Spring Rising
Emergency Exit Arts
London, Great Britain
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In March 2018 Emergency Exit Arts collaborated with digital arts company, Output Arts, to create an event in South London that celebrated the start of the spring season. The life cycle of a plant was used as a metaphor to create art work that reflected themes of community, change, opportunities and heritage with people from different generations.
The collaboration between the two companies supported several strands of work:
- An illuminated procession with lanterns, which led people to a public event and the creation of several light installations developed through artist-led creative processes with children in schools, family groups, a youth group, older people and a refugee group attending language classes
- A poem created by Sophia Walker that included words and ideas from the community about their neighbourhood. This was recorded and set to music as a soundtrack for a specially created film involving the participants and showing spaces and places around the local area.
- An Illuminated Garden created in a public park with specially commissioned work from artists including:
- the premiere of the poem and film projected on a large scale screen in the garden
- giant flowers, some containing the sound of people’s conversations
- a huge light box containing tree shapes where children could add their own silhouettes
- the opening of a giant seed pod using pyrotechnics to reveal a bouquet of people’s hands reaching out
- a mobile transparent snow globe containing a woman tending her garden
- interactive projection works using a web server that enables people to connect, communicate and play through drawing and writing
- large illuminated building blocks for children to play with
- circles of fires where people could sit, think, talk, eat and drink
- performance by EEA’s Street Theatre Squad that explored nature and technology
The project was commissioned by the London Borough of Southwark, funded by Arts Council England and attended by 3000 people in one evening.
Spring Rising was produced and created by Emergency Exit Arts (EEA) and Output Arts
Poem Sophia Walker and members of the East Dulwich community
Music Ben Raine
Videos Emily Taylor, Jonathan Hogg, Andy D’Cruz
Installation Artists Thor McIntyre, Emily Tracey, Jess Dickinson, Cristina Ottonello
Drummers South London Samba
Artistic Director Deb Mullins
Event Producer Kathryn Bilyard
Production Manager Ben Raine
Procession Artists Di Jones, Georgina Mackley, Cristina Ottonello
Lighting Designers Craig West, Ben Moon
Illuminated Dancers Marcina Arnold, Maria Scialdoni
Pyrotechnics Frank Earle-Whiffen
Event crew Gordon Allum, Liam Cahill, Emma Corck, Emma Garofalo, Asher Heigham, Billy Mullins, Sam Noble, Matt Stort, Kenji Takahashi, Chalkie White