This week involved more planning for North Hykeham and involved more circulating of the new posters that had arrived for the Haecca (see picture in last post). More excitingly, I was involved with the first steering group meeting for Waddington. It was comprised of locals, school teachers, parish councillors, project historian Dave Reeves and the artsNK project lead. The meeting has occurred very far in advance of the event which is taking place in spring, so at this stage everyone was discussing the themes we would want to work with in Waddington’s history. It is home to the RAF base, many ancient rights of way, medieval field systems and old clay pits and brick works. It was a great meeting to be involved with, I love learning about the different target locations’ character, history, identity and social tensions.

This week I was introduced to the true inter-disciplinary and inter-departmental spirit at artsNK. Their sister organisation ‘Transported’, based in Boston, were putting on a project called Illuminate, which explored Boston’s involvement the seventeenth century colonisation of North America and combined their heritage-inspired artistic performances with the town council’s Christmas lights ceremony. I was asked to play a specially created piece of music at the head of one of two processions that would converge in the town square. The musician for the other procession was a melodeon player called Dave Gray who I had previously met around various festivals and the folk circuit- small world right! We worked yet again with a rather stressed Jo Freya who was composing music for the Haecca at the same time! It was a joy to work with them both and also to be involved with another great project.

Me playing at the head of a lantern procession for the Illuminate project