Tag Archives: culture and tourism

Sustainable Outdoor Arts

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Me in hero pose picking up my new car

I recently attended an online sustainability symposium hosted by Wild Rumpus which was looking at all the things that we are, could and should be doing to make our work as outdoor artists more sustainable.

At the beginning of the year we made a big step as a household and as a theatre company towards greater sustainability by swapping our vauxhall zafira for a second hand Nissan leaf.

The zafira was a swap from a Vauxhall Combo van without rear passenger seats so that we would have somewhere to put child car seats following the birth of our first child in 2017. It was a good choice for a compromise between personal and business use as the seats fold down to provide a very large amount of space for carting puppets/sets /workshop materials etc.

Then came the announcement about all new cars being electric from 2035, (more recently they are considering bringing this forward to 2030). In addition to this my car had turned 5 years old and I had just had to get it seen to for its first major repair job (while in my ownership). I felt like the longer I kept it the less it would be worth and the more repairs it would be likely to need.

Tim (my co-performer in RMT and husband) had already started using an electric vehicle (a Renault Zoe) as a second car for our household. So, I felt relatively comfortable with the idea of switching to an electric vehicle of my own as I had already had experience of driving his.

One of the main differences is that it has no gears so those people who have driven automatic cars would find the swap to an electric vehicle quite an easy one.

I decided to get a second hand vehicle as I would be able to buy this using a hire purchase arrangement and at the end of 5 years I will own it outright and have something to show for my investment. At the time, Tim had a PCP on his Zoe and has now switched to a new lease (and a newer Zoe) without the option to buy. I wanted a car at the end of my payments.

So I got a Nissan Leaf which, while nothing like as big as the Zafira, has a fairly roomy boot and the ability to fold the rear seats flat for extra storage space. It is bigger than the Zoe but has a smaller battery (30 kwh) which gives a range of 120 miles with a fully charged battery in ideal conditions (it does not perform as well in the cold).

Before lock down we had the delightful plan of visiting the Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival for the first time in my new car. This happens every year and commemorates the first documented sighting of Mr. Punch by Samuel Pepys in his famous diary (so it is the official birthday of Mr. Punch).

We were going to take the children too and make it a sort of bus man’s holiday and stay overnight the night before. We had not been previously as the travel costs for us from North Yorkshire to London for an unpaid gig are very expensive but with an electric car we felt the trip would be within our means. We also felt it was worth trying as an experiment to see how practical it would be to use the car to transport the shadow puppet suitcase show to London in this car.

It was going to take a long time to get there compared with a vehicle with a bigger range (hence the need for an overnight stay) but it was going to be an epic electric car adventure.

Then lock down happened, the live event was cancelled and the May Fayre moved online instead.

So the only business journey I actually have done in the new car was to ‘For The Love of It‘ a street arts networking event in Manchester which happened immediately before lock down. The car performed well. The inbuilt sat nav got me to the venue (Cobden Street Works the new base of Walk the Plank) which I had never visited before without a hitch. I navigated to a nearby Instavolt charger at a garage and put on enough charge to enable me to complete the return journey and that was that.

One major change I have had to take on is the use of a smartphone which I inherited from my husband when he upgraded his. A lot of electric chargers require the use of a mobile app for that particular network (and there are lots of different charging networks). Instavolt, however, is one of the networks that allow you to charge using a contactless debit / credit card and the charger had lots of simple easy to read buttons that light up in order to tell you what to do.

I have since discovered that I was fortunate in my choice of first charger experience as Instavolt are very reliable and easy to use compared to some other networks. Some charging points can be broken when you turn up or the charging point works but the app doesn’t.

Another problem for some electric charging points is that they can be ‘Iced’ (the parking space is taken up by an internal combustion engine vehicle) which stops electric vehicles from using them.

The solution to a lot of these problems is Zap Map. This is an app which let’s you plan your journey. You input the range of your vehicle, where you want to go and it suggests charging points you might want to use to get there.

You can see if anyone is using the charging points, whether any are broken and users can report issues they have had with the chargers and upload pictures of the charging station so you can see what it looks like and find them more easily. So if you are planning a long journey and can see a particular charging point is having technical problems over and over again then you can simply choose a different charging point for your route. I think it eliminates what they call ‘range anxiety’ pretty much altogether. If you have plenty of money that is not such an issue any more anyway as most new electric cars have enough range to complete most journeys without the need to charge away from home (in the UK anyway as nowhere is very far away from anywhere else compared to America for example).

We are going to have a different epic electric car journey soon as we are going to Cornwall for 2 weeks. We are planning to use the Zoe as it has the greater range (particularly as we are now in Winter) and we need to get to YHA Eden project (where we are staying) by 10pm at the latest. This gives the different challenge of fitting everything for the holiday into the smaller bootspace This will include clothes for a 3 and a half year old and a 19 month old plus everything else they need and stuff for me and Tim. 

So I shall also be taking a holiday from blog writing for 2 weeks so there will be more on the progress of our Secret Keeper Shadow Puppet Murder Mystery Series then. Till then Very Best Wishes and stay safe to you all my lovely readers.

Culture and Tourism: Realising the value, at Fountains Abbey

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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I attended the above event at the National Trust’s Fountains Abbey which was organised by Chrysalis Arts, Welcome to Yorkhire and Arts Council England.  It was a beautiful clear sunny day and, in the nature of conferences, we were stuck indoors, unfortunately.  However it’s probably just as well as, had we had been out enjoying the lovely scenery and architecture, we may not have got any work or networking done at all!

