Latest News and Information
Folk tales with a difference at NMMC!
We're delighted to announce a new musical shadow show, commissioned by the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth to coincide with this October's half term holiday for 2024.
With a special focus on local maritime folk tales, the new show is being created by C'sh, Coz and Reg of ARTiculate, and brings the usual intricate, evocative and funny shadow puppetry to audiences, alongside brand new original music written specially for the shows by the team.
This year, which is our third residency at the Museum in as many years, will run over nine days covering the entire half term break, offering visitors far more chances to enjoy the shows, which take place several times during each day during Museum opening hours.
Do check again here for full details of show times and up-to-date admission information nearer the time!
Island Light Schedule at a glance:
UPDATED!!!
FREE festival events hosted by ARTiculate at Old Town Inn, St Mary’s, Scilly
***Delayed flights on Thursday, arriving Friday afternoon, so slightly later start to festival:
FRI 16 FEB
1.30-4.30pm: Memory Café Tea Treat with quizzes and with music from the show if we get there in time!
6pm-7pm: Sirens & WI music/making workshop
8pm-late: Open Mic/Open Stage... all welcome!
SAT 17 FEB
9.30-11 am: Brownies drop-in workshop - rearranged from Friday morning, your Brownie leader unable to be present so parents please stay to supervise your children!
11-1pm & 2-4pm: Drop-in open community arts & music workshops as per original plan
7pm: PIRATES! community show with 2025 preview/Q&A
SUN 18 FEB
3pm: Final PIRATES! community show
See you VERY SOON!!!
ARTiculate :) x
Island Light Festival 2024!
26 Jan 2024
PIRATES! - the new show created by Reg Payn and C’sh & Coz Lee. You’ve heard stories of Captains Pugwash, Nemo, Hook, and Sparrow; but what of the real terrors of the high seas, in the golden age of piracy? Blackbeard, Anne Bonney, Calico Jack and Black Caesar, to name but a few… Join Mr Maggots, Blackbeard’s cook, to enjoy the shadowy swashbuckling half-truths behind the legends.
What really happened? Only Mr Maggots knows - ‘cause he was there!
TIMETABLE:
A special Memory Café Tea Treat, incorporating a PIRATES! show for elderly residents, will take place on Friday 16 Feb from 1.30pm-4.30pm. Attendance of the Memory Café show/event can be arranged via Jenny Byers as usual.
Friday 16 Feb’s group-specific workshops are for the Brownies from 10am-12 noon, and a singing & making workshop with the Scilly Sirens from 6pm-7pm. There’ll also be an Open Mic night on Friday 16 Feb - for everyone who wants to come and join in, or listen - from 8pm on in the Old Town Inn bar!
Two further free PIRATES! shows for all the community will be taking place on Saturday 17 Feb at 7pm, and again on Sunday 18 Feb at 3pm. Shows are FREE, but do arrive promptly to grab yourselves a seat!
Saturday evening’s show-goers will also get a cheeky preview of ARTiculate’s plans for 2025, some musical extras, and a Q&A chat with the team.
Saturday 17 Feb’s drop-in community arts & music workshops run from 11-1pm and 2-4pm, and are open to everyone. These include music with C’sh and Coz, shadows with Reg, and tall-ships with Laura! If you’re coming to Laura’s workshop, please bring along a large, clean, 2-litre plastic bottle (e.g. lemonade or Coke bottles) – and we’ll provide everything else!
Thanks so much to Old Town Inn for hosting, and to the COOP Community Fund, Isles of Scilly Steamship Co, Edward McDonald Trust & Mincarlo for their kind support!
A mini, fun-filled, three-day Island Light Festival for 2024... the PIRATES are coming!
29 Dec 2023
For three fun-filled festival days during the February half term 2024, our artists & musicians will be on the Islands to perform PIRATES!, our much-loved musical shadow show, originally commissioned by/for Cornwall's Maritime Museum; running music, shadow and art workshops with the community; and also offering a tantalising taste of the theme & music of the larger festival we're now hoping to fundraise for and run in 2025: The Sultan's Camel.
We're very grateful to The Co-op Community Fund, The Old Town Inn, Isles of Scilly Steamship Co, the Edward McDonald Trust and the Lishmans at Mincarlo for their kind and valued support of our smaller festival this year.
The Sultan's Camel and other Tales... new plans for ILF 2024
12 July 2023
Taking a new approach this year, at the festival's heart is a double bill of musical shadow-story tales, including The Sultan's Camel - a story originally created during a wonderful Five Islands School project some years ago, all about the actual Camel Rock on St Mary's.
