Saturday 25th of June at Newsham Park Festival with FACT in Liverpool

On saturday we headed to Liverpool again to work again with FACT to be part of the Newsham Park Arts Festival. The day is organised by the Academy of St Francis of Assisi School in the Kensington Area of Liverpool and was crammed with people with a great vibe. 

                                   

We ran a stall for FACT as Unravel which was positioned right inbetween the two main stages which meant we had an incidental mash-up of two acts at any one time - seeing Bollywood and traditional Chinese dance acts clash with MC's and emo acts, also catching the birds of prey display and dog show! It was great fun and the community should be proud of itself for putting on such a friendly and varied event and we were really glad to be part of it.

Sunday 19th June at Maltby, South Yorkshire

Chris writes:

On Father's Day, Sunday 19th june, we ran a workshop in my home town of Maltby, South Yorkshire. 

When we visited Rotherham (the borough of which Maltby is part of) in April I thought this would be the closest we would get to coming to Maltby, the pit town where my family have lived for over a hundred years. After meeting Labour Councillor Jennifer Andrews at a recent exhibition held in the Edward Dunn Memorial Hall in Maltby about the history of the important pit town (Maltby Colliery is one of the few remaining working pits in the country) we soon agreed to host a workshop in the same venue - the very place where my Grandmother used to volunteer to help run 'Luncheon Club' for the local Pensioners.
I was surprised to feel more anxious about this date more than any other event on the tour because of the huge personal history I have with the place : my Great Grandfather ran a Pawn Shop there before the Great War, my Grandad was friends with locally born Cricketing Legend Freddie Trueman, my Mum went to Maltby Grammar School which became Maltby Comprehensive when I attended it, to the newly named Maltby Academy now being the school attended by my school friend's children.
We took many interviews with the people who came which included old school friends, family friends and people who had simply heard about us from the great marketing campaign Jennifer put together : an interview with myself for BBC Radio Sheffield and the front cover of the Maltby News.

 More than anything, this date reminded me of why we started Unravel - to explore the differences of communities across  mainland Britain.
Like always, we asked participants to highlight the pluses and minuses of the place they lived.
Maltby dwellers clearly hold their sense of community with fierce pride and people were happy to talk about how there was a renewed sense of optimism and progress in a locality that has suffered recession and  controversial political turbulence long before the national banking crisis.

I spent the first 19 years of my life in Maltby and therefore every place we have been has been informed and can only have been compared to Maltby in my head so, clearly, this event was undoubtedly one of the most personally profound dates on the tour and I'd like to thank everyone who attended, participated and helped make it happen.

Thursday 9th June at Zion Centre, Hulme, Manchester

On Thursday 9th june we ran a workshop evening event at the Zion Arts Centre in Hulme, Manchetster, at the opening of Kino Film's Polish Poster exhibition. As detailed in the post prior to this, Polish Film posters have inspired all of the members of the Unravel team and Chris and Maria were proud to have been taught by Andrzej Klimowski who was celebrated by the organiser and curator of  Kino Film, John Wojowski, at his unveiling of this exhibition in Manchester as his favorite artist. 

Participants managed to make a 9 minute film in just two hours and the results were surprisingly great for such a short period of time. It was great fun to be surrounded by such excellent imagery as we worked on the film and be offered such alternative visions of commercial 'Movies'.

 If you are interested in finding out more about Polish design we'd recommend looking into the work of  Roman Cieślewicz whom Andrzej helped organise a retrospective of at the Royal College of Art last year.

Maltby on Sunday 19th June plus new dates announced at Tate Britain, Derby Quad, Manchester Mela...

This Sunday is a very special day on the tour for Chris as we will be running a workshop in Maltby, South Yorkshire which is where his family have lived for over one hundred years. We will be running the workshop at the Edward Dunn Memorial Hall just off the High Street from 12.00 until 17.00 and are being aided by local Labour Councillor Jennifer Andrews. Hope to see you there.

We can now also confirm that Unravel will be running a workshop at one of the most important art venues in the country, Tate Britain, on Friday 8th July. As with all our workshops this will be a day open to people from all ages, regardless of background and creative ability and we are over the moon to be adding this most prestigious venue to the scores of places we have visited (all listed and illustrated at the bottom of this blog).

Our upcoming dates are all listed on the sidebar to the right and include another date organised with FACT in Liverpool for Newsham Park Festival, the Deutsche Bank Prizegiving for their 2011 Awards at the London Contemporary Dance School, Manchester's Mela Festival and Derby Quad. We're really looking forward to all of these last few dates of our epic project and hope to see you at any or all!