Glass House Dance Podcast

Please note this episode was recorded over Zoom in April 2021

In this final episode I chat to Rosemary Lee. Rosemary is a choreographer, director and performer. Over the past thirty years, she has created works ranging from live performances, that are often site-specific and involve a cross-section of the community, to dance films and installations.

Her work is characterised by an interest in creating a moving portraiture of both individuals and of the close performing communities she brings together.

I am lucky to have known Rosemary for quite a few years. She was instrumental in the development of my own interest between dance and working outdoors and for introducing a love of nature writing.

Both Sarah and I performed in Circadian in 2019, a piece created by Rosemary for First Light Festival which involved a cross-generational cast of 24 professional and non-professional dancers, performing on the hour every hour during the summer solstice.

Somehow Rosemary’s work manages to be both intimate and expansive about people and place. Her work is deeply touching without being overly sentimental.

She was an obvious choice to lead a walk for Wild Wander, both because of the way she works but also how she nurtures artists, always offering much food for thought. She led our final walk in the beautiful Suffolk countryside in the location of Staverton Thicks, an incredible site of ancient oaks and holly trees.It was one of those wonderful winter days when the skies are blue, the air is crisp and the low sun creates beautiful shadows across the landscape. It was a very special end to the project.

If you need to take a pause, then this weeks podcast might just help you to take a moment and see the bigger picture.

In this episode I talk to author and naturalist Mark Cocker. 

Mark is passionate about the environment and the significance of nature. He writes and broadcasts on nature and wildlife in a variety of national media. In 2018 he completed 30 years as a country diarist for The Guardian and Guardian Weekly and has written over 1,000 articles for both papers. His 12 books include works of biography, history, literary criticism and memoir.

In this conversation we chat about the environmental crisis and how it underpins his work but also how he celebrates and finds joy in nature - despite the startling facts and figures.

We talk about the landscape of Norfolk, and in particular Buckenham Marshes and the walk we took there to witness the incredible display of 30-40,000 Rooks and Jackdaws coming in to roost.

Mark has just made the move from Norfolk back to his childhood home of Derbyshire, and there is some reflection on this in our conversation. 

Please note this episode was recorded over Zoom in April 2021

In this episode I talk to Mike Challis. Mike led one of the walks on our Wild Wander programme. He is a freelance sound artist, maker and educator whose work engages with the sounds of nature.

Mike is known for his creation of SoundHides, straw hut dens in which audiences can listen to recordings which encapsulate the sounds of nature recorded in the respective local habitats.

Mike enjoys making work by walking, creating pieces from the resulting sound material he collects on his journeys. For Wild Wander we wanted him to find ways for artists to connect to the natural landscape and draw focus to their listening sense. 

In this conversation we talk about how we have been exploring our local neighbourhoods during lockdown and how that idea inspired the walk for Wild Wander. We have an interesting chat about what we listen to, how we filter sound and what we give out attention to. We talk about the power of a shared experience and it is worth saying that we touch on the vulnerability of walking alone, as this conversation happened not long after the death of Sarah Everard. 

At the end of this episode you can hear a recoding of Mike’s taken at Mickfield Meadow in Suffolk which is full of the joys and noises of spring. So take a moment at the end to soak it in. 

Thanks again for listening. 

Please note this episode was recorded over Zoom in January 2021

In this episode I talk to musician Polly Wright. Polly’s work encompasses performance, film, text and installation. She explores nostalgia, memory and stories against a backdrop of the rural landscapes of Norfolk and Suffolk.

She often works collaboratively and has created music for theatre, installation, poetry, fashion and dance and performed headline sold out shows at The National Portrait Gallery and Hoxton Music Hall. Her album ‘Sing as the Crow Flies’, a collaboration with fellow composer Laura Cannell was Folk album of the month in The Guardian.

She has also written two full length poetry collections and is one of Norwich Arts Centre’s supported artists.

In this episode we talk about the development and evolving nature of a creative practice and the conditions needed to help our creativity to thrive.

Please listen to the end to hear some of Polly's beautiful music. Enjoy!

Please note this episode was recorded over Zoom in January 2021

In this episode I talk to visual artist Mandy Rogers. Mandy initially trained as a painter before going on to train in art therapy and art education.

For over thirty years she has worked as an art psychotherapist, and as a community artist. Her own art work always continued to run parallel to these other practices, and sits somewhere between drawing and installation.She sees art psychotherapy as a collaborative creative process, exploring the unsayable and allowing new insights and meanings to unfold.

