Modern fairy Modern Fairies with Caroline Larrington and Faye Hield.
Hello, I'm Faye Heald. And I'm Caroline Larrington. Welcome to the Modern Fairies podcast series two.
And this is Episode one, Introducing the Modern Fairies Project.
This is our second podcast series about the project. Modern Fairies is a Ladies.
The project's aims were to find out what would happen if we gave 13 artists, musicians, filmmakers,
writers and poets a collection of around 50 traditional tales and songs about
fairies and about lovely ladies and ask them to make new art responding to them.
And we also wanted to find out what audiences would make of the results.
So we had the sharing at Sheffield University's Festival of the Mind in September 2018.
A workshop at the stage in Gateshead in January 2019 where we could work through material and do some rehearsal,
and then we have full performances at the stage in April 2019.
And then finally, there were some performances in Sharings at the Sound Post Singing Weekend in Dunsworth near Sheffield in May.
Twenty nineteen thirty is officially opened now, but the creativity is inspired.
It's continuing in various offshoot projects and the first podcast series we introduce the collection of folk tales
and songs about fairies and talks about the kinds of stories the artists might choose to explore in this series,
too. We're going to share work produced by the artists and talk about their processes gathered into themes that the artists felt were important.
This first episode will introduce those themes and introduce our artists.
So the original five themes or the five-fold is given to the artists.
And you can hear all about them in series one were Fairyland Time and Space Fairy Wives and Fairy Lovers, Fairies at work.
And that includes helpful fairies, fairies and children and lonely ladies.
Those of women who transform themselves or are transformed into hideous hacks and the artists
could choose whatever they liked or indeed go off and do their own research into fairy themes.
And some of the went off on different tangents altogether. It was surprising for me what got picked up on wasn't popular,
particularly what the new research turned up, the topics that really captured the artist's imaginations.
Partly corresponded with and partly diverged quite a bit from the original folder
organisation when we looked at the work that the artists actually produced.
We decided to group together the songs, stories, drama, poems, music and artwork.
Similarly, in two distinct strands, and these include two things from the original folders fairy time and space and fairies and children.
But the artists also evolved to new things, which you will find in episodes four and five.
That's fairies and the environment and fairies and other transformations.
There were 13 artists involved in creating new work. Is it alone or collaboratively?
We included a variety of art forms and styles.
The linking factor was that everyone had previous experience of working with archival folkloric material in some form.
The project was first conceived as a musical one, and so musicians were key from the outset.
I'll start by introducing myself. I'm a singer and editor of traditional songs, a newly a banjo player,
and I also researched the folk scene and why traditional music remains important to people, hence devising this project with Caroline.
And now we'll tell you a piece about all the other artists involved in the project.
So first, Murray Waterson. She's part of the Waterson family musical dynasty and she thrives on communal music making
while developing highly original and distinctly English performance styles of her own.
And not only does she sing. Murray also makes visual art and animation.
Thompson was raised in a musical family on the Fair Isle, where stories of Selkies trousered Greek Fixx and other fairy folk are still widely told.
Her main instrument is the piano Kaede accordion.
But she also works with a range of unusual instruments and composes music rich with the textures of natural, created and manipulated sounds.
When MacPherson was born in Liverpool and raised in Wales and he trained at
the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts before settling in the Highlands,
there, he worked for some multi instrumentalist, um, plays with Schubel Nifty Sold House and various other groups.
And he also makes films. And he even wrote a short story for this project.
Barney Morse Brown, a.k.a. duo Tone is an alchemist weaving his pioneering, unconventional cello, playing a.
Full use of Lupa into blankets of intimate sound. Ben Nichols is a singer songwriter, double bass player, a multi instrumentalist.
His work crosses many genres. He's a member of a whole lot of bands and he was a co-writer on the Mercury music prise nominated Nadine Shaw album.
His work has been featured on many TV shows in films and adverts.
Lucy Farrell is a member of the Furrer Collective, as well as a solo performer and appearing in many of the line-ups an innovative collaborator.
Many have been entranced by Lucy's haunting and quintessentially English voice,
subtle and instinctive musicianship, and her ability to connect emotionally with an audience.
Lucy works with ballads that inspire her own compositions, telling fantastical stories imbued with handed down beauty and strangeness.
So thanks to the musicians, but from an early stage,
we also thought it would be really interesting to involve writers and visual artists in the project, too.
Sarah Hesketh is an exciting young poet now just completing her PHC and creative writing.
She's published several poetry collections and done some extraordinary projects, including one on poetry and people with dementia patients.
