There's a real sense of anticipation at Festival Stoke waiting to see and hear The Mavis Movement perform The Black Lives Monologues.  Bringing together the talented family members, each gifted and experienced creative in their own rights, to perform, these siblings and cousins will dig within themselves to put forward the truth of Blackness as they see it.
​Keep an eye on our Facebook and Instagram pages.

Uncaged Aerial Theatre are bringing an amazing performance of aerial dance and spoken word to the Festival Stoke screens filmed on a secret beach in the north east of England, in August.
One of our Festival Echo commissions supported by Arts Council England.
Keep you eye on our Facebook page so you don't miss it!

We are excited to announce that the Olympics are coming to Stoke this year!
Fully Booked Theatre are bringing Olympics events into your home with their fun characters String and Strong.  There will be live activities to join in through Facebook streaming.  
​Part of our innovative Festival Echoes programme thanks to Arts Council England support.

The next in the series of the Festival Echoes commissions funded by Arts Council England is Stoke Lockdown Stories by Samantha Jones. Samantha, a recently graduated artist living and working in Stoke-on-Trent was commissioned by Festival Stoke to create artworks in response to Covid-19, working within the government guidelines.
Samantha writes about her Echo commission:
“My aim as an artist who doesn't originally come from Stoke is to find how the current covid-19 situation had affected the city and its people.
I will also be asking people from the Stoke area to send me their stories of lockdowns. These can be uplifting ones or ones where people have struggled, and from these stories I will pick a select few which I will create illustrations from. These combined with my photography will be created into an online gallery where people can view the images and watch the resulting film.”
The ‘Stoke Lockdown Stories’ video and photo gallery can be viewed here

We are delighted to announce that in response to the large number of excellent applications we received for the Festival Echoes commission ‘Creating Art in a Different Landscape’ we have taken the decision to increase the number of commissions from the six originally planned to a total of 14.
​
​Having started in May with the superb ‘Heroicus Rex’ film by Martin Gooding these will now run right through the year until January 2020.

With agreement from Arts Council England we have been able to reallocate the funding ring-fenced for the Mysterious Moth event (postponed from 16th May) and add it to the immediately available Emergency Response Fund awarded for the Festival Echoes programme.  

The range and quality of the artists’ proposed projects makes for an exciting and varied programme,which will have broad appeal.  There’ll be aerial acrobatics and immersive soundscapes, contemporary and classical dance, and projections. There’ll be music and words rooted in the here and now, and mystical imaginations taking you on a journey.  They’’ll  be outdoors by the sea and then on wild moorland, but also in the artist’s front room. Several will be quirky, others reflective or purposefully playful with the chance to join in at home.  Festival Echoes will be available to view and listen to right through summer into winter.  Keep your eye out on our social media channels and website for more information. 

In the longer term our plan is to rework Mysterious Moth into an even more extraordinary interactive event for late 2021, building on the creative ideas and foundations already in place and working with existing and new artists - we’ll plan to secure new funding next year to make that happen. 
Festival Echoes is funded by Arts Council England
#letscreate #ACEfunded

We're excited to announce the first of our Festival Echoes - artists creating in lockdown .  Lasting 20 minutes artist Martin Gooding asks:
​"What happens to the heroes when the heroic thing is to stay home?" 

The film was made over the course of the month of May 2020. 
Martin made the film within the limitations of his house - filming on his phone, utilising scrap materials to build props and costumes and only using locations he could access without leaving the house. 

Martin said:
"While on lockdown I've been rereading a lot of the forerunners to modern European theatre, Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus etc and I'd like to take influence from here to build the narrative and form of my film, using monologue, poetry, song and music. I intend to tell a family friendly story exploring the theme of 'Isolation' that will be at its core a comedy. 
The question I want to ask is:  "What happens to the heroes when the heroic thing is to stay home" 
The film can be viewed on Youtube
About Festival Echoes:
We have asked six artists each to produce a piece of artistic work, each over a period of one month, which can be viewed online, within the guidelines and restrictions of lockdown.

