We were joined by the public at Brandon Country Park to celebrate the opening of the new performance space – the FireCrest Theatre. The space was made possible through a collaboration between Brandon Creative Forum, Brandon Country Park and MarketPlace, working alongside an incredible team of volunteers led by Mike Willett who worked to bring this vision to life.
We all celebrated the new space in style in the afternoon sun, with live music, poetry, storytelling and singing.
Local artist Flaming June, (led by marvellous our Creative Producer Louise Eatock) kicked off the afternoon. They performed a number of original songs which resonated beautifully within the space, showcasing the impressive acoustics that the venue offers.
Claire Sawford, Programme Manager at MarketPlace, opened up the rest of the performances by saying a few words. She spoke about MarketPlace’s work with local communities in Forest Heath (and Fenland) to help develop and support innovative and fun creative experiences.
She went on to give a big thanks to everyone involved in creating the FireCrest Theatre including: Jill, Mike, members and volunteers at Brandon Creative Forum; Head Ranger Sarah Austin and Jackie, Paula and Malcolm and their volunteer helpers at the Country Park; West Suffolk Council for permission to create this space; and Louise Eatock AKA Flaming June, MarketPlace lead on this project.
Claire said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be a part of this great project which encourages people to come to such a beautiful spot and get creative in nature.”
Brandon Poetry Group stepped into the performance space next. They read from ‘Lovely as a Tree: Poems of the Forest‘ which was created from a recent poetry writing workshop with Melinda Appleby earlier this year. One poem ‘Plum Tree’ was written about the poet’s neighbour, who spent hours stewing the fruit from a plum tree while her husband was recovering from illness.
Celtic Essence performed by Diane Jackman Plum Tree performed by Rosemary Appleton
The mic was handed back to Louise who wrapped up the day by thanking everyone involved, the performers and the members of the public who came to give their support.
What a great addition for the Brandon community. We look forward to witnessing the performances and experiences that will take place in this remarkable space in the future!
Get ready for the grand opening of the new performance space at Brandon Country Park. The brand-new performance space is a result of a collaboration between Brandon Creative Forum and MarketPlace, and is soon to be opening its doors. Join us on Saturday 29 July from 2 to 4:30pm, as we celebrate the new space in style with live music from local artist Flaming June (AKA our Creative Producer, Louise!). Plus poetry, storytelling and more.
We’ve been hard at work alongside Brandon Creative Forum and the dedicated volunteers from Brandon Country Park, digging foundations and preparing the space. Leading the project are Mike Willett and Jill Blanchard of Brandon Creative Forum, with an incredible team of volunteers supporting them every step of the way. The performance space was skillfully designed by Mike, who is a retired engineer.
Brandon Creative Forum is part of the creative collective, established in the first phase of MarketPlace. They are composed of individuals and volunteers from local community groups. Back in Autumn 2022, they approached MarketPlace with their idea for the performance area. They have delivered some wonderful projects over the past few years including Ferry Tales, Tails and Trails as well as stained glass window and lantern projects around Brandon. Brandon Creative Forum hope that the space will prove to be a valuable asset and are looking forward to seeing how it grows within the community.
In the future, this space will be available for hire, opening up even more creative opportunities for the area. Exciting times lie ahead, so mark your calendars and get ready to celebrate with us!
This case study is part of our project evaluation for Phase 2
In October 2020, artist Genevieve Rudd responded to the MarketPlace commissioning process of Creative Conversations in Lockdown with the idea of a workshop that would connect people, using creative activities to explore their local environment on their daily Lockdown walks. We developed the project in collaboration with Brandon Creative Forum and community members to become a digital guided creative walk.
In 2020, Genevieve had pivoted to Zoom group creative sessions during the first lockdown but had never undertaken a blended distance engagement approach to facilitate creative experiences. Enabling connection for groups unable to meet due to national restrictions and responding to a national trend of residents exploring their hyper-local natural landscape, this concept met the self-identified needs of local community groups that MarketPlace had been working with. The Creative Agents wanted to find ways to unlock doorstep curiosity creatively whilst enabling community groups to remain connected during the national restrictions.
Testing and trialling with community members who show a willingness to try something creates the potential for new advocates to learn and ensure that the ideas work before rolling out to wider, more cautious community members.
The Walk ’n’ Craft Group, based in Mildenhall, and the Can’t Sing Choir, based in March, participated in timed socially distanced (in line with the government restrictions at the time) group creative walks that were led by Genevieve using WhatsApp to send prompts.
Pictured: Left: Environmental artist, Genevieve Rudd sits on a tree stump, surrounded by the lush greens of Brandon Country Park woodland.Right: Genevieve’s mark-making drawing.
