ARTSPACE / STILL WATERS

Early doors at our screening at Askam Community Centre. You'll see Lindsay Ward's marvellous photographs of the Askam ponds and environs, and the set-up for our a 22 minute video comprising landscapes, sound and music ,  images from school workshops and James Alexanders marvellous animated version of a slice of Alexander family history, passed onto him by his cousin Kev.   Jim's animation figures and set were  there too, and  a special printed programme and a free postcard.  If we don't get the chance, thank you to everyone who has helped us make this work... Kev Alexander, Janice Cumming, Elaine MacNamee, Nicola Atkinson, Patricia Southward. Amy Stretch Parker,  Jacquie Wright, Rob Kavanagh, all our young workshop artists...and many others...  Lindsay has compiled her photographs into a hardback book, and Janice at the History Soc now has a copy...you can see it at the foot of this post...   It's been fascinating work to make, we've enjoyed our visits enormousl

 We rolled into Ireleth St Peters School today, and had a marvellous morning  with our Askam and Ireleth map collage workshop. We worked with the whole school and their staff in their assembly hall. We provided the children with ariel photographs of their local area, and several mountains of fabric, card and interesting coloured/textured recyclables from Ulverston Scrap store and over the morning they made these collages and models. Some of these images will be included in our project video, and they will be displayed around the school. It was a great morning; the group found the balance between serious intent and fun, they worked well together, asked the right questions, solved their own problems and produced work that delights and surprises and exhibits their skill and thoughtfulness. Earlier, we took to Ulverston Market Place, loaded down with fabric and goodies from Ulverston Scrapstore under a Gazebo provided by Ulverston Community Enterprises, and took part in Enough Is Enough, a

Interesting week, eh? We went to Askam on thursday to record some footage with which to frame Jim's piece...here we are outside Kev Alexander's shed and at the end of his street. We recorded two sequences with Kev that we hope will show the world of the story, while he filled the shed with stories and petrol fumes. Elsewhere, we've had the ok to use a recording by The Magic Toyshop, one of the best bands to come out of Furness in my time here. The song is an edited versh of King Of Space by Rob Kavanagh, from an acoustic session, and features the great Phil Birkett as singer. Many thanks to Rob and to Jamie Bosanko for supplying a file.  And on friday we were at the Laurel and Hardy Museum with Tony Lidington, for his marvellous lecture on Performative Science and quackery. We had a very good audience including lots of old friends, and raised a very decent bit of money for Furness Refugee Support.   Thank you, one and all. We'll be posting Tony's script, but for now

Photos: Jim's Ealingy grotesques, during a closed session at the cottage and our family workshops in Askam the other week.  It's been a good few days for Still Waters, what's emerging is a sort of aphoristic rumination on the way a place can tell its own story, with Jim and his cousin Kev at the centre of it, telling theirs.   The rest of us work at a remove, responding to what we find, what we are told and shown.     Askam's history is in the hands of people that know it and live it. We are interested in how stories within it get told, through anecdote, folk processes, and in the role of formal and personal archives.    Story, like land, is fluid and shifting. It shifts with every visit and every telling. Jim and Kev's versions of this unruly ragged slice of family history dip into official versions and family lore, and  each carries  their own fingermarks , along with the discrepancies and shifts in tone that result from any process of reproduction and re-telling.

We moved into Askam Community Centre for a couple of days, with a bag of paper, fabric and other recyclables from the Scrap Store. The idea was  to make maps of parts of the village with local children and their families, to introduce ourselves and the Still Waters project and find a few people who might like to help out with the next bit. We worked from photographs, Alex's sketchmap and the children's own knowledge of Askam.  Jim's animation and Lindsay's photographs ran on a loop, and it was good to hear our visitors point out the same paths and tracks that we've been exploring, and hearing their stories overlap ours. The Community Centre is a beautiful and well-equipped former school building, run by volunteers and used by youth groups and others. We'll  be back with our exhibition, which is likely to consist of a screening and Lindsay's photographs.  The work from this weekend will be in there too.   We asked a few  Askamites to record their walks around

  Click here  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ycr4TLYyotGVlGACkASzzl8kCLCrGB4X/view?usp=sharing to see a short test sequence shot by Jim last week in the Sir John Barrow cottage.  It's a grey day. Black Combe is in the distance.  You see the Alexander family members planting their stakes and nets in the estuary. They work steadily, with concentration; they've done this many times.  Appropriately, Jim's mum and dad have been involved in the process, making props and costumes.  More will follow. We are in Askam this weekend, Alex, Jim and me are running craft workshops for families in the Community Centre, building collage maps of parts of the village   We will have this clip with us and some of Lindsay's Askam photographs, which will be on display in the cottage on fridays and sundays for the next few weeks. Be sure to visit, it's a beautiful show, Here's a sample.