Having developed long COVID after a severe onset she says she has become acutely aware of the calming and restorative power of being in the natural world. Mandy is a deep and sensitive person and I loved hearing about her experiences of Wild Wander and learning more about her work.

Please note this episode was recorded in January 2021

In this episode I talk to artist Sorrel Muggridge. Sorrel trained in Nottingham in performance and visual arts, and has been living and working in Norwich as an artist for 10 years. She makes site-specific live art which endeavours to connect the audience with the landscape they are in and experience it in a new way. Her work can be found in a wide variety of spaces, from shopping centres to seashores, rivers to forests, from theatres to galleries.

We talk about where her interest in the natural world began, the power of walking, what Wild Wander offered her at this time and her hopes for future work.

Please note this episode was recorded in January 2021

In this episode I chat to multi media artist Helen Wells. Helen’s work encompasses animation, film, text, sound and performance to create work that has both a personal significance and a connection to the society and culture in which we live. She has a background in Process Oriented Psychology and this informs her interest in layers of experience and disturbance. Although she tackles big subjects she does so with humour and a light touch which makes it accessible.

In this episode we talk about how she arrived to making this kind of work, conditions for creativity and the joy of being a messy artist. We delve in to the ageing body, how to accept it and how important it is for all of us to hear older voices.

Helen is an activist, feminist and a passionate and articulate artist. 

Helen exhibits regularly in Norfolk and Suffolk and  has created performances for 11th hour  Festival, Kings Lynn and Norwich Fringe Festival and is currently working toward an exhibition on Climate Change which involves Artists and Scientists and will take place in June in Norwich.

Please note this episode was recorded in January 2021

For our fourth episode I get to chat to Dance Artist Helen Lamb.

It was very important to us as part of the Wild Wander project that we met with artists at different points within their artistic careers. Helen is a recent graduate from Falmouth University. Since graduating she has been dancing in projects across the country mostly outdoors and sometimes site specific. She has returned to her childhood home of Norfolk and this is now informing her artistic inquiries. During lockdown she has been dancing in places near to her home and exploring her relationship with the environment she grew up in.

In this episode we discuss how difficult in can be to talk about dance and describe what we do to others. We chat about dance on film and what that has offered to us during lockdown. We also discuss the importance of allowing ourselves to dream big and not limit ourselves with our creativity.

Please note this episode was recorded in January 2021.

Kaitlin’s work encompasses sculpture, drawing and print making among other things. She received her Bachelor Degree in Fine Art from Norwich University of the Arts in 2011 and later received her Masters from the University of Edinburgh's 'Art, Space and Nature' programme.

Her work is concerned with our environment; through explorations in geology, ecology and the environmental humanities.

She creates large site specific sculptures as well as designing participatory projects for audiences of all ages.

In this episode we talk about how artists have had to make the leap to working online and producing digital content and the difficulties that can come with that.

We also talk about the ups and downs that lockdown has offered and how we can keep ourselves motivated.

I am fascinated by her interest in deep time and how through her work she wants to shift our perspective on time (which is generally very human-centric) to one that draws our attention the 4.5 billion year timescale that is our planet. It is her belief that this will allow us to address the nature/culture divide that has potentially led to our climate crisis.

Please note this episode was recorded in January 2021.

For this episode I get to chat to the fabulous Lucy Enskat. Lucy is Artistic Director of Hocus Pocus Theatre, a company making outdoor shows, walkabout acts and immersive theatre shows.

Lucy is a performer, writer, designer, puppet maker, clown, producer, promoter, manager - basically she does it all. Her work is beautiful, touching, at times surreal, deeply human with a sprinkling of magic. I love it.

She has a sensitive nature and cares deeply about the people she works with and the audiences she creates for. I am so lucky to call this wonderful person a friend and have enjoyed working with her on productions in the past.

In this episode we talk about her approach to making and how the art form she is working with dictates the process. We also chat about the conditions needed for creativity to flow. We discuss how walking helps with problem solving and touch on how creativity is innate in all of us.

Please note this episode was recorded in January 2021. 

For our first episode I am talking to theatre maker, scriptwriter and performer Shey Hargreaves. Her work ranges from live theatre and poetry, to audio and video content. She has a passion for using storytelling to explore complex issues such as the climate crisis, our national health service, and the challenges faced by women in science. As well as being a brilliant artist she is also a mother to 3 small children. Her partner is a key worker in the NHS and so she has been spending most of her time supporting her partner and looking after their children. In this episode we talk about the difficulty in juggling careers and children, the importance of art at this time and how vital it is to take time for yourself. We begin by talking about how life informs our art and how her tendency towards oversharing developed in to her one woman show Sick.