Hannah Nicklin

Hibernate!

Image shared by Smithsonian’s National Zoo on Flickr via a Creative Commons License.

Just to let you all know that I shall hopefully have my first ever proper game played at Larkin’ About‘s Winter games event. I’ve been coming at the world of pervasive games and contemporary performance from a largely writerly point of view so far, hence my affinity for the soundwalk form, I think, and although I love crafting soundwalks, I thought it would be good for me to have a go at something looser, and more game-y (ludic, I should say) and force myself out of control.

I thought something simple would be a good place to start, so it’s roughly a treasure hunt/capture the flag kind of cross, the rule set as it stands thus:

Hibernate!

For 8-20 players

Set up
Your normal habitat’s food supply is under threat because of a Summer of floods and damp weather, it’s getting cold and you need to prepare for winter, so you’ve had to venture into the city to find food…

Rules
- To be played within a small area of dark city-space.
- Up to four teams (3 will work best, I think) – the Door Mice, the Voles, the Shrews and the Weasels.
- Each team wears a coloured glo-stick in their team colour and gets a certain number of the same colour, unsnapped.
- The aim of the game is to collect pieces of ‘food’ back at the nest.
- Players can only carry one piece of food at one time.
- There are 2 sizes of food, blue and red, blue food is worth 2 food-points and requires two animals to carry it, they must link arms to pick it up.
- Players cannot communicate using anything other than the word ‘squeak’, but they can mark routes with their ‘scent’ – snapped glo-sticks.
- If a nest is unguarded, the food stored in it can be stolen.
- The winning team is the one with the most food within 10 minutes. OR The winner is the first team to a certain number of foodstuffs and all at the nest within the time limit.

Needed per iteration:
- Glow sticks of up to 4 colours
- ‘Food’ hidden around the space, not too grouped together. Painted ping pong balls are best.
- Something to signify a nest

So there you go. Simple, I know, and I think for the next one I’ll try and play with the form a bit, but just as Walk With Me was my first 10 minute test of the soundwalk form, so Hibernate! will hopefully be a simple test of game-like stuff.

I’m currently working with the Larkin’ folk to iron out a final rule set, and all being well it should get its first test on the 27th of November in Manchester. Exciting! Continue reading…

Nightwalked

And so another piece gets rolled over into the past tense. Nightwalk, York reached the end of its official life-span last Saturday with the close of the Illuminating York and Take Over Festivals. The offical site (http://nightwalkyork.tumblr.com/) has been amended and appended with some of the lovely feedback I got over twitter.

The picture above was taken by Katherine as she walked around the streets where it was happening. She took this picture of a couple who did the whole piece whilst holding hands.

It was a very odd feeling not to have been there while it was going on, but time was short, and the 5 1/2 hour round trips to York wearing so I didn’t make it up after the main testing/re-edit. Huge thanks to @Katherine_ann for being around to check people were OK, an wave those off as wanted it. She thinks she saw off roughly 100 people over the couple of days she was there, and other people were doing it in the days between the 27th and 30th as well, so all in all, a larger audience than I expected. There was growing coverage for it too – as before (with Rain Reminds) people didn’t really know what to expect, but after the first outing, word got out, people invited other people (I saw a surge in facebook invitees) and it eventually made it onto local radio and papers, as well as the Love York and Science City websites.

A brilliant reception, too, so much so the York tourist board have showed preliminary interest in a slightly modded one that will work for a bit longer, so perhaps Dark York may even become a fixture of the city. Like the moonstone books, where you could slip between the stones at night into a slightly different world.

I’ve left the download link up for any curious ears, certain parts of it wont work in situe now – the park where it begins will be shut, and references to bonfire night will stall a bit – but if you are interested in some the stories and sounds that could be found in Dark York, do have a listen. Headphones if you please. And go breathe in some cold Autumn air.

Thanks to Katherine for all her hard work, to the festivals for having me, and also to the brilliant Lantern Music for their musical contribution to the piece – a very happy first collaboration, here’s to many more.

Where next?

I hear whisperings over at @umbrellaproject, both of past soundwalks, and also something… bigger.

Pitter patter, pitter patter.

Arts Cuts: the verdict.

Image shared by Articulate Matter on Flickr via a Creative Commons License

So you may have seen the http://supportthearts.co.uk site that I set up in the run up to the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). It was developed in response to my and others’ disappointment with the approach of other campaigns that only approached one side of the debate, and often in an alienating way. Well the Review has passed, and the repercussions of the announced cuts are beginning to emerge. I was asked by Arts Professional to comment on them, and I thought it was worth reproducing my responses here.

What impact will the cuts to ACE and the DCMS have on the arts infrastructure?

I think that two things are going to suffer most in the light of 29% cuts to ACE, nearly 25% to local government and 100% to non STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) teaching in Higher Education; firstly regional and community theatre – much regional and community theatre relies on investment from local authorities, which facing massive job losses and the pressure to privatise their services will be hard pressed to see the arts as an investment. And secondly: innovation and education; Churchill famously said “without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.” Cuts to the higher education system and a subsidised arts sector stripped to the bone and forced to rely on private investment will get us both coming and going.

What’s your worst fear, your highest hope, and the scenario(s) you think is/are most likely?

My worst fear within the industry is the fetishisation of the 80s ethic. Many people who found the turn towards box-ticking repellant seem to hold up the days of living on a shoe-string, making urgent, simple pieces – generally whilst living on the dole – as a paragon of creativity. This is not to say that shoe-string work isn’t valuable, but art and artists are; as a country we should acknowledge that. We also need to acknowledge how such a fiscal environment mean people with caring responsibilities (often women), or from underprivileged backgrounds, find themselves unable to consider making art – we can’t afford to lose those voices.

My greatest hope is that the industry stands tall and we challenge ACE and the community to revise how it thinks about funding art. Just as in the greatest period of national debt the big idea of the welfare state was born – I believe the arts need to think big ideas about how and what we fund. Bureaucracy has its place, but we need to tackle the perception (or reality) that box ticking gets you funding – how people are assessed – how many 100% funding is offered to new innovative work, work with RFOs to work out how best to absorb their cuts and assess them, shift focus to compensate for the greater losses of the regions, move away from the big buildings (the RSC, the ROH and the National could well consider getting their budgets from Tourism) look at digital technology as a cheaper way of doing certain things, and create a nationwise community of mutual assets – space, and expertise – to fill as many gaps as possible. We also need to look into measuring the impact of disinvestment in the arts on the economy and society. Dealing in hard facts is repugnant to some, but they don’t half help when lobbying politicians. The most important thing is to keep art alive (and in all the UK) so that as we lobby and state our case we have something to take forward – not a corpse to resuscitate. Continue reading…

Pecha Kucha Coventry

I am currently squirrelling away at a redraft of Nightwalk, York, so in the meantime and for your delectation; the video of my presentation at the Coventry Pecha Kucha Night – Theatre in the Age of the First Person.

For those of you on non-flash devices, try here.