Absolutely Barking

We are looking forward to welcoming artists at the ABSOLUTELY BARKING week 12-16 May, bringing a group of artists together to work up ideas around the sideshow theme.

The idea is to develop the side/boothshow approach. Working with Adrian Schwartzstein and each other to develop pieces or the slightest things that can work in the booths that we created and were ‘beta tested’ at Winter Droving 2025. Adrian is one of Europe’s great innovators, he is absolutely a maestro of performance and audience inclusivity and ingenuity and carries the great carny tradition in his work, we are very pleased to have him work with us on this, it is a privilege.

Eden Arts Director Adrian says:

"We are really fascinated and interested in how the carny/booth tradition worked in the past and how it still has a relevance today. As a performer and director and curator I became drawn to thinking about it through looking at how our accessible town centre festivals work, I was further drawn into it by reading the book Memoirs of a Sword Swallower by David Mannix, and then when we had Stuart Nolan bring the Strange Thing to the Droving, leading me to think about what would a 21^st Century carny/booth/sideshow look like? I have also had the pleasure of getting to know Con and Kim at Fanzini and the National Circus Festival in Ireland who brought the fab SPAILP to Droving 2024, and Lucy at ISACS, Billy at Cirque Bijou, Mikey at Oerol, Liz and John at Walk the Plank, Ajay at Nukhut, Bart at Captain Boomer etc etc and it feels like lots of people who all freely share our enthusiasm for all of this, and sometimes we meet up in Tarrega where there is an annual gathering of European innovators - carny and pop-up seems to look differently through European eyes. I want us to join in with this, it feels like a must do… without even knowing the outcome.

I love the accessibility and immediacy and intimacy of the performance or ‘trick’ in a booth or sideshow, and then think how would we do that now? It is different from the ‘I have a 40 minute show’ approach. It is quite ‘back to the future’….the sideshows were the original outdoor arts/pop-up/street entertainment, rich with slightly ‘freaky’ and direct and frankly desperate to make a dollar people. And they entertained!! They threw ideas and a sideways view of the world at their audience that had the direct transactional relationship with the audience that meant that they might get run out of town if the people didn’t like it!

I think this still has a relevance today. We have basically reached into Eden Arts piggy bank to make this happen, there is no direct funding for it, we just think it is a good thing to do!! We will look after you as best we can, pay the fare, accommodate you and do anything we can beyond that. Let us know if we need to do more."

ABSOLUTELY BARKING:

Is a week Mon-Fri of working together on your pre-existing ideas for sideshows. 12^th-16^th May.

It is a workshop week at Eden Arts base for 12 artists only. All accommodation and transport is covered.

The workshop

Aspects of this will be about how we are managing the audience, and the space, as well as developing creative ideas.

It is also important that we have fun, and in Adrian S’s words that it is an intensive workshop in a creative and friendly ambience.

The artists are all people who we really respect for their talent and creative and social approach – it is a great group and it will be great fun to work together – they are quite diverse in your abilities and experience and knowledge!

In the time allowed it would be good to come with things/ideas that you already have – up to 5 minutes long. We expect there to be up to 12 ‘acts’ so it will be busy! We would like to film the outcome on the last day, as a ‘video showcase’.

The work that the artists make remains theirs – though the booths are Eden Arts’. It would be great to be able to book the booths plus artists to any potential festival etc, not sure how possible that is (ie who could book you all en masse) but we will be sharing our outcome with our colleagues at festivals that we have ongoing relationships with.

We also have our own programming and we would obviously like to include work developed in the booths for things like the Winter Droving. It is also possible that the booths can be made available to you for your work as and when the opportunity/gigs arise.

We also like to have an ongoing relationship with artists, you know that we tend to keep working with artists who we develop that relationship with, and we are lucky to be able to do that.

So, please get back to us with any questions.