Crab & Bee (Phil Smith & Helen Billinghurst) have been gathering the ‘old stories’ of Albion, using the map of their own instincts, travelling on foot, and always ‘being there’. The result is an anarchic retelling of the old folk tales, a banishing spell for nostalgia. These are not the stories of the medieval manuscripts, or their nationalist retellings for the BBC or the readership of the Times. This is how the old stories tell themselves these days, in their own places, the places where their genii loci dwell. Professor Ronald Hutton called the resulting book "an inspired retelling of some of the finest tales and tale tropes of England, at once very old and very modern".
Join Helen and Phil, and publisher Dan Sumption, for readings from the book, a discussion of how it came about, and an exhibition of original artworks featured in the book.
Crab & Bee is a collaboration between Helen Billinghurst, painter and walking artist, and Phil Smith, writer and performance maker. Our collaborative work reflects our shared interests in alternative cultures, ecology, folklore and walking in different landscapes. In 2019 our project ‘Plymouth Labyrinth’ – an extended walking and making project with different community groups and partners across Plymouth – culminated with an exhibition at the RAAY gallery, Stonehouse. We have given workshops in Cardiff, Huddersfield and Salford, presented papers at conferences including that of the Royal Geographical Society, and have performed a number of diagrammatical pieces at a variety of venues, from the Royal Conservatoire Scotland to the Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography. These have included ‘A Jubilee Scrying’ (2018), ‘Life and Death Walk’ (2019), ‘Nets, Webs & Carrier Bags’, ‘Boatburn Finale’ and ‘Around The Hills’ (all 2021), ‘Séance For Stonehouse’ and ‘Leadworking’ (both 2023), and ‘Patterns, Diagrams and Place Stories’ (2024). Triarchy Press published our essays and poems as ‘She Is The Sea’ (2019) and our book ‘The Pattern’ in 2020. We have made short films for The Box and UNFIX Festival (both 2021). We were co-organisers with Claire Hind of the ‘Walking’s New Movements’ conference at University of Plymouth in 2019, and with Claire were editors of ‘Walking Bodies’ (Triarchy Press) in 2020. Helen’s solo exhibition ‘Walking Diagrams’ was shown at the Roland Levinsky Building in 2019. Phil’s most recent publication is ‘Albion’s Eco-Eerie: TV and Movies of the Haunted Generations’ (Temporal Boundary Press, 2024).
You may also like the following events from Centre for Folklore, Myth and Magic:
Also check out other
Exhibitions in Todmorden,
Arts events in Todmorden,
Entertainment events in Todmorden.