This case study is part of our project evaluation for Phase 2
Brandon Creative Forum is a community group established in the first phase of MarketPlace, delivering their first event in 2016. With MarketPlace support they have organised 4 local festivals with Tales and Trails 2019 their largest to date. We have supported them to continue local activities as far as possible through the pandemic, with all its challenges, and they are still growing from strength to strength.
In 2019 the group had no ambitions or desire to become a constituted group: they aspired to develop a central hub for cultural activity, enable the community to think about Brandon positively and organise events for everyone to access. At this stage, the group of 4 core leaders universally identified a desire to develop skills in commissioning and to consolidate their learning to date.
Throughout the pandemic, MarketPlace supported the forum and their wider community interest groups to remain connected, develop digital skills, and participate in shortlisting, commissioning, and testing new projects ideas.
Two members of the forum are also members of the Creative Collective. This enabled the group to identify learning from other towns and recognise their skills and achievements whilst participating in commissioning, shortlisting, and interviewing commissions.
“We still need youngsters to come in with us on the forum. And we are working on that, but it’s such a strange town. But having talked to Wisbech as part of the Creative Collective we can see that their problems are the same as our problems and then we could work out a solution together from that.” – Jill, Blanchard Brandon Creative Forum
Through remote working and digital connectivity with MarketPlace, the forum became more embedded in the team’s processes. It started to identify the community’s needs in the face of the pandemic, beyond activities and events for enjoyment.
By August 2020, the group took steps to become constituted and, in 2021, challenged what their perceptions of a central hub could and should look like by taking on a market stall to begin to reach wider communities.
Pictured: Left: Brandon Creative Forum member Jill Blanchard chatting to Brandon residents at the ‘See You Soon’ stall at the market. Right: Members of Brandon Creative Forum meet at Brandon Country Park to assess the area for the Walking Companions podcast project.
On Thursday 10th and Friday 11th June 2021, I had the pleasure of accompanying the team behind the immersive theatre game Escape from Fort Lagoon, by Adam McGuigan (Wake the Beast) and Jude Jagger (Submersion Productions), around several towns in West Suffolk and Fenland. They were scouting out possible locations where they could produce their water-based immersive theatre game experience as part of their Research & Development. Alongside this, they were testing out an app which audience members would use during the performance, experimenting with original songs with a choir and meeting lots of local people who would be able to advise and assist them on this journey.
We started in Brandon and were guided around the town and their local riverside walk by members of Brandon Creative Forum who had some valuable insights into the town and the people who populate it. As the company would need access to a body of water to perform in, they could specify which places of the river were safe to swim in and where performers and audiences could enter the river. We discovered a series of jetty’s which could be ideal for little pockets of performance spaces.
Members of Brandon Creative Forum, the MarketPlace team and Submersion Productions gather together in Brandon to discuss the plan of the day.
Next, it was onto Mildenhall where the team met Imogen Radford, a regular ‘wild swimmer’ in the River Lark. She went into great depth about the different safety considerations for swimming in rivers. Safety tips such as wearing waterproof protective footwear and getting into the water slowly to ease your body in gently to the sudden change in temperature and prevent performers and audience members losing their breath.
Jude and Adam from Submersion Productions, and digital artist & app designer Jack get ready for wild swimming in the River Lark in Mildenhall.
Finally, we arrived in March and I helped Godfrey Smith show the team around the area surrounding the River Nene before meeting up with the March Can’t Sing Choir. I have lived and grown up in March my whole life and it was interesting to see it through the theatre company’s eyes. I think I forget to appreciate how green it is and how many open spaces we have on our doorstep. Coming from Manchester and London, they were amazed at just how far you can see and how many wide-open spaces we have.
When we met up with the choir, we split into two groups; one group was trialling the app which Jack Hardiker had designed to test if the choir members could learn some short phrases to sing from their mobile devices, and one group to be taught these singing parts by the choir master Sally Rose. Speaking with Jude and Jack who led the app group, I think they found this exercise especially enlightening as they realised that learning these short songs from an app was no replacement for a choir master who could correct things as she went along, and practise blending these different parts together to make a really beautiful sound.
The groups join together on the green for singing with Sally Rose and March Can’t Sing Choir in March.
On the second day, we met with David Johnson at the Empress Pool in Chatteris where the team experimented with the acoustics of indoor pools and used the time to reflect on what they had learned and brainstorm new ideas for how the show would need to adapt to what they now know. After this, David gave us a walking tour of Chatteris town centre. He provided the team with information on his experiences of how to organise events and arts projects in Chatteris.
From there we drove to Gildenburgh Water in Whittlesey where the team swam in the lake and learnt about the different safety measures that the owners would insist upon should performers and audience members need to go into the water. We walked around the area and found some quite interesting little patches of field which could be suitable for performance spaces.
