SongMaps Rye is a free community project bringing together people from all walks of life to explore, through the arts and sciences, challenging questions about how climate change is affecting Rye.
A team of acclaimed artists, brought together by two London-based arts organisations, StrongBack Productions (https://www.strongbackproductions.com/) and Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions(https://speaking-volumes.org.uk/ ), will use poetry, music, and the visual arts, over five workshops. These will be informed and inspired by leading artists and scientists, conservationists and the real-life experiences of local fishermen, farmers and young conservation activists.
The five workshops will take place between March and May, including talks by conservationists from Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, anthropologist Kate Giles and the citizen scientist group, Strandliners, led by Andy Dinsdale. These talks will serve as inspiration for the artists to work with participants to collectively design visual SongMaps to chart the changes affecting Rye with templates for responses and solutions.
StrongBack Productions is a small London-based arts charity, who bring artists into communities via projects that reflect those communities back to themselves. This is our first project in East Sussex having been introduced to Rye by our chair Susan Benn who lives locally. We have gathered an exceptional team of artists to bring their considerable skills, curiosity, and expertise to this project; artists who enjoy real collaboration and are already engaged in multidisciplinary work bringing arts and sciences together with communities.
In my role as artistic director of StrongBack, I was curious to find out how towns like Rye, on the front line of rising seas, are dealing with climate change. This led me to create the project with our partner organisation, Speaking Volumes, as a means of exploring how to bring our artists and ideas with people from all different parts of Rye together to share resources, information, and skills, to ask questions that allow us all to find out more and seek imaginative ways of offering solutions.
Months of fundraising have reaped rewards and we have received support to implement this project from Arts Council England, Rother District Council, the Chalk Cliff Trust and the Sussex Wildlife Trust. Their support enables us to offer our workshops free to participants and to assemble the following unique creative project team.
French dramaturg and writer Antonia Taddei is the co-founder and director of xtnt, a Paris-based art / theatre company redefining the role of the performing arts in contemporary society. Antonia has specialised in designing innovative, multidisciplinary participatory programs for the company. Poet Francesca Beard has vast experience of working in and for communities through workshops and collaborations including with the Wellcome Trust to produce science informed poems that inspire social change and community activism. Rye poet, S Morgan is the author of nine books and runs the Avocet Gallery in Rye Harbour, nurturing connections and networks of local artists, writers and makers.
Visual artist Mo Langmuir has a background in environmental biology and is a multi-disciplinary practitioner using social art to explore being human on a shared planet. Mo will join us from mid-March following her current residency in Germany. StrongBack producer Sally Wood will design templates of workshop games for all ages. Fresh from her 2022 summer stint as operations manager for the London charity, The Ministry of Stories, Sally led workshops with 11-16 year-old creators, to design the character and world of games and hosted 8-12 year olds and their families to play the escape room. I will be offering my services as an experienced composer across theatre, radio-drama, TV, film, opera, chamber music and musicals to join this exceptional team in what we hope will be a fun and informative exploration of where we are, what are we taking for granted and what we can do.
SongMaps Rye begins Saturday, March 4 at Rye Creative Centre 1:30pm – 3:30pm.
Anyone curious to find out more should come along, meet the team of artists, hear how the project will work and what will be expected of participants. Veteran fisherman Paul Hodges will give a talk on the historic importance of the fishing industry in Rye and its many transformations along with his own experience as a local fisherman.
Once more we throw out this call to everyone in Rye: participants wanted. No previous experience or knowledge is required, just curiosity and commitment. We are looking for 30 participants aged 13 and upwards.
Image Credits: Susan Benn .