On a beautiful Summer’s evening community writers and their family and friends from across Fenland and Suffolk met for the first time at the Fenland Orchard’s Project, Wisbech to hear local actors bring a new verse drama to life.
These first-time and returning writers joined facilitator Belona Greenwood’s Voices of Forest & Fen online workshops to research and create historical and modern stories from the Fens which were then woven into a verse drama – Fen Voices – which took inspiration from Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood,
An audience member described the event as ‘…moving, unexpected…’ whilst the writers enjoyed seeing and hearing the fruits of their labour, meeting with the other people who shaped it, making new friends and meeting new people with shared values. “It’s all about people and place, and this was brought together well. Feels like the start of something, not the end.”
Introducing Voices of Forest and Fen, a creative writing project inspired by Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood that explores the richly historic landscapes, stories and lives within Fenland and Forest Heath. Join writer Belona Greenwood in a series of free creative writing workshops to create a verse drama of what it is to live and work here.
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced writer, these online and in-person workshops are for all levels of writing experience. Led by writer, screenwriter and creative facilitator Belona Greenwood, the sessions will explore what the Fens and forest mean to you, and help you build a sense of place with words.
You will be guided through the process of research, writing, and editing. At the end of the workshops, participants will have created a narrative of voices and portrayals of the land, culminating in a final performance piece. We hope that some of the writing will become public readings at festivals and events around the region.
Read Belona’s introduction to Voices of Forest and Fenhere.
Marketplace’s area of operations stretches from the fens to forest and heath, strongly atmospheric, richly historic landscapes full of stories. Nature writer Robert Macfarlane describes entering the Fens like ‘crossing a border into another world.’ Equally, walk into the forest and you can listen to the trees bearing witness to all that has occurred around them.
Capturing and writing creatively with the community about these unique worlds is what a new Marketplace community project, Voices of Forest and Fen is all about. Inspired by Dylan Thomas’ 1954 verse drama Under Milk Wood, our text will embody the special nature of our landscapes and the lives lived there past and present.
Those of us of an older generation might remember Under Milk Wood narrated by the hypnotic voice of Richard Burton full of strong, lyrical description of place and the comic, compassionate deeply human voices of the local population. It was a complete portrait haunted by the spirits of the dead. This is what we aim to achieve, to invite members of Fenland and Forest Heath communities to come together in a series of writing workshops to create our own verse drama of what it is to live and work here.
The workshops are open to members of the community who want to help create this picture of where we live. We will explore what the fens and forest mean to you as individuals and build a sense of place with words – researching lives from the past who haunt our landscapes still, figures who do not have to be famous, it could be that you write about a great grandfather who had to leave to go off to war or an aunt who never set foot outside a village. We will write about the lives of people in the past, and how they lived, as well as to capture the voices of the present. We will also create monologues and dialogues from water, trees, and sky. After all this shifting land so altered over time should have a voice too.
The workshops are open to beginners and those with experience of writing. In six two hour sessions, I will lead you through the process of research, and writing and finally, will edit everything together. There are two groups, one for the fens and one for forest and heath.
The content of the project is very much guided by you who know the stories, have smelt the changes in the wind, and walked the paths.
We hope that some of the writing on the way to the creation of a final performance piece will become public readings at festivals and events around the region. In the end we will have our own version of Under Milk Wood – a frieze of voices over time and descriptions of the land we share that no one will ever be able to forget.
Belona Greenwood, Writer, Scriptwriter and Creative Facilitator
It was a shock. I lost all my arts in education work and income overnight. At first, I pretty much panicked in that I applied for any work, anywhere with a sense of dread that I would end up having to leave behind a creative life I had spent so many years trying to put together. At the same time, suddenly there was a space which I couldn’t negotiate productively. I would have loved to have used the time that opened up before me creatively, but I was too anxious about money. And then I benefitted from an emergency grant from the Arts Council. I was so grateful and promised to use my time well, even as I disinfected everything in sight, even as I limited going out to an early morning gallop with the dog, even as I stressed about my keyworker daughter exposed to the public.
Developing Ideas
Gradually, my heartbeat slowed, and I began to think and write again – in that gloriously beautiful weather in the first year. I sealed off the world and zoomed. It has made me think of hybrid theatre forms and I have discovered the potential for intimacy, as well as theatre’s wider online reach, but still, a year on the yearning for the energy of live performance is very strong.
I count myself lucky. I was commissioned to write a play with funding put in place before the pandemic. It was a stop start experience for the theatre company – even as auditions, and script read throughs were held and rehearsals began, they were postponed, the project settling into a waiting time as theatres closed and new variants emerged and made being together impossible. I think we learnt patience this year.
There are limitations to not being in the same room. Part of my working life is spent in a writers’ room with two other scriptwriters where we develop television and radio drama. It is a crucible where we hammer out a series, it is so much harder to interrupt each other passionately, the creative energy is missing in action. We adapt but it is not evolution.
Belona Greenwood’s book The Flying Shop of Imagination, is full of inspiring ideas to get children writing and inventing.
Final Thoughts
It is a year since I have spent time in a school with real, 3D children. Delivering an arts project to six-year-olds for a day in maverick weather this week was brilliant. A real return. But I cannot forget. We all carry a sorrow for the suffering of then and now. I cannot but believe that as artists we are in a fragile peace, we live in uncertainty and with that there is a challenge. Out of chaos comes creation.
This case study is part of our project evaluation for 2019/2020
Writer Bel Greenwood was commissioned as part of our Creative Conversations in Isolation programme to bring together a group who were interested in creative writing with a landscape and environmental theme. Everyone had to get used to being on Zoom rather than meeting in person, but the group enjoyed getting to know each other and experimenting with their writing guided by Bel. People were finding new connections to their local environment and nature through lockdown, this group were no different, giving them lots to write about. They produced a blog to share their work and have continued to meet and write.
Recognising an increase in people’s connections to their local environment, this commission was a way to develop interest and community audiences connected to this theme.
Images reads “It’s about generating a sense of imaginative connection with the landscape – they have a very strong relationship with the landscape and I want them to generate a successful collection of work. I hope I’m building confidence in people in their own stories and starting them off on an adventure.” – Bel Greenwood, writer.
The group had mixed previous writing experience from academic papers and books to one creative writer. Their passion for the natural environment unified the group.
Each workshop consisted of a combination of surprising writing challenges and the opportunity to collaborate and share. As well as the experience of having a professional writer critique and support edits in work produced.
Key outcomes for the group were to improve their skills in writing creatively through their connection to the landscape. Also to support them to increase their confidence in sharing their work publicly.
Graphic showing participation and audience numbers. Facebook: 1191, Participants: 9, Twitter: 4417Pictured: A photo of a robin singing. Text on the image reads: “Dear Robin. If I’d only sat up and taken the time to smell the damp earth and appreciated the beauty of my garden instead of considering my work a trial to endure, things could have been different. By Jaqui Fairfax”.
