The Creative Hub, The Storey Meeting House Lane Lancaster, LA1 1TH

MANCHESTER!

18th November 2014 by Morven Macbeth

THREE DAY RESIDENCY AT CONTACT – ‘MONUMENT’

AND THREE DAYS PERFORMING AT THE LOWRY

The Lowry, Salford and Contact are co-presenting ‘A Farewell to Arms’ in this here neck of the woods and we wanted to reflect this by making a companion piece of work that would be shown at both venues over the course of the run. Speaking to Matt Fenton at Contact we came up with the idea of a three day workshop residency where we would work with early career artists to make some kind of an installation titled ‘Monument’, thinking about how we remember, how we memorialize, how we commemorate conflict as a society. Visiting my home town in the north of Scotland recently, I had been struck by the fact that I had spent years of my life walking past a war memorial only occasionally really noticing it, looking at it, thinking what it meant to me and to the people around me in the street.

So over three days, beginning by giving each participant a box of mementos, we wrote, talked, recorded each other, found images, made soundscapes, made images, talked some more, played with Isadora (all of which fairly accurately reflects an albeit condensed version of the imitating the dog making process!) and put together our ‘Monument’ which went into the foyers at Contact and at the Lowry over the three days we performed at the Quays. Such a great space, we had a lovely time, packed houses which is good because we should therefore be on form for our first ever sold out, yes, SOLD OUT run this week at Birmingham Rep. Very, very exciting…

A big thank you to everyone at Contact and the Lowry and to the ‘Monument’ makers:

Lyndsey Bennett

Charlotte Berry

Jay Birbeck

Karen Featherstone

Rob Gregson

James Monaghan

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