Tags: 2011

After the success of FIB, MBD was approached by promoters from both the street arts sector and the visual arts sector to create work for their own arts environments. With this in mind MBD decided to leave their theatre roots behind, and embarked on an incredibly ambitious and pretty exhausting programme of work called THE FOUR SEASONS…

It started with SPRING in 2005 and has finally reached its epic finale in 2011 with the premiere of SUMMER and the staging of all 4 seasons in Lincoln during Frequency Festival. http://frequency.org.uk/

Looking back I'm reminded of so many memories. The all nighter before the premiere of SPRING as we tried to build our first outdoor installation on SAND! Pushing an Austin Sprite through the streets of Leicester at 6am before we squeezed it through the City Gallery doors with only millimetres to spare. The howling gales during the get out of Winter in Winchester, and the late nights, early starts and endless road works as we commuted to Lincoln on a daily basis to install SUMMER.

But with the blood sweat and tears (and there really were blood sweat and tears!) we've had so many wonderful moments. I'll never tire of the many children running around SPRING getting squirted by water and sticking their heads into beehives. I'll always remember the subtlety of AUTUMN and how it connected with the homeless in Leicester. Winter was when the Four Seasons really started to take shape and offered a through line and over arching narrative. With Winter my memories will always be of how it really touched people. It's quite a strange feeling to make people genuinely cry. SUMMER is a true testament to collaboration. Alongside MBD's artistic directors are a group of associate artists and freelancers who work with us to help deliver the vision. Summer would not have been possible without creative input from Steve Gibbs, Kate Unwin, Motion Design and Margaret Reeves.

There were times when I think we all wanted to throw in the towel, but standing in Lincoln after visiting all 4 installations, I felt incredibly proud. Yes we could have done things differently, after all a lot of the journey was about learning. And yes I would have loved just a little more time and money so that everything was perfect but the essence of The FOUR SEASONS is there. With some seasons you have to hunt a little harder, but Polly's life and her connection with the mysterious Gwyn Penn is now finally complete and, although WINTER concludes the series, SPRING follows straight on to start the cycle over again.

And the question we are left with back at MBD HQ is…… What now? All I can say is I'm sure the lessons we learned from FOUR SEASONS will never leave us completely As Mr Penn tells young Polly in one of their discussions, things come back in different ways "Like Caterpillars and Butterflies".

So it’s the start of 2011 and Paul and I are tapping away at our computers writing the national portfolio application. Like so many other arts organisations out there and indeed most people who work in the public sector it’s a pretty scary time. In Leicester we’re desperately trying to save The City Gallery, libraries are closing and lunchtime discussions involve whether or not Leicester City Council should spend quite so much on flowers! It’s a pretty depressing world out there, which is why we need the arts NOW more than ever. Oh and maybe some flowers! There are so many reasons why the arts are important but just on a basic level it can make people smile and that’s good enough for me. And I have to say on the plus side of this economic farce, it’s given me the opportunity to really question why I’m an artist and what type of work I want to make. The majority of the projects we create are free to the public and take place on high streets and festivals where members of the public just stumble across our work. This fact has become increasingly important, there’s nothing quite like watching a group of young people stumble across our work, realise its FREE, participate and find out it’s FUN. The unexpected nature of our work has become increasingly important, we’re always trying to find new ways of offering the public an artistic experience. FIB is a huge game of musical chairs, Whispers from a Rickshaw takes place in a rickshaw and Communication Breakdown is a Treasure Hunt. Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to find new ways of disguising that what we’re actually making is in fact art and hey maybe that’s not such a bad thing, especially if it means more people take part. The year a head is incredibly uncertain for so many people and the arts that do survive have quite a responsibility. So as I read the doom and gloom headlines of more and more cuts I’ve decided to make a tiny promise to myself that when I see a member of the public having a jolly good time at an arts event (not just ours) that I will cling onto that moment as proof to myself of just why the arts are so (excuse my language) BLOODY IMPORTANT.