Hello, this is the first update from myself ( Megan Broadmeadow) and Julia Peat. We are the two artists who are working to produce the ‘Night Garden’ event in Anderton Nature Park on the 4th of October.
Firstly we just have to say how excited and honoured we are to be producing the event. We have met some lovely people though workshops and research, and every time we visit the nature park we come away inspired!
We are two friends based in North Wales who are lucky enough to be able to work together to produce art and performances for various exhibitions and events across the country. We have a strong interest in producing work for the great outdoors and try to make work that reflects the history and people from the local area, with an emphasis on finding out and reflecting on personal and sometimes obscure stories!
So the story so far with ‘Night Garden’ is that we have been doing our research, and along the way becoming obsessed with salt, factories, birds and bats!
We have held two creative writing and art workshops in the park itself with members of the public, and are going to use the results from these sessions in the actual event…although we don’t wish to say exactly how as we want it to be a surprise!
We have also visited the salt museum, Lion Salt works, and been given a guided tour of the Brunner Mond factory which is opposite the park. The factory visit was the highlight of our year- it was fascinating! We took about 300 photos each, and got some great sound recordings. The people from the factory have been most helpful and have invited us back to get blocks of *limeish material for us to carve. * (despite the enjoyment of the visit I am afraid I cannot remember the technical names hence ‘limeish’)
We have also met a keen local musician Chris Hardy who has agreed to help us create some original live sounds for the event, we think his piece will be pretty special and are very thankful for his commitment to the project.
We have also been on guided walks of the park with bird and bat experts Alan Garner and Paul Hill. We are most grateful for their advice and help. In fact we spent last Saturday night in Northwich- not in a nightclub though- we were listening and recording the extraordinary sounds of bats!
We are now coming to the end of the research, we are bursting with ideas, and ready to get making and building our artworks… we don’t want to give too much away, but will be posting snippets of material from the workshops, and photographs from along the way.
That’s all for now, we will keep you posted!
Megan and Julia
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