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 :

        

   

 Thank you for walking with us Owen Lowery (1968 - 2021)

 

A photo sent by Owen for A Walk with Shrines. Our thoughts are with his wife Jayne at this sad time.

It is with great sadness that I share this piece made with Owen for A Refracted View. Owen has contributed through Thread and Word to our film A Walk with Shrines, the soundscapes Are You Listening and The Listening Post for The  Margate Bookie and Let’s Take a Moment the soundscape for Arts and Minds with Sound Uk and the  LV21. He sent me some wonderful poetry recordings for our latest project @a_refracted_view_ and we made this video. You will be sorely missed Owen but we will continue to love and share your work. Thank you for making our lives a little brighter. 

This publication is made out of public concerns, expressions of grieves, and sympathy. ”We’re saddened to hear of the death of much-loved poet Owen Lowery on Friday 14th May 2021. We’ve published two of Owen’s collections: Otherwise Unchanged in 2010 and Rego Retold in 2015. A third, The Crash Wake Poems, is forthcoming in Autumn 2021…....” @Carcanet  announced the passing of Lowery on social media on 17th, May 2021.

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.

 

 Terraqua : River story postings 

'The mind assembles experiences and constructs stories from them" 

As we prepare for  Terraqua I was looking ahead and reminded of The Terminalia Festival 2018. 

Where the land meets the sea........

Each year as part of Terminalia we celebrate the roman god of boundaries Terminus. I thought it would be fun to share these images of our 2018 celebration when a group of us walked with Thread and Word.

We experimented with a little mud walking led by Kate Monson, as we walked. to the boundary of where you can dig for bait at low tide in Seasalter.                     

                            

We walked, knotted ropes, and shared a moment in time.

                                                  and where the sea meets the land ......

 Terraqua creating stories from the riverbed.

 

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

 

"SOPLO"

An introduction to The Supercluster Fire-pit and my first experience as a Fire-Keeper

I was invited by Fred Adam , Geert Vermeire and Stephanie Whitelaw to become a fire-keeper around the supercluster fire-pit last Friday evening. 

Image Fred Adam

The plan is to bring together friends and contributors to the Earthlings Summer School hosted at Kings College last July and to keep the fire of those encounters burning and, hopefully, create new experiences, exchanges and encounters. A school reunion if you like but with additional elements. These can all be found in the fire-keepers guide. I decided to write this and describe my experience as I really wanted to record my first visit to the campfire.

This was my gratitude from the Earth  

B. Fasicularia , an Andean plant 

My gratitude : Sometimes we don't see or appreciate what is in front of us.

I had been walking around looking and thinking about what I would bring as my earth totem and I suddenly realised that it was there right in front of my eyes. It was outside my studio door and yet I was spending my time looking for it on walks elsewhere. I think it found me.... This happened last Tuesday ....I have had this plant from Chile for the last four years and it did this. You could easily miss it as it is tucked inside the grasses. It is alchemy as the green colour of the foliage has been transformed to a bright hue with blueish edging. I am wondering if it was the heat of the sun this summer.

with gratitude to Fred Adam for introducing my fasicularia into the campfire

My topic: was to reference Cecilia Vicuña's small sculptures titled Precarios.  Cecilia Vicuña has developed her practice of making precarios these are small scuptural pieces of collected found fragments which develop into a broader conversation about political struggle, the displacement and erasure of indigenous people in a time of increasing globalism, and the alarming, ever more apparent effects of climate change on the natural world. 

 I then invited us around the campfire to engage in making some playful sculptural pieces from found objects. I suggested we should use  SON QON, this is a quechua word meaning the energy of the heart, to guide us as we look around us for the overlooked. 

We then introduced these to each other ending with a  "soplo" a soft sound a whisper if you like that might represent the pieces we made.

I am interested in indigenous practices, poetry , weaving and storytelling and I do believe that by re-visiting ancient practices we can re-imagine how we relate to the earth, to each other and perhaps re-imagine how we would like to engage with the wider world. I am really enthused and interested to see where these meetings might lead us to next.

In the meantime you might like to check out this event next Tuesday which is free and, I think , very connected to some of the ideas associated with our fire-pit actions :

Open School East

Mapping : Locative media +Literature .

Here some Saturday fun for those of you who like puzzles. Check out our map A Different LENS, linked below.

1. Link authors to places listed in this image

2. See if you can work out the locations of the artworks using Lat.and long. ( also Maps)

https://cgeomap.eu/adifferentlens/

 Have a fab Saturday. Brought to you courtesy of @margatefestival @margatebookie @peopledemcollective