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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.

Bye 2014 – Hello 2015!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hello again everyone!  The above images are from last year and did not make it into my blogs at the time because my phone whose camera these pictures were taken on died and I only recently managed to successfully retrieve the photo’s.

The first few pictures are from Buxton Puppet Festival where I saw Peter Piper Puppets version of Punch & Judy and Diddley Dee Puppets show “Rabbits to the Rescue”.

You may recall in a previous post that I held forth (at some length) against the “dumbing down” of Mr Punch with misplaced sense of political correctness.  Very soon after that I encountered this performance in which the puppeteer declared in no uncertain terms at the beginning of the show that this was exactly what he WAS planning to do.  Poor Mr. Punch was transformed into a sad and pathetic individual who not only didn’t get to hit anyone with a slapstick but was instead on the receiving end of a giant pencil wielded by a clumsy social worker in the form of Joey the clown, (among other indignities).  This was after Mr. Punch lost the baby after trying to teach the baby to walk.

The audience seemed to enjoy the show and “Peter Piper” rounded off the show by turning the audience into an impromptu band to process to the next outdoor entertainment.

However, in my opinion one of the best parts of the show were Mr Punch’s dog being taken for a walk by the puppeteer prior to the show and “weeing” all over the audience (with the cunning deployment of a not wholly invisible water pistol).  The other fun part was two unconventional “stagehand” characters whose function was to appear and hammer and saw at various parts of the booth and to tell the audience that the show wasn’t ready and hadn’t started yet.

“Rabbits to the Rescue” was obviously intended for an audience younger than myself and I have to admit to finding it a little twee.  For what it was though it was a lot of fun and the children obviously enjoyed it.  It was well performed and the puppets were very charming and nicely constructed.

I also attended Mintfest in Kendal as an X-trax delegate last year and that is where the other photo’s are from.

The previous year’s Mintfest (2013) we had been busy performing all day Saturday and Sunday with our “Fred Fettler’s “Pony 3000″ – The Transport of the Future!” show in the Westmorland Shopping Centre and thus had not had much time to see other people’s shows or to talk to bookers about our work.

“The Table of Thoughts” was an installation which was in an upstairs shop space in the Westmorland Shopping Centre.  I thought this was a very brave and unusual thing to include in a street arts festival but Mintfest are very good at including things that are a bit more challenging and different.  The installation consisted of a dining table with various peculiar “place settings” and foodstuffs.  The audience can sit at any seat at the table and by listening to an audio file from an mp3 player through earphones get a voice-over of the internal thoughts of the person whose place they are sat in.  This monologue is reflected in the appearance of the place setting in front of them as well.  In addition to this there are general ambient, but subdued, sound effects such as cutlery being used and muted unintelligible conversation.  I listened to all of the monologues, each of which was quite unique, and enjoyed them thoroughly.

I also had the opportunity to take part in our good friends at Frolicked’s game called “The Birds”.  We had heard them talking about this project at an X-Trax shorts presentation previously so it was great to get an opportunity to try it out.  We had to find a missing endangered bird, (who I am pictured with above) in teams.  I was with a dad and his little girl and another couple, none of whom I’d met before.  I did wonder if being in a team of other people I didn’t know would be awkward but they were all lovely and the activity was extremely challenging, exciting and fun!  It was obviously meant to be done in a group of mixed adults and children as some of the tasks/clues would be too difficult for small children and the challenges set were hard enough to be totally engaging and exciting for adults.  I am sorry to say that our team did not win though I think we did a touch better than some of the others.  I am saying no more but if you get a chance to take part in this game yourself, I would wholeheartedly recommend it.

One of the other puppetry offerings at Mintfest was Burek the marionette dog – puppeteered by Lucasz Puczko.  He is from Poland and has travelled to lots of different countries with this act.  I have recently found out at the X-trax Northern Street Arts Networking event that Lucasz enjoyed the reactions of the audiences in Kendal so much that he has now moved to England to live and work and is currently based in Bradford.

It was very refreshing, after hearing a bit of doom and gloom from a lot of people on the state of the industry in this country and the amount of work/money/opportunities available, that someone would actively seek out England as a place to work because of the friendliness of the people and the audiences.  Jeremy Shine was very keen to promote Lucasz’s act on the basis of it developing a hitherto untapped audience – dogs!

A lot of dogs seemed keen to interact with Burek but most seemed a bit disturbed by something that looked and moved like a dog but obviously did not smell like one!

I have heard a lot of people say that the best way to keep new year’s resolutions is to put them down publicly on a blog like this.

Last year was a good one for us in many ways with a lot of firsts.  We produced a new show “Clueless & Wuffles” for Glastonbury, (which we were attending for the first time).  I performed at Morecambe Variety Festival and also did workshops and performances for a number of Primary Schools that I hadn’t visited before.

Tim and I performed in Skelmersdale with our Mad Hatter’s Tea Party walkabout show, (somewhere I have never visited or performed before).  Together with Rough Magic Theatre founder member Leo Nolan I created a French Nursery Rhymes for beginners show: “Nursery Rhymes with Monsieur le Fou” for Wakefield Grammar School Foundation on European Languages Day.

And to crown the year off I created a new light up costume for another event I hadn’t been involved with previously the “Light Up Lancaster” illuminations event.

We were also invited back to what is becoming a regular event the CARnival Bentham.  My ever popular Shadow Puppet Suitcase shows had a lot of airings as did the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and the Hansel & Gretel and “The Interrupted Wedding” shows made a couple of appearances too.

My resolution always tends to be to get more work.  I have been doing well with my aim to get more work doing “light and shadow” workshops in schools in Spring, Autumn and Winter but more schools work would be welcome, (please get in touch if you’d like a workshop/show or both in your school).  I shall be visiting a school in Hartlepool on Monday and I shall let you know how we get on next week.

I would also like to get more work with our main hour long indoor show “Alice in Wonderland” as last year was a quiet year for this show whilst being a popular one for the show’s offshoot Mad Hatter’s Tea Party walkabout show.  Please get in touch if you are interested in booking either of these for your school, theatre, literature festival, book day etc.

In order to get more done I am also resolving to get up earlier rather than hearing the alarm go off and falling back asleep again.  I also therefore have to go to bed on time and I am also trying to build more exercise into my schedule.

It would also be great (time permitting) to finally finish of the new version of the Rough Magic Theatre Website that has been ongoing for a couple of years now.  I also resolve to be more disciplined about doing the old social media regularly rather than the rather hap-hazard approach that I’ve been taking recently.

It would be really great to hear what your New Year’s Resolutions are too.  Please leave a reply on this post, (business or personal goals or both) 🙂