Building as ever on the experiences of our previous festivals (this will be the seventh Island Light Festival we've run in 12 years), we are planning and offering a slightly different-shaped festival to previous years. In discussions with Islands Partnership and others, we are hoping to bring the musical shadow-story double bill to venues across the Islands, and offer a range of creative workshops alongside, including the possibility of creating and performing a community curtain-raiser.
More fundraising and all the festival and engagement details to follow soon; if you would like to support the Festival in any way, contribute to our funding, or simply wish to find out more, please do email us at contact[at]articulatecollective.com :)
PIRATES! Shadow Shows at the National Maritime Museum!
24 March 2023
The new show will be themed around the museum’s ‘PIRATES’ exhibition, which runs for most of the year from 31st March 2023.
More details to follow about the October show dates and times!
Shivery Timbers at Cornwall's Maritime Museum!
15 October 2022
Articulate artists Reg, C’sh & Coz have been commissioned by the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth to devise and perform a series of Halloween shadow puppet shows over the October half term, 24th to 28th October this year.
Suitable for all the family, and featuring five original songs, poems and a horde of hand-made shadow images, ‘Shivery Timbers’ takes the audience on a spooky voyage - encountering Pirates, sea monsters, ghosts, ghouls, skeletons and........sausages?!
Three shows take place daily over the five days, from the 24th to the 28th October inclusive, at 11am, 1pm and 3pm, in the main hall!
For full information go to www.nmmc.co.uk
Nature Journals: Schools For All Seasons
25 May 2022
We are delighted to have co-written and co-designed a brand new children's publication as part of the exciting Schools For All Seasons programme with Real Ideas.
The Schools For All Seasons Nature Journal is a 16-page creative learning journal for primary aged children, designed to increase wellbeing through closer engagement with nature and the seasons. Moving through gentle creative activities that get children noticing the nature on their doorsteps, whether they live in town or more rurally, the journal also supports and leads children through the Five Ways to Wellbeing from HeadStart Kernow.
Inspired by ARTiculate's Bird Passport - an original creative research & engagement tool we conceived for our Island Light Festival on Scilly in February, Sarah Waller of Real Ideas approached Laura Frances Martin from ARTiculate to co-design and co-write the new learning and wellbeing Journal tool for their wider Schools for All Seasons programme - delivered from April - July 2022 in collaboration with multiple partners & 12 participant primary/SEN school settings.
ARTiculate's own Bird Passports are also now on their second reprint, developing the themes of birds, migration and diversity, and connecting Year 4 pupils from St Teath in North Cornwall with the Year 4s of Five Islands Academy on Scilly, via Phase 2 of A Wider World!
Ships & Shadows in Camelford!
9 March 2022
We enjoyed a delightful week working with Camelford CP School, Camelford Town Council and Camelford Library on Ships & Shadows in the first few days of March - creating miniature tallships, designing story characters, and writing lines of lyrical poetry with Year 4 Crackington class, and with all their creations used in different ways for a special shadow story sharing on Saturday 5th March in Camelford Library.
The children's lyrical poetry lines were written into a special new story poem, One Day Upon A Stormy Sea, performed at our storytelling event; the characters they drew in class were turned into shadow puppets that were used to re-tell the story the children had been inspired by in class -The Skull & Crossbones, written by Reg Payn; and their fantastic willow, card & paper ship creations were on show during the event and on display in the Library for the whole of March!
Part of the St Piran's Day celebrations and the grand opening of the fantastic new young people's facilities in the town, our workshops and story sharing event were supported with kind thanks by the Welcome Back Fund, Camelford Town Council & Hall for Cornwall.
Celebrating A Wider World!
28 February 2022
Wow - what a festival it's been! We've been so inspired by birds, celebrating how migratory birds in particular connect us all and transcend imagined or political boundaries, at a time when humanity needs to be more connected rather than more divided.
Our event on Saturday 26th Feb was due to be a parade, but after high winds were forecast it took place instead in the Church, by kind permission of the Chaplaincy.
We celebrated with a church full of lanterns large and small, including our four biggest lanterns - created by the artists working with the secondary students - of four migratory birds: an Arctic Tern, a Swift, an Osprey, and even a Porthcressa duck - voted for by the Year 10 students in school!
With some beautiful words from Reg Payn, some beautiful songs from the Scilly Sirens choir, the Island Light Band and Wilderness, and the community joining in on our song 'The Call' - what a lovely and fitting close to our festival!
