Different LENS designed by Cgeomap.eu. You can find our map here:

A Different LENS

For Terraqua we will create new entries uploaded through A Different Lens. It is a collaboration between Kent-based artists and artists in Brazil ( Vitória ). Our co-creators from Brazil are artists and academics from UFES (Federal University of Espirito Santo (Brazil) / Razuras Geografias Marginals (linguagem poetic movimiento). They are responding to the environmental disaster/crime that occurred in 2015 in the city of Mariana (Minas Gerais). It destroyed all the marine life and the biodiversity of the river over almost 700km, reaching its estuary, which is in that city.

We will be supported in our storytelling by the Scrapstore in Ramsgate. Their members from EastKent Mencap will be part of the co-creation and will be making flags using recycled materials from the Scrapstore. These will be created through crafternoons organised by East Kent Mencap. We are hoping to hold a physical exhibition (Covid permitting) of the flags together with binaural recordings of stories contributed by authors who support The Margate Bookie. 

Our ambition is that through juxtaposition and layering, alternative stories and perspectives of the past, present, and future can be unearthed and exposed to a wide audience. We will create locative media experiences that ‘tinker with our locks, thereby putting our inner worlds in contact with the outer world’ (Lucy Frears) 

Terraqua is being created with the generous support of the Margate Bookie, The Work and Play Scrapstore East Kent Mencap with funding from Arts Council England.

You can follow Terraqua on Facebook : @Thread and Word

 

Let's Take a Moment

This soundscape with accompanying video introduction of a recorded workshop at Turner Contemporary during The Margate Bookie can be viewed In Your Living Room at The Wandsworth arts fringe if you follow this link:  Let's Take a Moment

During  Creativity and Well being week May 18th until May 24th 2020, I am delighted to offer a  box set of 100 signed limited edition prints at a special price of £25

Photography by Anna Bowman

A soundscape and an explanation

Soundscapes can transport the listener from one environment to another. Listening to a soundscape can calm the mind and encourage time for reflection. Let’s Take A Moment is a sound world reflection of a collection of poetry by Owen Lowery and sounds from a collaborative walk in Gravesend. It focuses specifically on the coast and shoreline from With the fisherwomen of Nairn to the Mediterranean horizon of Pathos Sunset.   The artist and composer Lucy Claire worked with sounds from the walk Let's Take a Moment , the shore, the harbour, the hissing and sucking of the shore, the heady buzz of insects and the rhythmical sploshes of oars moving in and out of the water to bring another dimension to Owen’s words and help transport the listener from one place to another. 

The Box Set 

‘Let’s Take a Moment’ is an A5 box-set of materials produced through a walking event which was part of Arts and Minds a festival in Gravesend, Kent in 2019.  The lid of the box has a QR code printed on it. This links to a soundscape of the walk which can be listened to on iCloud. Inside the box are materials to interact with as you listen to the soundscape of the walk. These include a palo Santo incense stick, a rope to knot meditatively while listening, a copy of a performance of a sermon enacted during the walk, and a set of cards with listening activities.

                                                                             

Contact details: Elspeth (Billie) Penfold

 elspethpenfold@yahoo.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/ThreadandWord/

https://twitter.com/elspethpenfold

https://www.instagram.com/elspethpenfold/?hl=en

http://www.elspeth-billie-penfold.com