Ken and Berry - Ben Winger

The Search

bwinger — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 12:54:17 +0000

Project Preview

A community treasure hunt with story at its heart. We were approached by Fringe by the sea to create a piece of theatre that would engage with residents of North Berwick outwith the central festival hub. We chose to focus on one particular street (Lochbridge Road) and engaged the people living there over 3 months in the run up to the festival. We finished as FBTS opened, with a large scale quest on the street.

Focussing on intergenerational play, our provocations and events were delivered for all ages and made with accessibility in mind.

Project Story

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DUCK? ‘Missing’ posters appeared overnight along the street.

DUCK TRACKS & CLUES chalk sprayed duck prints and our duck symbol appeared overnight along pavements and walls.

RUBBER DUCKS ON DOORSTEPS every household on Lochbridge rd

received an unexpected visitor. It included a request to decorate the duck and tell its story. We made a website where people could upload photos and stories of their decorated ducks on ifoundaduck.co.uk

FUNish FAIR

A run-down fairground arrived in town with a ‘Hook the missing Duck’ games stall & Clairevoyant. This was a chance for us to playfully collect story ideas from residents

SAIL & STORY DROP

A mysterious scroll with a poem penned by a lost fisherman and sail piece posted through all doors. With the instruction to design part of a new sail and drop it into the ‘sailbox’ inside the local shop who were keen to be part of the project.

EVENT INFO

A letter arrived through all doors with information and an invitation to come along to decorate the boat and attend the Treasure Hunt.

BOAT DECORATION

Residents painted and decorated the boat with the community using spray paints and continued to decorate sail scrolls.

THEATRICAL TREASURE HUNT – during the Fringe by the Sea Festival Performers and clues transformed Locbridge Rd for the day in the quest to find The Fisherman and his boat. Hidden treasure awaited them at the beach.

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Households

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Months

Treasure Seekers

Project Footage

Some films we made during and after The Search

Project Summary

We loved doing this project. Catherine Wheels were incredible throughout and it was brilliant to get back to the theatrical world again!

You can download our report on the project here.

Download Report

The post The Search first appeared on Ben Winger.

The Hunt

bwinger — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 22:30:54 +0000

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During the first lockdown in 2020, Kerry Cleland and I were lucky enough to be recipients of the inaugural Make Space development funding from Catherine Wheel’s Theatre company.

We wanted to create a theatrical community treasure hunt that built on the increased sense of community spirit brought about by the pandemic.

Project Details

We started with different provocations and playful installations on our street. Seeing how people would interact with them, and what sort of responses we might get. We were really keen to look at ‘whole family’ play and how people might begin to break and bend rules again after such stringent lockdown requirements.

After that, we spent some time in Catherine Wheels’ unit working with Gill Robertson to develop some narrative and structure for the treasure hunt and came up with the Character of Mr Yellow and The Colour Suckers. We were enlisting the community in the fight to reclaim our colour.

Project Summary

The Hunt took place over a weekend in September, with the phonebox shack arriving as if by magic in the darkest night hours. Participants were required to solve a series of clues and find numbers that, when combined would give them the phonebox telephone number. They spoke to Mr Yellow and were presented with the next colour that needed saving to display in their window. We invited 6 families at timed intervals to ensure social distancing and other Covid-19 measures were in place.

PS...

For those who might find it interesting. Kerry and I submitted a video application for the Make Space fund. I’ll be putting up applications (both successful and not) for archive and sharing purposes. You can watch it below.

The post The Hunt first appeared on Ben Winger.

5 ways…

bwinger — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 22:30:10 +0000

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The idea behind these videos was to provide quick and informative ideas using one easily accessible material in 5 unique and engaging ways with someone under 5.

We used chalk, cornflour, water, pom poms, rubber bands, and scarves

Project Details

Working with Kerry Cleland and our youngest son, we developed these resources by experimenting and playing with the materials. It was ideal! Playing for work.

ways

Materials

Pom Poms*

*no official count data….

The Films

The post 5 ways… first appeared on Ben Winger.