The culmination of two weeks of wonderful community and school activity, making some amazing willow and paper sculptures and also making music with our collaborators, Wilderness, we estimate that around 180 people came along to our event, and many more had worked over the two festival weeks to create beautiful sculptures of birds of all denominations, along with stars, whales - and even a dinosaur!
At the end we shared a beautiful celebratory cake created by Becky’s Scilly Cakes, with all the migratory birds on it in icing! The lower tier was shared on Saturday night along with a huge number of gorgeous cupcakes with all our main event attendees, and the top layer of the cake was shared out with the residents of Park House on Sunday and apparently was greatly appreciated!
With huge thanks to our funders and supporters who include Arts Council England, FEAST, IOS Chaplaincy, Five Islands Academy, IOS Steamship Co, The Edward McDonald Trust, IOS Council, Islands’ Partnership, IOS Police, St Mary’s Library, Co-op Community Fund, IOS Wildlife Trust and IOS Bird Group.
See the special project photo gallery below...
Island Light Festival 2022: A Wider World - our celebratory event plan
February 2022
After a fabulous week in school and another week of wonderful community workshops, we have reached our celebratory event day!
We have high winds forecast for this evening's event, so will be hosting an indoor event inside the Church, by kind permission of the Chaplaincy.
The times remain the same: gather from 6pm with your lanterns, or collect them between 6pm and 6.20pm from the Pavilion next door, for the event in the Church that begins at 6.30pm. Then please stay on for some celebratory (vegan) cake in the Pavilion Gardens afterwards!
See you there,
The ARTiculate team x
07971 412371 contact@articulatecollective.com
With huge thanks to Arts Council England, FEAST, The Edward McDonald Trust, Isles of Scilly Steamship Co, Five Islands Academy, Isles of Scilly Chaplaincy, St Mary's Library, IOS Police, Co-op Community Fund and Islands' Partnership for their kind support
Final run-up to our Island Light Festival 2022: A Wider World
January 2022
We're really delighted to be able to share our festival workshop and event details with you now, all taking place on the Isles of Scilly!
You can find all the practical details of the festival workshops, Five Islands Academy's themed school project week, and our grand parade, here - and do feel free to contact us direct if you would like extra information too.
Excitingly, we also have a wonderful team of young Creative Leaders from Five Islands Academy working with us this year to help plan, promote and deliver aspects of the festival - we will all be hearing from the group in various ways over the coming few weeks!
Lastly, we are seeking musicians from all walks of life, on the Islands or visiting them during February, to join us and Associate artists, Wilderness, to create the first Island Light Band! Please get in touch if that's YOU!
07971 412371 contact@articulatecollective.com
With huge thanks to Arts Council England, FEAST, The Edward McDonald Trust, Isles of Scilly Steamship Co, Five Islands Academy, Isles of Scilly Chaplaincy, St Mary's Library, IOS Police, Co-op Community Fund and Islands' Partnership for their kind support
Island Light Festival 2022: update
December 2021
Plans for our Island Light Festival 2022: 'A Wider World' on the Isles of Scilly in February are now moving on apace, thanks to a brilliant project recce in November. We met to begin work with the school team and community members, Scilly's Chaplain Perran, Librarian Linda and more; and we also had a special tour of the Museum on the Move and heard about the exciting plans for the building.
We're now really looking forward to February and will keep you posted about dates and details of all the community workshops and events as we firm them up - for now, SAVE THE DATES! School Project Week residency 14-18 February, community workshops 21-25 February, with our big processive music and illuminated event (COVID and Licences permitting) on Sat 26th February in the early evening. See you all soon! And have a warm and wonderful festive season meanwhile, with love from the ARTiculate team x
With huge thanks to Arts Council England, FEAST, The Edward McDonald Trust, Isles of Scilly Steamship Co, Five Islands Academy, Isles of Scilly Chaplaincy, St Mary's Library and Islands' Partnership for their support
'A Wider World': Island Light Festival 2022 is GO!
September 2021
We are thrilled to announce the Island Light Festival 2022: 'A Wider World' on the Isles of Scilly next February.
Thanks to successful funding bids to Arts Council England and FEAST, along with kind support from Isles of Scilly Steamship Co. Community Fund, The Edward McDonald Trust, Five Islands Academy, Isles of Scilly Chaplaincy, St Mary's Library and Islands' Partnership, this exciting new two-week illuminated arts & music festival will be the sixth biennial Festival, timed to bring light and warmth to one of the darkest times of the year on Scilly, and created in close collaboration with the school and community.
