A Fall into Grace

In 2015 I worked as artist /producer on A Fall into Grace 11, the project was devised in conjunction with Sarah Pace of Addo. In 2011, the first version of a A Fall into Grace, was created for Aberdare Theatre in the South Wales Valleys and comprised a series of theatrical stereoscopes depicting a simple fictional love story. Local people had been encouraged to record their own accounts of falling in love and these audio recordings were exhibited alongside my fictional tableaux. The interest shown by local people together with the compelling and sometimes devastating nature of these true love stories inspired me to develop the project further.

A Fall into Grace 11 was devised as a kind of art/participation/education project. Ambitious in its’ aims to introduce participants to a variety of new experiences - essentially it was a writing project, where acclaimed authors including Phil Carradice, Erica Bohr and Rachel Trezise ran writing workshops for diverse groups of people to explore the theme of Romantic Love. The project was organised as follows:

Participants were offered all of the following:
Three writing workshops each across six small groups with further support through editing and proof reading. (44 people took part in total)
Screen printing workshops to illustrate their stories. Participants were invited to the Print Hause in Cardiff with workshops delivered by artist Jude Lau. The iconic Welsh Love Spoon became a visual symbol of the project, following a museum visit.
Letterpress workshops to print the first line of their stories. I set up a small print room and led workshops in letterpress. Thanks to the generous artist and garden shop proprietor Lucy Bateman who made a room above her garden shop available for the duration of the project.
Performance workshops with experimental theatre producer John Norton.
Perform their story John Norton produced a unique day of Romantic Storytelling. This also involved a market stall; our matchmaker Madam Rita; a curious audience; twenty one storytellers, seventeen venues across the town, including, benches, cafe's, a vintage car, a bridal shop, a bed shop, a florist, the ringing chamber of a church and a graveyard. A set of specially designed playing cards; a campaign map; four coded maps; much screen-printed material, posters, illustrations and wallpaper; and finally one beautiful young man who sang to everyone on the hour and flirted with Madam Rita.

An illustrated anthology of romantic writing was published in December 2015 in both paperback and with a special edition hardback edition. A celebration and book launch was held at the wonderful St Fagan’s, in the Oakdale Workmen's Institute with over 100 people in attendance, and featuring many readings.

I worked with Sarah Pace of Addo on the development and production of the project. The project was funded by Arts Council of Wales, the Ashley Family Foundation and Rhondda Cynon Taff County Borough Council, through their Town Heritage Initiative Scheme.