The project is supported by funding from Arts Council England from their Emergency Fund 
#letscreate #acefunded

We are delighted to announce that we have four artist opportunities as part of our Arts Council England Emergency Fund programme.  These will form part of the six-month Festival Echoes programme from June to November 2020.

PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE FULL COMMISSION BRIEF OF WHICH THIS IS AN EXTRACT:

Festival Echoes is a series of one-month artist commissions from May – October 2020
Four open commissions are available: July, August, September, October
Artist Fee: £1,250 (includes up to £250 for materials and expenses) 
​Theme: Creating art in a different landscape
For each commission an artist will create work, of any art-form, in response to the theme.
The artwork must be available to view by members of the public online and/or in public space and then broadcast online as video, photographs or audio content.
The artist may prepare something specifically for online presentation or, alternatively, something that can be photographed or filmed in situ and thereby seen online.
Each commission to run for one month between July and October
The work must be completed by the end of the calendar month for presentation at the start of the following month.
The artist may present their work online as a developing project during the month of creating.
Following completion, the artist will prepare a short evaluation of their experience in written and visual format, this will hopefully help with self-reflection and feed into the development of Festival Stoke.
We are looking for proposals that:

• Provide people across the communities of North Staffordshire with more opportunities to enjoy culture
• Experiment in creating art in new contexts
• Can be shared online using social media, YouTube, etc.
• Propose working in a new and experimental way, for the artist 
• Provide an opportunity to develop creative practice
• Respond to current global situations and issues, which may be general or from the perspective of a particular locality or group of people 
• Are ‘family-friendly’

We are particularly, but not exclusively, interested in receiving proposals: 

• That include an outdoor/nature element 
• From people with a wider cultural heritage
• From artists, we have not worked with before

Proposals must comply with any Coronavirus (Covid-19) UK Government guidance current at the time of the commission
Commissions are open to artists and creative practitioners irrespective of geographical location who are resident in the UK.

We thought you'd like to know a bit more about the stunning banners that have appeared in Stoke town centre. 
SURFACES is a series of six large, bright and bold, fabric banners created to hang along the main street of Stoke-upon-Trent.  The banners are designed and hand-stitched by Rhiannon and the designs use abstract imagery inspired by two of the most striking buildings in the town centre:

• The recently renovated Sutherland building on Church Street
• The old Stoke Library opposite Sainsbury’s

"I propose to create a series of vibrant outdoor fabric banners with bold designs that are directly inspired by the architectural forms of Stoke’s buildings. The designs respond to the environment of Stoke’s streets, abstracting shapes, colours and forms to create layered compositions that trigger associations with the locality and invite people to look at the surroundings anew."  Rhiannon Hunter

Sadly someone has pulled down and stolen one of the Twelve Essence heads. The one pictured is a sculpture of Christine Thorley and was sited outside Wetherspoons. 😔. It must have taken some effort to remove and then carry off.  The Police have been notified and we hope to get it replaced if possible.
If anyone saw anything or might know something please do get in touch. Please also keep a look out in case it’s been ‘dumped’ somewhere.
One of the good things is some of the lovely comments that people have put on hearing the news:

• Love all this artwork in Stoke.
• Hope it's found. The artwork is awesome 👍 I'd ❤️ to see more in the future 💯
• The masks make stoke a brighter, more interesting place to live. let alone the effort put in. What the frock is wrong with people?
  
• I wish people would see how such a thing can make brighten up peoples lives but devastate them when it's been taken away. No more said.
  
• I saw that on my way to work and wondered where it had gone 🙄 why would someone do something so pointless in the middle of a pandemic?
  

We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded funding by Arts Council England as part of their Covid-19 Emergency Response Package.
The funding will ensure that we can continue with our festival programme and strengthen the organisation for the future. 
Keep an eye out for our Festival Echoes artist commission opportunities, which we will be publishing in June and look out for more art coming your way over the summer months.