The groups explore suitable performance areas in Chatteris and Whittlsey, including the local pool and green spaces.
At all of the places that we visited, the team were taking pictures of everything and making notes on what would work and what wouldn’t work at each location. They were taking into consideration factors like how accessible it would be for members of the public, how far people would have to walk, how loud the noise in the surrounding area would be, how enclosed it is and what (if any) access they would have to the water. I believe that actually trying out wild swimming for themselves and learning how they would need to adapt the show to take into consideration what they now know has been a crucial step towards putting on a show here.
Jodie, Colin and Buster the dog from MarketPlace stand together for a photo in Chatteris town centrewith David Johnson, a film maker based in Chatteris, Jude and Adam from Submersion Productions, digital artist & app designer Jack and theatre designer & costume maker Abby.
Also, testing the capabilities of the app they are developing with members of the public and learning what tweaks would need to be made, would not have been achievable without this Research and Development stage, supported by the Arts Council of England with National Lottery funding.
The project has the potential to be unlike anything Fenland and Suffolk have seen before, so now more than ever I have learnt how important this stage in the creative process is, and how it will now go on to inform so many decisions – both creatively and logistically in the future when Submersion Productions take the plunge and perform it.
Written by MarketPlace Young Producer, Jodie Hicks.
Escape from Fort Lagoon is an immersive ‘theatre game’ created by Wake the Beast (Adam McGuigan) and Submersion Productions (Jude Jagger). We have been an active partner in their Research & Development work since 2019. We’ve been lucky to have a group of local community members who have formed a ‘Creative Collective’ that has provided a springboard for feedback on ideas and the concept of the theatre production.
Escape from Fort Lagoon is set in the future where water is a precious commodity and is controlled by an oppressive government who restrict access to the water to the elite (a theme that surely resonates with many right now in the rollout of the pandemic).
Once the Covid19 conditions allowed, Adam and Jude invited the Collective to do some location scouting in their home towns and further afield. Towns with a nearby body of water being the main practical consideration for this piece.
The Collective members came up with different locations and devised their own maps, highlighting interesting features of their area. With local knowledge they fed ideas into many of the creative elements that will end up in the final show.
These included news reports, set design, crowd interactions and environmental issues that are highlighted within the theatre piece.
The Fort Lagoon team visited the region to gain an understanding of our area and the challenges that exist in putting on a large scale theatre event. During the few days spent in Chatteris, March, Brandon and Mildenhall, the team got to test out the mobile phone app that will act as a device for audience members to navigate the game.
They also went for a spot of wild swimming and tested the new choral parts with the Cant Sing Choir in March. Having that time to test out elements of the show was extremely valuable and having the time to explore the spaces meant that the piece can be influenced by the landscape and the people in those areas.
The team got a lot of inspiration from the décor at Johnsons of Old Hurst Tropical House near Chatteris, (marred only slightly by Jude dropping her phone into the crocodile enclosure). Residents of Mildenhall were calling out supportive comments as the gang tested swimming in their local river and Brandon’s Market Square was buzzing with activity. Many people chatting in the square wanted to know more about the project and how they could get involved.
Submersion Productions now plan to secure funding to present the piece in summer 2023 in the area and all our fingers are crossed and watch this space!
This case study is part of our project evaluation for 2019/2020
Digital artist Lee Mason applied to the Creative Conversations in Isolation Inkling programme with the idea of using Mozilla Hubs Spoke to make a virtual gallery with other artists. We saw an opportunity for a collaboration with a local community group and commissioned Lee to work with members of Brandon Arts Society to create a digital home for their 40th anniversary exhibition. A 3D virtual gallery experience became their exhibition space for the celebrations.
As a commission, this met a local need for connection, routine and a way to reduce isolation in a group of older amateur artists. The digital nature of the project challenged the group to see and experience their work in a new way. Lee worked with Brandon Arts Society, Brandon Creative Forum and Creative Collective members to liaise with the group’s membership to collate and curate high-quality images and interpretation for all of their exhibition submissions.
Visitors to the gallery created an avatar to explore the exhibition space. The event was complete with wine and nibbles.
Lee built the virtual reality gallery in Mozilla Hubs after conversations with the MarketPlace team and Art Society member Terry to discover more about the local area and the group, in order to inform the aesthetic of the space. This enabled the creation of a space filled with local references and events that could make this virtual space feel owned and relevant to the artist participants, who were embarking on a new digital experience together.
Building the exhibition himself enabled artist Lee Mason to personalise the space to include features associated with Brandon. This included a roof garden to commemorate their Anglia in Bloom 2019 win and special guest, the infamous Brandon bunny.