Once again you will note that I am straying away from the area of puppets.  Perhaps you are wondering why I attended at all and if I got any benefit from it.  While it is true that none of the other people (as far as I am aware) did puppet theatre, I am part of the wider picture of Culture and Tourism as a whole.  In the course of my work, I interact with a huge number of other businesses, not all of whom are arts organisations.

My being booked to do puppetry at Masquepony, for instance.  I may have been booked by M.I.A. and Lakes Alive people, but I am also connected to the people running the campsite at the racecourse in Cartmel, who are getting extra business at this time as a result of my work.  Equally, if they were not able to attract visitors to their campsite, the festival would not succeed and I would not have that job.  People who sell camping equipment will also benefit, as will people purveying food and drinks and other local shops in the area.

One of the things that was highlighted by Steven Feber was that while there were huge amounts of cultural and tourist attractions or activity in North Yorkshire, generally speaking people are operating in their own little bubbles and are not talking to each other or working together to improve the visitor experience of tourists in our area.  Culture adds value to a visitor experience and the aim, through co-operation and joined up thinking, would be to increase the length of time visitors spend in the area and thus the amount of money spent in our area as well.

Tom Freshwater, contemporary arts programme manager for the National Trust, said that there was a lot less interaction between the Trust sites in Yorkshire and contemporary art practice/installation than in the South of the country as things stand.  They are working on it and they aim to turn the visitor feedback forms from good to excellent for the sites in our area.

I was particularly interested to hear about this because I have been meaning to contact the Trust about doing performances at their sites for some time now.  Tom gave a number of case study examples of things that had been done in Trust properties elsewhere in the country.  These were very interesting and were real examples of value added by the introduction of contemporary art into existing spaces and sites.

For example:  Engaging the bikers who regularly visit the Tattershall Castle area, which is essentially just a shell of a building without any objects or interior furnishings to speak of, through an art installation and an alternative village fete aimed at bikers.

This event and the art installation work towards the aim of getting people to stay in places for longer periods of time and to spend more money while they are there.  This was done with the support of ACE as well.

We found out about the Railway Children theatre performane, championed by Welcome to Yorkshire, which was created by the York Theatre Royal and then restaged at Waterloo station in London.  It was used as publicity to persuade people to visit Yorkshire after seeing the show, through the cunning device of staging it in what they were calling the “Welcome to Yorkshire Theatre” within the station and publicising it in various other ways too.  Feedback sheets from the audience indicated that they would consider visiting Yorkshire after seeing the show – though the data for how many actual visits happened was unknown.

I also found out about a little known National Trail in a little known part of Yorkshire called the Yorkshire Wolds.  They were going to apply to ACE for a set of benches along the route, but instead they were encouraged to apply for benches and artworks along the trail and a set of “land art” pieces are being constructed as we speak.  After a while the artworks will appear to be part of the landscape as the earthworks are covered in grass.

There are also plans to create a Hockney trail, similar to the existing Turner trail, which has benches where you can sit and look at the locations from particular paintings side by side with a board showing a copy of the painting for comparison.  The idea being, that you could choose to visit some or all of the locations.  So clearly, the artwork is adding value or, indeed, creating the tourism and also encouraging people to stay longer in the area.  This also benefits cafes restaurants B&Bs campsites, outdoor supplies shops etc.

Lunch was devoted to networking, (we were banned from talking to people we already knew).  After that we were split into roughly geographical groupings to talk about what existing links and networks we have, and how we can create more or be more efficient at working together and co-operating.

Steven Feber had been keen to point out that the “Welcome to Yorkshire” website was less user friendly and flexible than it ought to be, but that perhaps the future lies in “apps” like “Stumbleupon” that create user generated recommendations based on people’s existing likes, dislikes and patterns of behaviour.  But this seemed to suggest that we needn’t bother trying to link up with each other and that we could leave it to the tourists themselves!  Quite a few people were on the technophobic side and seemed to think that paper based promotion and leaflets were enough.  My personal view is that the arts is a difficult business to make pay and we are in an economic down-turn too, so why not take all the advantages you can grab with both hands.  Paper may appeal to older people who are existing customers but why not make young people your customers too by reaching out in a medium they understand, (to say nothing of being better for the environment – how many leaflets are wasted every year I wonder?).  Also, the internet is a global medium, you can reach out to people from unimaginable distances as easily as the person next door.

Into the mix of the discussion someone said that the geography of the region made it hard for everyone to receive Broadband and that maybe that was part of the charm of the region and perhaps we don’t need Broadband at all!  It worries me if these are the kinds of people who are making decisions about connecting the region with the rest of the world, I feel sorry for all the businesses who will suffer from such narrow thinking.

No definite conclusions were reached by the end of the day but everyone had a lot to think about and I personally made lots of new connections with people that I particularly wanted to be connecting with.  So the event itself made a good start, despite the pessimism of some who implied that everyone knew each other anyway, (perhaps they only spoke to people they already knew and it was their own fault for not circulating).

One thing that did come out which I thought was interesting is that days like this and intermediary organisations like Welcome to Yorkshire, ACE, Chrysalis Arts etc. are vital in providing the opportunity and financial support for links and clusters to form and work together.  As Rick Faulkner pointed out, even something as simple as putting other people’s links on your site is not a “free” activity and takes time and expertise to achieve.  Let’s hope that money to help everyone along does not dry up altogether.  It was encouraging, (or is it disturbing?) to hear that as tax payers contributions to ACE go down, lottery money goes up!