Sledge Blog

The Alternative Village Fete

As one of the organisers of the innocent village fete this Summer I was intrigued to hear about The Alternative Village Fete curated by UK creative and performance art production company, Home Live Art, at Theatre Square on the Southbank on Saturday 5th July.  Commissioned by The National Theatre as part of their Watch This Space outdoor summer festival, this free one day event was billed as a ‘traditional village green, re-imagined for the modern age…with an eccentric urban twist’.  A refreshing concept and what a fun filled colourful bag of tomfoolery and child’s play it was too!

The concrete and urban setting of the National Theatre square was transformed into an alternative village green environment complete with fake grass, fete stalls, bunting and street performers interacting with members of the public and playing with the form of the traditional village fete. Interactive arts and crafts stalls such as the carve your own vegetable sculpture or animal and a knitting stall promoting British sheep farming I Knit London whereby enthusiastic knitters attempted to knit panels to cover a large wire mesh sheep sculpture, proved very popular with young and old alike.  In addition cake stalls, farm produce, and the Vauxhall City Farm filled up the cosy (if somewhat over crowded) Southbank environment.  Alternative traditional fete dancing came in the form of The Bollywood Brass Band and The Wild Hunt Bedlam Morris dancers – a dark and menacing Morris side, dressed top to toe in black garments and intimidating warrior masks and swords. Not your average Morris dancers!
Performance artists mingled with the public to prod and probe the traditional fete form and challenge our preconceptions. One such artist collated video footage of members of the public performing their own country dance moves throughout the day (with their consent!) and then he physically re-constructed these moves into a whole dance routine which he performed on the Village Green at the end of the day. The Society of Wonders interpreted traditional fete games including a silent Margaret from the WI (not sure if Margaret is an up to date paying member of the WI or not…) conducting a stare out competition over a table with members of the public whilst, alongside, another actor provided a running commentary describing each and every facial expression and the meaning behind them.

Wacky stuff indeed and the public seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves too amongst all this quirkiness and eccentricity!   Although full on performance artistry is generally not everyone’s cup of tea and WI cake I think we should applaud those who continue to mix it up and challenge us from the daily grind of every day life since its projects like these that remind us of our creative and playful sides that we can tend to forget as adults.  As adults, we don’t tend to make time for proper innocent playtime and being playful with each other.   Its events like these that remind us of our inner child and encourage us not to take ourselves too seriously.

But don’t worry if you missed this alternative village fete, the real thing is coming to Regent’s Park on 2nd and 3rd August where we have innocent playtime aplenty.  There you can witness a very traditional village green complete with a town crier, village idiots and farmers, the Baldock Morris and the Old Palace Clog dancers, duck herding and dog agility, welly wanging and a good old fashioned tug of war.  We’ve got the real WI selling tea and cakes as well as hosting a decorate your own cake stall.  There is also plenty of amazing live music from acts such as The James Taylor Quartet, Son of Dave, Imelda May, Wallis Bird, The Correspondents and The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.  You can get involved in some dancing at the Alfresco Ballroom with line dancing, tea dancing and jiving from The London Swing Dance Society.  And a new feature to the fete this year is The Village Voice – a platform for spoken word, wordy comics, authors, open mic and poetry readings sponsored by 4th Estate publishing and curated by progressive theatre group Nabokov. 

For more info go to the innocent village fete website. Innocent fun and smiles guaranteed.

London Calling

Last week I popped down to London Calling the annual music industry jamboree that takes place at Earl's Court. I attended two interesting sessions, both of which were concerned with creating value, but in slightly different ways.

The first was a panel of agency people talking about examples of great music / brand tie ups. There were some fairly well known examples, such as Bacardi and Groove Armada, but perhaps the most interesting was Absolut Machines. This campaign involves two groups of musicians building sound installations, which people can go online and have a play with; the machines are also part of a touring exhibition. Someone made the good point that brands often forget about their heritage when they get into music. Absolut Machines is a good example of a brand staying true to itself.

Brands also need to convince people that they have a genuine passion for music, Red Bull, through their Music Academy, have achieved this. For the last ten years they have been helping artists get started in the business and now they are setting up their own label to leverage the position they have created. An interesting example of a brand's passion giving rise to a new business opportunity. The only criticism of Red Bull was that they had kept their activity in music too quiet.

The second panel looked at mobile music and asked the question; what is the value of music in the digital age? For handset manufacturers the value is in the user interface and adding extra services. With a ratio of 20:1 for illegal to legal downloads, tools such as Sony Ericsson's Track ID which helps people find out the name of a track they are listening to their mobile's radio and then purchase it are the kind of tools that will add value.

