Midsummer Wakes

Midsummer Wakes 2016

In early July 2016, the Social Agency members all came together to work with artists from Letting in the Light to create costumes and objects for the Newcastle-under-Lyme Midsummer Wakes carnival. The theme of the carnival this year was “Winds of Change”, and we decided to work on creating a tornado. Throughout the week, participants were able to take part in different craft-based activities including windmill making, felt making, T-Shirt design and tie-dying, and working with willow withies. Furthermore we also spent a morning working with professional sound designer James Earls-Davis to create an imagined sound of our tornado.

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It was a very busy week and our efforts were rewarded by having the opportunity to join other community groups, and professional street artists, and processing our work around Newcastle town centre. What’s more, the rain stopped!

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We are indebted to Cristiana Cappelletti and B Arts for taking lots and lots of photos, and to Peter Wilshaw for motorising the tornado.

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Midsummer Wakes 2017
The theme for this carnival was ‘Flight’. Group members decided they wanted to create a number of space ships and so we worked with Hilary Hughes from B Arts to help us make a number of lanterns. We enjoyed this as the process is relatively simple, working with withies (flexible willow stems), masking tape, and paper tissue. However, the simplicity did not limit our imaginations, as these images attest. We began by making simple 2-D birds and then progressed to 3-D space ships which included a TIE Fighter, Thunderbirds 2 & 3, and the Tardis!

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