News
Continuing City: Arts in Education at All Hallows by the Tower
All Hallows by the Tower has been part of the City of London landscape for thirteen hundred years, and people have lived and worked there for far longer. Clio’s Company and the community of All Hallows have been working together since 2001 on a series of arts in education projects, some also involving the Company of Watermen and Lightermen. In the current series, we use a combination of known historical and imagined but possible events to stage a series of site-specific plays and complementary workshops for primary school children to bring to life the rich and complex history of the church in its context.
In November 2012 London primary school children took part in “Ultima Britannia”, a project focusing on London 2,000 years ago when it was a raw, new, dangerous town on the edge of the known world and All Hallows was a building site where a Roman villa was being constructed.
March 2013 will see a production of "Baited Hooks" an interactive theatre project and workshop set in Tudor London. Children become London apprentices of 1533, and are caught up in the controversies and dangers of the months when Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn is only a rumour.
Early Georgian politics go live
Clio’s Company’s long-standing partnership with Sir John Cass’s Foundation Primary School has branched out into cyberspace as we work with the school (and Lighthouse London, our website design partners for the project) on a web application designed to bring the past, present and future of the school together. While the site is planned especially for, and in consultation with, the children of the school, it also casts new light on Georgian City politics and provides a vivid and sometimes poignant narrative of the lives of inner London children in past centuries.
Common Ground: Hackney Georgians
In May 2013 we will be expanding our Common Ground: Hackney Tudors project to include a new century – the 18th.
This will involve working with a group of local primary school children to bring to life the Hackney of the 1790s. These were years of rapid change, as the new technology of the canal age brought new prosperity, the French revolution brought refugees to an area already famous for its community of free thinkers and radicals, and a hugely increased population brought the need for new building.
Children’s work from previous stages of the project can be seen at www.hackneytudors.org.
Railways, canals, boats and a tidal mill
The House Mill at Bromley by Bow is an eighteenth century tidal mill, a complete and unique survival of London’s industrial heritage. We have known, loved and based projects there over many years. Now we are planning a new pilot, which will take the East London story on to 1848, when the railways were revolutionising all aspects of life and there was conflict between the cultures of water and of rail.
Watercress beds to one-way streets: 120 years of a north London neighbourhood
This intergenerational project is a new kind of venture for Clio’s Company. It already involves archive research, recorded interviews, a local history trail and nearly 200 blue plaques commemorating local residents of the Edwardian era. Further stages will feature drama and gardening workshops and a performance based installation with planted up wheelbarrows and costumed storytellers.
Rehearsed Readings
Clio’s Company stage an occasional series of rehearsed reading of plays that were smash hits in their day, but which have been long forgotten. We aim to discover whether their obscurity is deserved, or whether these are shows that would appeal to a modern audience. The readings take place at various locations around London, including Sutton House, Dr Johnson’s House and All Hallows by the Tower – please email for details of the next one.
Clio’s Company goes to Sussex
2011 saw the staging of our latest venture at Nymans Gardens in Sussex. We were commissioned by the National Trust to work on a new project focusing on the time when the plant hunter Harold Comber was sending home new, exquisite and fragile specimens from all over the world for his head gardener father to beautify the garden that was his life’s work and to boost the social status of his employers.
In “Growing On”, an interactive, outdoor production, the audience found themselves attending a charity open day of 1932, encountering characters of the time and seeing some of the garden’s exotic rarities through the eyes of the people who risked their lives to find them. The cast was Lissa Chapman, Mark Fairclough and Jay Venn. Plans are now underway for further projects at Nymans in future years
Next Year
2014 will of course mark the centenary of the First World War, and we will be working on a production focusing on the rarely examined area of the impact of the war, and of the first air raids, on Londoners.
For further information on any of these projects and events, please contact us by email.