RiSING Arc
October 2021 - October 2022
Collaborative project with artist collective Fourthland and the many beings that became woven into the work over the course of a year.
Rising Arc birthed a space, land and realm for healing and the dissolvement of categorisation and separation. Camborne Community Centre supported a form which held no owner or hierarchy. A form that bridges the spaces between, allows confusions and questions, supports inquiry, uniqueness and deepens connection.
Rising Arc was a year long internal and physical space for Cornish and Syrian locals to exchange their gifts during monthly gatherings. All individuals are the gift bearers of their individuality, their stories, their crafts and bringing of their hearts.
The project was a continuation of Fourthland's previous work during the summers of 2019 and 2020 with refugee families living in Cornwall, in connection to Kestle Barton. Supported by Feast and Arts Council England.
The communities and people who have been drawn to the project connect through many things, one being their severing from land and culture. There is a long history of of ethnic cleansing in Cornwall through hundreds of years of deliberate undermining of Cornish people, Cornish culture and Cornish language. This element of Cornish history that still ripples into modern day, is an echo of the severe mass migration of people all over the world who have been severed from their home lands. This was the story present for some resettled people who attended Rising Arc groups and gatherings.
A painfully recurring talking point during poetry sessions and talking circles has been the deep wounds of land 'ownership' and land 'use' alongside the oppression of Cornish people. Many had ancestors who worked in the mining industry that came to an end with the final mine; South Crofty, Camborne, closing in 1998. This marked the end of a proud 4000 year mining heritage which saw a wealthy county slide into economic and industrial decline and a severing from a globally connecting industrial purpose.
Cornwalls folk lore, mystical entities and landscape were shared through the project. The expansion of myth and magic by participants during sessions was a tool for healing and reimagining connection to land and lineage. Reinterpreted and amalgamated stories from across continents resided in a collective performance that closes the project.
Rising Arc wove new mythologies about Cornwall's dwellers and home makers, whether people have arrived here in recent years or still never left. The Morris dancers, Syrian Dabke dancers, lace makers, children, train enthusiasts, poets, historians, recovering alcoholics, grandmothers, grandfathers, miners, Cornish speakers, Arabic speakers, bakers, cooks, babies and those we have all lost. This web of connectivity and creative offerings became the art work itself. The weaving of community and web of collective memory bared an opportunity to reinterpret and evolve such ancient stories embedded in Cornwall's mineral rich earth.
