Yearly Round Up 2020
Playing with light and water for Óró.. in An Cheathrú Rua, September 2020
2020 was a strange year, but in some cases, surprisingly busy. I've realised recently that I haven't done the best job at keeping you all up to date about my movements over the last year so I thought I'd write a round up of my 2020 in the arts - and stick to positive things.
It seems like a lifetime ago, but in January, together with the wonderful Rebecca Gregson, in association with The Writer's Bloc and Kresen Kernow we ran workshops for the Kan Rag Kernow Yowynk project. We worked with local Cornish schools to write new songs inspired by the work of John Couch Adams, the Cornish astronomer who discovered Neptune, all of which included some Kernewek decided on by the children. I had a fabulous time flouncing around Kresen Kernow in a top hat pretending to be Adams and answering all the kids questions and teaching them some Cornish. By February they had worked with a composer and we had a concert to show off their incredible work.
Around that time I also released a new poetry video filmed by Sam Cavender: The Library of Alexandria
As the first lockdown was beginning, I was with family in Cornwall. I spent my time writing poems as hopefully as I could - some of which were included in Sam J. Grudgings' project Poems To Keep You Company.
By April, it was announced that I had been commissioned by New Creatives to produce an audio piece about the 'Brain Drain' of Cornish youth moving out of Cornwall for work. I spent time interviewing people, writing, recording and editing over the next few months. I wrapped the project in November and will let you all know as soon as it is available to stream. Here's a little info: https://callingtheshots.co.uk/meet.../taran-spalding-jenkin/
Along with poet Sam Brown, we also organised and online festival of Cornish language poetry in the group Lien Kernow. The videos are still available to watch there if you missed them the first time. I also made the first of many batches of lockdown pasties...
May saw the release of Florence Browne's New Creatives project about the resurgence of Cornish language among young people, for which I was interviewed and commissioned to write a short poem in Cornish on the subject. You can listen to it on BBC Sounds and I highly recommend it. Our Words Sing Still: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08dwg1z
At the beginning of the year I was invited to join a multinational ensemble of artists to go to Ireland and create a piece of theatre that linked us all together as part of the festivities for Galway2020. The show was called Óró... and it was about journeys, in every way possible. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 our first two weeks of exploration and group activities (in April and May) had to be conducted on Zoom. They were intensive, and a brand new way of working to all of us. At that point we had no idea whether the show would go ahead, and if it did in what form? Fortunately, but the end of August it was deemed possible for us to travel - so I packed up and headed to Galway for quarantine and a covid test (we were all negative and lived in pods on site, with social distancing and masks where distancing was impossible, and plenty of other strict rules besides)
For six weeks, we explored, developed, wrote and rehearsed, still unclear whether we would have a show, or even an audience. By the end of September we performed a sold out 8 show run with no more than 30 people at a time. Not a word of English was spoken, only Irish, Scottish, Cornish, Frisian and Basque. It was an experience I will never forget. Hopefully, a touring version will come to Cornwall in the future. Here's a review of the show in the Irish Times:
I was published twice in Issue 8 of The Poets Republic in September with two Cornish language poems.
I recorded a voice over for a short film by Luke Hudson which was release in November. You can watch Tewedh Tamm here: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CH-o-yInJVC/...
I also recorded and wrote a poem for Benjamin J Larham's Cristmas Postcard which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/YL9VO8p-Jrk
And finally, in mid December I began streaming twice a week at twitch.tv/thecornishwriter playing games, chatting and telling stories. You can see some highlights here: https://youtu.be/4Yf-y6-9z5A
All of this while continuing to run Tonic online all year with Chris Beale and Pascal Vine. Thank you to everyone who has joined us once a month throughout 2020.
I have definitely forgotten some things, but it has been a packed year. Hears to another, hopefully better, packed year in 2021