Barbie is an award winning writer and someone who's very interested in traditional mediaeval material.
She's best known for her brilliant work, perhaps in retelling the Canterbury Tales.
But she's also performance poet and her new young adult novel, The Infinite has just come out to great acclaim.
Terry Wendling is an award winning blogger on folk topics,
hugely knowledgeable and experienced writer and editor, widely known within the folkloric world.
Jackie Morris, the amazing illustrator, was originally part of the project.
But due to the time pressure connected with the success of her book lost work, she had to drop out.
But nevertheless, she had really important input into the early part of the project.
Fortunately, we were able to get Natalie Reid to join us later in the project, and she brought her unique visual imagination and illustrative style.
And we also had a filmmaker, Jim Locky, who made a video record of the project filming our final sharing,
and he also made his own extraordinary art film. It's difficult to pigeonhole all these creatives into one box or another.
Many people worked across a variety of media, so they brought other talents into the creative mix.
But others had no understanding of the different creative practises. So getting to know what each of the needed to work was a process of exploration.
We also have to mention to the extraordinary work put him by and the Belle Isle creative project manager,
sound technician and all round organisational genius.
And then there's Mary, our outreach officer, Stephen Hadley,
our research associate who did so much of the audience research and our industry partners.
Amy Leach at the stage and Helen Bell and Jenna Walker at Sound Post.
They were invaluable in understanding how our weird and wonderful, somewhat unconventional project could come face to face with audiences.
Now, you've been introduced to the project and its staff. It's time to listen to the next episode to hear what the artist actually did.
Our next podcasts episode is about Fairyland as a different space and with a different imagining of time from the normal world.
And it's called fairy time in space. But first, we're going to call you into this magical world with the song that led our audiences into the theatre.
The sage phrase calling on song invites you into a new space, assuring you that although you thought fairies were long gone,
have been driven away from the woods and groves, they are actually still here.
What inspired you when you came to compose this song?
Faye I was struck by Chaucer's description of fairies in the introduction to the wife of Bath and thought
you had so many resonances to what we've been talking about in the early stages of this project.
Yes, it was so old. I love that fairies seem timeless and that I could collaborate with Chaucer was just magical in itself.
It seemed like an introduction to the project,
an invitation in there's a song in the rapid dancing wells called The Calling On Song, and it's sung to introduce the dance.
I used this tune and some of the words to frame Chaucer's words.
Then I went about making it relevant to our project, adding specific things that described what we were doing, taking out things that jarred.
And I got some more contemporary words from Sarah. One of the poets and incorporated those.
The work was in smoothing them all out and avoiding the rough edges between the three different sources and making it hold together as one voice.
I struggled most with the contemporary words like glitches, but felt that they were important to include.
After a lot of singing through spaces for the dust to settle and re approaching it, the song is settled into something that feels natural to me now.
That's when I know it's finished. When there are no awkward corners left and it makes sense to me literally under aesthetically.
Well, let's hear some of it. Good people, I pray, get attention.
Come here, all we have for to say they're firing line colon less with your eyes open wide.
Now we pray you'll hear about how we shall work together by chance to tell tales of dark deeds and road burn.
Saying to lead. You saw the.
In days of old, long past and gone now, all of which we sing with great regard.
Her country was riven with Ray, the high queen, and her sprightly health hold to high health and delight in murder.
So green rejoice in the village, in the forest fire.
In the carax. Fall betwixt and between. But these are long days passed and gone.
Now we hear no more. And so far, the prayers of old priest and bold friars drove out.
On our thoughts are the Thirroul Blessing Hall Chamber Kitchen.
Well, they overrun Reverend Storey walking past old stories.
Forgotten gold flaks turned to dust in.
So the. But never were we hollowly redon.
They found a new power, sir. Aside from the prices they have lately been Heddon call to arms.
Now ready to ride to take back Built-up City Skyline Casts Shadows or US Mickey Ayten Street at dawn falling dusk and inStar Lights Glan Sideways.
You catching your dream. And that song really worked when it was played over individual headsets,
warm by the audience to give them a sense that they were being invited into a different space.
And they also made those who weren't coming into the performance look around and
realise that there was something mysterious going on that they weren't part of.
If you want to see what we're talking about.
Don't forget to go and have a look at the Modern Faries Web site where you can find more of the work with illustrations,
a film of the whole performance at this age in Gateshead, and lots of interesting blog posts from the artists about their processes.
And in the next episode, we'll be looking at what the artist did with the theme of fairy time and space.