Update on 22nd November 2014 - thanks to the support of over 600 funders, we've just reached our initial target, so we're now raising further funds for community story and arts projects we're going to run from Hedgespoken - there are more details at http://hedgespoken.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/the-big-question/ - so please keep reading and supporting the project in any way you can! More funds for these projects mean more stories, more art and more people being reached by the Hedgespoken magic...
Welcome fellow wayfarers and seekers of starlit wonder!
With your help, we're planning to turn a 1960's Bedford RL lorry into a travelling off-grid theatre and home...
If this were a story, it'd begin
something like this:
Once upon a time, there was an artist, a storyteller and a 1960's Bedford RL lorry... They lived in troubled times – sometimes it seemed like the magic had all run out of the world and all that was left was distraction and strife. So they decided to make something amazing, a device for spreading beauty and kindling imaginations, a spectacular creation to reignite the old enchantments hiding at the edges of things, and bring wonder back into the greying world. And so, they created HEDGESPOKEN... A vehicle for the imagination!
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So... what is Hedgespoken?
It's a travelling theatre...
With its drop-down stage, fancy awning and proscenium arch, Hedgespoken will serve as a stage wherever it goes. Whether it’s Tom and Rima telling tales and making mischief with handmade puppet shows, or it’s other actors, musicians or sword-swallowers using the stage-space as part of the Hedgespoken travelling show, our aim is to spread a little old magic by doing what we love. Hedgespoken has the wherewithal to act as a mini-theatre, a cabaret stage or acoustic music venue, anywhere. Perhaps your village green, or that disused urban space, wayside or park – Hedgespoken arrives, makes magic, plants seeds of imagination, and then leaves, in the tradition of wandering bards, travelling storytellers and itinerant puppet theatres and circuses that are so much part of our heritage.
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An off-grid home...
Hedgespoken is also going to be our home. We don’t need much, but we want to make a small, beautiful house. We want to create something that’s from a dream, from one of our dreams. If you’ve ever been inside a proper old showman’s wagon, or a well-kept vardo, you’ll have some idea – the kind of place you go into and it takes your breath away. We want this to be something that people look at in 100 years time and go, ‘Wow – they really made that well! Isn’t it beautiful!’
We’ll employ local craftsmen and craftswomen to make something that’s beautiful, and robust, and as low-impact as we possibly can, so that we can be virtually self-reliant wherever we go, using solar power and wind to supply our electricity needs, a woodburner to heat the house and cook our food and a bathing trailer (made from converted horse-trailer) for us to tow – as well as a bath and a wood-fired hot-water system, there’ll even be a self-contained compost loo.
The truck is in amazing condition. Having been kept undercover for much of its life, there's virtually no rust on the metal body or chassis, and the back, which is made from solid oak, is immaculate. Nevertheless, the whole body of the theatre/house is designed to lift off the RL chassis, in case the truck is ever not fit for the job any more.
As for the fuel, the truck currently has a petrol engine and has been semi-converted to run on LPG. We plan in the long term to adapt its fuel usage to run completely on a more sustainable source such as recycled veg oil; this will ultimately involve replacing the petrol engine with a diesel one.
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A dream and a promise...
More than anything, though, Hedgespoken is our dream – we’ve thought long and hard about how best we want to live our lives, how to do what we love doing in a way that serves our communities and fulfils our dreams of living close to the land in a creative, sustainable way. Hedgespoken is our best shot, our way of taking our skills and our love of story, of art and magic, and living in a way that means we’re using all of that, all the time. And, it’s our promise, to ourselves and to our children, that we will refuse to live half-lives. Hedgespoken is a gamble – to live on the road is to embrace uncertainty and certain kinds of insecurity, after all – but it’s a gamble that we have to take, because we dreamed this in the week that we first met and we knew then that we had to find a way to make it real. With your help, we’re getting there, in Hedgespoken style, living lives that are full, not empty, nor half-lived or hollow – with your help, we’re already creating something beautiful, allowing something of the magical world to be born.
Play a part in our story...
To make this dream become reality, and to really begin this Once Upon A Time, we need money to pay for materials, craftspeople's labour, engine and bodywork improvements, tools and paint and suchlike. Here below is a rough list of the essentials needed. Where possible and desirable we'll use salvaged and recycled materials, and with the materials that are bought new, we'll make sure they are as locally and sustainably sourced as possible (for example the Western Red Cedar for the exterior will come from a sustainably managed woodland just a few miles down the road).
- Welded metal frame
- Western Red Cedar box exterior
- Woodburning stove for truck
- Drinking water tank
- The stage - boards, proscenium arch, and a winch, supports, etc.
- Folding seating for our less-agile audience members...
- Appropriate licenses to drive the RL with a trailer - no small matter!
- Doors and windows (possibly double glazed) and skylights and portholes of various shapes and sizes
- Insulation
- Engine repairs - the RL's in great condition (having only done 7,000 miles!) but inevitably needs some TLC.
- Paintwork and signwriting for the truck exterior and stage
- A new spare wheel and fittings
- Interior woodwork for walls, cupboards, tables, etc.
- Furniture, a mattress, and so on
- The LPG conversion - half-done, needs completing (it'll half our fuel costs - eventually we'll put in a diesel engine and move over to alternatives, but not while the original engine's still in such good nick.)
