Collaborations with A Moveable Feast

A Moveable Feast workshop

One of Armchair Puppet Theatre's main collaborations is "A Moveable Feast".

A Moveable Feast is a workshop on Workshop for workshop artists. Set up by Tony Gee with Arts Council funding and backing from the Centre for Creative Enterprise and Participation at Dartington College of Arts, there have so far been five Moveable Feasts, with funding for a further three.

The participating workshop artists are given an opportunity to expand their view of what is possible and what Workshops are all about, by being totally immersed in Workshop for several days.

As well as dreaming..."Chaos, taking risk, collaboration, site specifity, exploring a theme, opening the group, busting the expectation, breaking new ground, learning about others, leading and following, performing to each other, spectating for each other, playing with available resources, looking at the stories inherent in the group, connecting art forms and practice, being in a particular environment and transforming it, employing media, forms and disciplines other than your own and experimenting without financial obligation or expectation"...are some of the things that go on.

The Feasts have been instrumental in bringing together multi-talented groups of workshop artists from all over the South-West of England. As the name A Moveable Feast suggests, workshoppers have eaten well at these residential events, and so, in the creative company of fellow workshoppers, they have at last felt some recognition for their courage and expertise. Amongst many other things, these Feasts have spawned a Public Workshop Adventure for 150 people that culminated in a Tower of Dream Balloons, the Participatory Arts Network (PAN) in Bournemouth, an Artists' Network in the Blackdown Hills, a Sizing of the Workshop Community and a series of Skill Sharing Play Days. Workshop collaborations have sprouted amongst the participating workshop artists and work opportunities have been generated that have impacted on the profile and practice of Workshop across the region.

Armchair Puppet Theatre's Ken is an assistant workshop leader for A Moveable Feast . As a participant in many of the Feasts, Jill from Armchair Puppet Theatre, has run a different variation of her cake decorating workshop as a finale at each Feast. The picture below shows the Wondrous Box of Truffles cake.

Link to the Moveable Feast website

www.themoveablefeast.co.uk
is a new website about art workshops. Moveable Feast is a group of artists - performers, poets, puppeteers, painters, musicians, dancers, sculptors, textile artists - who run collaborative workshops.

“It is my belief that Workshop is a contemporary form of arts practice and that its effects could be profound on how we learn if we go beyond scraping the surface of its potential.
"So 'What is Workshop?'
"Workshop's history is unwritten. It has succeeded in eluding institutionalisation. There is not 'A Workshop Theory'. Workshops are something you 'just do'. There is no body of literature that expounds their history and no professional body to standardise practice. This has the advantage of allowing great licence to play, invent, improvise and to be responsive to the moment. But, conversely, it allows events to be dry, fixed and didactic or simply disorganised and still claim the title, 'workshop'."

Tony Gee, "Workshop. A Moveable Feast". (see Books) www.dartington.ac.uk

"There's nothing else like this for community and participatory arts practitioners."
Katie Venner, ex Director of Education and Training, South West Arts.