Associate Artist Rhiannon Armstrong: Pollination and Ripples
Developing my sensory practice with Oily Cart by Rhiannon Armstrong
As we prepare to announce Oily Cart’s new Associate Artist, we want to share and celebrate some of the incredible work of our former Associate Artists, that happened mostly behind closed doors throughout the pandemic.
Rhiannon Armstrong is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is sensitive and interactive. We felt a natural synergy with the ways Rhiannon works so we invited her to come and play in a sensory way.
How did I get here?
I hear a lot of talk about ‘challenging work’: this is usually presumed to mean work that challenges its audience, rather than the audience’s capacity to challenge the assumptions and processes of those that are doing the making.
There is a radical inclusivity at work at Oily Cart that I wanted to immerse myself in, so when Ellie Griffiths became Artistic Director and invited me to be Associate Artist, I readily said yes.
Like many aspects of my life, my evolving work in sensory performance now lets me sit astride two worlds. Depending on the context:
- I am both enabled and disabled
- I am both a migrant and a national
- I am both a young people’s sensory maker and an experimental performance/live artist
Being in both worlds stops me getting too comfortable in my perspectives and helps me question mine and others’ assumptions. I also get to bring philosophies and practices from each context and let them influence one another. I intend to keep melding, percolating, pollinating worlds.
What did I do as an associate?
I began by working as dramaturg on Ellie’s first two productions as Artistic Director: ‘Jamboree’, and ‘All Wrapped Up’. This was a great way into sensory theatre for me. I brought experience and skills in ensemble performance-making to the company while also expanding my understanding of sensory theatre, and the barriers faced by audiences and collaborators alike.
An associateship can give both company and individuals space to develop successful long-term working relationships. I was collaborating artist on ‘Something Love’, and commissioned to create a sound work for ‘When The World Turns’, with Oily Cart and Polyglot Theatre (Australia).
My final act as associate was to travel to BIBU for my first taste of the international sensory theatre scene. As an independent artist it is rare to be able to attend these symposia and festivals. Oily Cart’s invitation to join them at BIBU to meet and network with international colleagues was meaningful indeed.
Making my own sensory work
Oily Cart also encouraged me to seek funding to begin creating my own sensory work, providing mentoring, in kind studio and production support, and introductions to families and schools.
The Covid-19 pandemic derailed a lot of my plans but thanks to support from Oily Cart and my funders (Unlimited, Jerwood Arts, and Paul Hamlyn) and their belief that I had something unique to offer and would make a good sensory performance practitioner I was able to engage in hugely rewarding research and collaborative explorations with staff and students at Swiss Cottage School; Sam and Lucy Bowen; and Tim Spooner.
The idea was to use field recordings from home life with Sam and Lucy Bowen and some information discussed in interview to create tracks through a mix of collage and musical response. The process would be particularly attentive to Lucy’s musicality, considering possibilities for remote creative collaboration across time and distance, and without relying on linguistic communication (Lucy is non verbal).
Following an online interview exploring the role of music in Lucy and Sam’s life, I received recordings from Sam (Lucy’s mum) of Lucy playing and vocalising at home. I compiled and composed the resulting tracks as an attempt at remote, time-lagged, non-linguistic, creative collaboration.
This work was research and development (under the title Cradled, The White Noise Factory, and then Tilde), and as such there is no “finished product” (yet). I am letting the ideas percolate, relationships grow, and influence whatever comes next.
What do I want to say about my time as Associate Artist
The main thing I want to emphasise is how much of a ripple effect my time as Associate has had. I have just finished a spell as artist in residence at Ashmount School in Loughborough with Attenborough Arts Centre. I would never have undertaken this residency before or have even known about it. Tim Spooner and I made a whole new sensory listening device which has already travelled with me to specialist schools and into family homes as part of remote and in person sensory sound collaborations. This was Tim’s first experience of making work for those who face the most barriers to access: our conversations about intended audience and the complex and intense nature of barriers to access have recurred in my work with other companies who don’t have experience in the sensory sector.
You can find some of Rhiannon’s Instagram posts from Bibu here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cdxf7RlIxAf/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CdxoJs4o7t0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cdx1gZvoix0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CdyM0n_o2GZ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Oily Cart’s Associate Artist programme champions and supports disabled artists to develop their sensory theatre practice and develop leadership skills to create a more representative sensory theatre making sector. Our 2022 Associate Artist will be announced soon.