Footprints provides opportunities for everyone to freely access their culture, heritage and environment in a really fun way by creating performances, workshops and ‘happenings’ based on real people’s stories. Project work is tailored to the site and the people who have used and currently use the site.
Stowmarket Stories
With the generosity of Historic England’s funding for an Everyday Heritage project Footprints has been able to develop ‘Stowmarket Stories’, a year long project, for the people of Stowmarket.
Stowmarket Stories was created in response to the rich tapestry of oral stories in the Stowmarket area. The company wanted to capture the spirit of Stowmarket and celebrate it with the people who live there.
Many people said that they didn’t have a story to tell and yet we collected many touching and beautiful stories and captured them in our hearts.
In January 2023 Footprints began to deliver workshops to a variety of Stowmarket community groups. We met and worked with some truly amazing people who were passionate about their community. We created a ‘Washing Line of Stories’ with residents in care homes and in partnership with Get Suffolk Reading and with Stowmarket & District Dementia Community Group. We offered workshops to people with a creative flair at the Dairy Cottages, home to local woman Emily Wilding. Our creative workshop allowed us to explore its history, imagining scenes from Emily’s life. Another highlight was our creative workshop at The Regal cinema and theatre one of our participants said “It was a great day.” We went into schools and care homes and worked with the Food Museum at the Beer Festival and at the Storytelling Festival and we met people in the Marketplace while performing our Cabinet of Curiosities.
Our aim was to share as many stories as possible about the people of Stowmarket and celebrate the community.
As we were collected our stories, playwright Caroline Roberts was shaping them into a promenade play performed by Footprints in July 2023 moving through the streets of Stowmarket. ‘Stars of Stowmarket’, was beautifully performed by a team of professional actors. The performance was framed by a magical storyteller, taking a young archivist around Stowmarket, to discover people’s stories, the real-life Stars of Stowmarket!
Stars Of Stowmarket
In August Footprints partnered the Food Museum to deliver a free Theatrical Summer School for young people.The young people explored the spaces of the Food museum and learnt to devise theatre responding to site. They treated their families and friends to a slick and magical promenade performance at the end of the week long course.
Laura Kloss, education officer said “The children were brilliant and the performance was a great showcase for the Food Museum.”
Our workshops were warmly received by groups of all ages. People enjoyed the chance to share their stories, or come together to unleash their creativity. Our unique performances, created from the lives of ordinary people, helped people to engage with the heritage from Stowmarket’s past and see their town with new eyes.
The Food Museum, Stowmarket helped us to develop the legacy for this project by helping us to set up an exhibition celebrating the stories of Stowmarket.