For both brands looking to engage consumers through music and mobile operators looking to make money through music the key is finding new ways for people to access music.

Bandstand

Not being English, it took me some time to figure out what Corsa (as in the car) meant when they invited me to “an eccentric, eclectic festival” in London’s Old Billingsgate.

On May 3rd, Corsa presented ‘Bandstand’, an evening described as the Mad Hatter meets a traditional English tea party, put on by the people behind Bestival, headlined by Rob da Bank and Mark Ronson . The event’s website is great and set high expectations – illustrating a magical park-like world with fauna, animals and surreal characters. This identity ran through all communications, including actors playing characters from Alice in Wonderland and uniquely branded Corsa cars parked outside. The Old Billingsgate interior was dressed with park benches, super sized teacups, quirky signage and eccentric look-alikes. Bringing Bestival to the city while targeting the core market for Corsa – urban dwellers in their (early) twenties.

Except from a few cars outside the venue and their name on the Bandstand logo, I’m not sure how much there was in it for Vauxhall. With close to 8000 sq meters they could have been a lot more innovative in how they integrated the cars and the brand and still have accommodated the audience, who unfortunately seemed to disappear under the beautiful arches of this listed structure.

It was a great club night out in London and I love the idea of turning a music event into a journey of discovery, exploring secret gardens and hidden corners. Unfortunately though, the event was too spread out to achieve the intention of creating an “intimate” indoor festival. Was it truly individual and totally different as the website claims? Alice in Wonderland seems to be a repeated theme across events recently, and I hoped to experience a more unique and surreal world - more Monty Python and less Mad Hatter!

The Power of Disorientation

I was lucky enough to get a ticket for Punchdrunk's The Masque of the Red Death at the Battersea Arts Centre on Saturday night. I'm not normally a big fan of theatre, I find it hard to suspend my disbelief and buy into the conceit of actors on a stage (this says more about my shortcomings than those of theatre in general). The Masque of the Red Death was a very different evening, it is audience involvement theatre. You plot your own path, explore a myriad of rooms and come across different scenes as you move through the space. Whenever you feel like it you can even pop into a David Lynch like cabaret show and have a drink before exploring further.  No two people have the same evening because of this you end up spending a lot of time afterwards comparing notes and trying to combine knowledge to understand the story.

The success of the evening was in large part down to something that it is really important to think about when designing brand experiences - the power of disorientation. On arrival the venue looks shut, you are directed down a side street and enter via the fourth fire exit on the right. Everyone is given an identical masque to wear and told not to talk. You walk through five or six small dark antechambers, separated by big black curtains and from then on in you have no problem suspending your disbelief. Complete immersion in an amazing experience.

Son of Dave

Great stuff. For more on Son of Dave

Wishing Wall

I've always fancied bringing in the New Year in Times Square (Trafalgar Square doesn't prompt the same desire). I just have a feeling that New Yorkers would get properly involved, unlike Londoners who are a bit sceptical about choreographed fun. I also like the idea of the confetti in Times Square. This year the organisers implemented a lovely simple idea; New Yorkers could submit a wish for the New Year which was then printed on a piece of confetti. This is yet another example of the fashion for people becoming involved in public events in interesting and surprising ways.

Check out some of the messages here 

Interesting 2007

Russell Davies put on a brilliantly home spun event at Conway Hall in Holborn on Saturday. Interesting 2007 saw an eclectic bunch of presentations delivered in three, ten and twenty minute slots, topics ranged from how to chop wood to the life lessons to be drawn from Ibsen and the muppets. Talks were interspersed with short bursts of frippery such as the technology correspondent for the Independent playing Linesman of the County on the saw.

 

What made the event so great was that people were talking about things they had a passion for rather than topics that fitted a particular conference agenda. Lloyd Davis, for example, who I believe spends a lot of time at conferences talking about his day job, gave a brilliant cooking demonstration using 'molecular' techniques that saw him reinvent the great british breakfast. A fried egg created from beans and potato live on stage!

Sledge was involved, donating plates and cups made out of reconsituted vegetable matter and a country mile of bunting!

iPhone

The iPhone cometh... need I say more...?

Bowling is Cool

Anyone who has seen The Big Lebowski or King pin knows that Bowling is cool, if you still don’t believe me, get your ass down to Bloomsbury Bowling off of Tottenham Court Road this place.

La Cabina

A throw away comment about getting stuck in a toilet in Italy led to a discussion about similar moments of anxiety and Paul mentioned a film he'd seen years ago about a man who got stuck in a phone box. I think it might be this one. Whether the Sledge blog is the right forum for discussing obscure Spanish horror films from the 1970's I'm not sure, but if not here then where?