Springing from our ‘Words On The Wing’ lockdown project, which employed ‘migratory’ bird-themed arts and poetry to help alleviate isolation and connect people crestively during COVID, ‘A Wider World’ also celebrates how the migration of birds - and people - to the Isles and beyond, along with their stories, songs and cultures, can transcend imagined boundaries and help enrich & reconnect us all.
The two-week festival comprises schools and community workshops for everyone and a grand finale celebration on St Mary's on Saturday 26th February 2022; we will add more details here as we develop the detail, so please do come back again soon!
Welcoming new Associate Artists, Wilderness: Peter & Corine Lee
July 2021
We are delighted to announce our new Associate Artists, Wilderness - musicians Peter and Corine Lee.
Based in their own 24 track recording studio in North Cornwall, the accomplished musical duo are well known for their rich original catalogue of songwriting & performing since the 1990s, most recently as Ecomods and also in their new acoustic incarnation, Wilderness. They are "always on the lookout to create musical magic" - and, thanks to a creative collision of interests via ARTiculate's lockdown project, Words On The Wing, the pair have become increasingly involved in ARTiculate's artistic and project-based plans in recent months, and are helping us shape new magical musical strands across our projects. We are looking forward to sharing some gorgeous, musically-led outcomes when we can! More about them and their work meanwhile on our Artist page and via their website www.wildernessmusic.co.uk
Words On The Wing: round II
Following our Arts Council England-supported Words On The Wing migratory arts project in 2020, which travelled all over the globe from our local communities, we're delighted to be able to extend this activity, which is designed to help alleviate isolation and inspire bird-themed creativity, thanks to FEAST and Cornwall Community Foundation. If you'd like to get involved this time around, to receive a free art gift and/or to create an art gift to pass on to someone else, then please do get in touch! Just email your postal address, who's getting involved, and how many blank cards & stamps you'd like, to contact@articulatecollective.com
Support for A Wider World:
Inspired by some of the amazing outcomes of the first WOW project, and working with our partner communities in North Cornwall and on Scilly, we've been gently developing new strands of work under the umbrella of Words On The Wing: A Wider World. Schools & community music, creative writing and puppetry arts workshops would, COVID permitting, precede a small series of live, avian-inspired outdoor performance/installation events in both areas, or alternatively some filmed versions of the same to share online.
With support from Isles of Scilly Chaplaincy, Five Islands Academy, Islands' Partnership, St Mary's Library and North Cornwall Learning Cluster schools, as well as the increasing musical involvement of talented North Cornwall-based duo, Wilderness, we are hoping this project will bring our communities some much-needed creative joy.
Words On The Wing in Lockdown
August 2020
Arts Council England have been fantastic in supporting our wonderful new community arts lockdown project, 'Words On The Wing' this spring & summer as well as underpinning ARTiculate's development during 2020. Working chiefly across communities in North Cornwall, Penwith and the Isles of Scilly, #wordsonthewing has been helping to connect people, alleviating isolation and loneliness through sharing unique, bird-themed and bird-inspired migratory postal & shadow story arts, and encouraging people to not only receive an art gift, but to create and share their own work in turn. You can read more on the Words On The Wing page.
ARTiculate turns 10 in 2020!
May 2020
ARTiculate has been celebrating its 10th birthday in 2020! Originally formed in summer 2010 by five like-minded artists - who had already worked together across a range of festivals - in order to jointly generate and run exciting new community arts projects, the collective has since gone from strength to strength. We have worked with thousands of participants, and produced some specatular celebratory art, across a wonderful variety of projects and festivals. Here's to the next ten celebratory, creative years! Read about some of our community & celebratory projects here.
LIFE LIGHTS Island Light Festival, Isles of Scilly
March 2020
ARTiculate ran a wonderful Island Light festival on Scilly in February, supported by Arts Council England, FEAST, ISSC Community Fund, Innes Architects and the Five Islands Academy, that might just be the only illuminated festival to actually run as planned during 2020...
LIFE LIGHTS - the latest in a series of biannual Island Light festivals that ARTiculate have run on Scilly since 2012 - involved hundreds of Islanders on St Mary's and the off islands. Two full weeks of school and community arts workshops, including a gorgeous sharing of Project Week work at the Five Islands Academy on Feb 14th, culminated in a truly magical parade through the streets of Hugh Town, St Mary's on February 22nd, ending with a very special cake finale! The festival was celebrating the Islands' unique life preservation heritage, with some incredible and unforgettable themed portable and wearable light creations, including lighthouses, lifeboats, ships, buoys and more! Read more about this and our other Island Light festivals here.