- Solar panels
- Wind turbine - with this and solar, we aim to be totally self-sufficient for power, year-round
- Bodywork repairs on the truck - again, just a few bits need touching up here and there
- Shutters
- Extendible lift-up roof section over the cab to allow for comfortable sleeping space.
- Electricals - 12V storage capacity and system, including stage-lights
- External canvas structure to provide a separate covered space
And for the bathing trailer:
- The trailer - probably a second hand Rice horse-trailer
- Hot water system (small woodburner, water tank, etc.)
- Bath, taps, pipes etc
- Insulation
- Windows and doors
- Paintwork
- Labour costs
- Compost loo
Throw a coin in our travelling circus hat...
We need to raise an estimated £25,000 in total to make this vision become a reality, and we cannot do it alone. This is where you get to play a part in our unfolding story by pledging what you can to make this dream happen, and by sharing this campaign far and wide!
We are very excited about the possibilities of a project like this being funded by the people to whom it will mean the most - a true grass-roots hedgerow of pledgers!
Receive gifts from the hedge in return for your generosity...
As you will see, there's a veritable highwayman's trunkful of good things to be had in return for your financial help! Rewards range from heartfelt handwritten 'thank-you's to bundles of art, poetry chapbooks featuring the widely-loved wordsmithing of Tom Hirons, storytelling workshops, art tuition, original hand-painted and highly sought-after original clocks and paintings by Rima Staines, and the incomparable golden tickets to the very first secret happenings amongst the trees - Hedgespoken's maiden performance! Or you can even become a Hedgemother or Hedgefather and get a lifetime ticket to all our travelling wonder-shows, and your name carved into the stage!
We think all of these are uniquely worth pledging your coins for, but you can help us in many different ways. As well as donating money, you can help us greatly by sharing this campaign-film and page with as many people as you can via social media, email, websites, blogs, and crumpled note passed hand to hand. The biggest reward of them all, we feel, will be taking part in the rebuilding of a liminal magic, and getting to help manifest a travelling off-grid theatre and home, the like of which has never before been seen.
If the target isn't reached, the building of this project will take much much longer than planned as we squirrel away pennies from our low-income busy lives to keep the project afloat, and may even grind to a halt.
If we raise funds above the intended target, we will keep them in the Hedgespoken account to pay for continued modifications and additions to the truck-theatre-home, to keep it running, as well as pay for unforeseen expenses. But these extra funds will also allow us to bring Hedgespoken Travelling Theatre further afield - perhaps to your Hebridean hilltop, or your Connemara beach, to begin to spread the magic even further into the misty fringes of these green isles and to lands beyond the sea.
What went before...
Both of us have experience of living semi-outdoors, and long for a return to lives that are more rooted among trees and dew and blackbird song. Rima has lived in converted Bedfords twice before in her life - once as a baby and small child when her parents travelled with her over four years in their old Bedford CF to the foothills of the Alps, and again a few years ago when she co-converted a Bedford TK horsebox (featured in Shelter Publications'
Tiny Homes - Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn) and lived and travelled in that, selling her art as she went. Tom has lived in an interesting variety of small spaces along the way, including tipis and caravans, ever since he moved into a hut in a field full of hares in the 1990's. Both Rima's
artwork and Tom's
writing have gathered a considerable following over the years, a loyal community of supporters worldwide who love the work they do. Now is the time that all the folks they've met along the way can help support this long-held and important dream.
The what-ifs...
Of course, in embarking on a project like this, we know there'll be many hurdles to jump and challenges to overcome, but we feel that working with professional craftspeople who are helping to plan the build meticulously beforehand will allow us to tackle problems well before they become disasters, and work creatively to solve them. We know too that we'll learn a massive amount along the way, and make this creative project - our biggest yet - as unique and beautiful as all those we've worked on before, but even more so, because we'll not be doing it alone.
Stay with us on the forthcoming journey...
As this campaign progresses, and after the funds have been raised, we'll be keeping you updated with regular blog posts at
http://hedgespoken.wordpress.com We'll tell you about the inspirations behind this project, talk about the artisans working with us to create it, about the stories and arts we will purvey, and of course, about the actual truck-build as it grows! You'll be able to see where your pennies have gone, and enjoy the magic that they have made possible. Of course, once we're living and travelling in this wonder-wagon, you'll be able to share that momentous journey with us via the blog too, not to mention find us on a wayside near you, woodsmoke rising from our chimney, lamplit windows lighting a stage set and eager faces ready for the story to begin...
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Why this matters...
Hedgespoken is our attempt to try and live our dream right here and now in this life, fully and heartily and with all the colours available to us. It matters because of the flame that burns in all of us to really live our dreams, despite all those voices - inside and outside - telling us that that's not possible. It matters because by sharing soul-nourishing arts with others in this way, we are re-weaving a tribe of those who yearn for this old magic that feels at once delightfully strange and very familiar. It matters because sitting under the stars by firelight together is a fundamentally old and human thing to do, and because when we sit there in the woodsmoke and owlsong and crackle of darkness, we Remember...
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With your help, we'll take old stories and new stories alike out on the road and weave a trail of that Remembering all across this many-storied land and beyond. Who knows what might happen next?
Thank you in advance for your generous support - we really can't do this without you! As we say in the film - see you under the stars...
