The theme for the 2024 Being Human Festival – Landmarks –got Madzine researcher, Jill Anderson, thinking of how the landmark of a lighthouse might be a restorative object. From this point, she came upon my cabinet project, and thoughts on Lancaster’s local Plover Scar lighthouse being hit (in 2016) and having to be restored . She approached me and fellow collaborator, visual artist and printer, Charlotte Done, to see if we’d like to cook up a project idea for the 2024 festival.
Cue many emails and conversations and expanding then whittling of ideas and we came up with Lessons from the Lighthouse, a series of linked events funded by PACT at UCLAN, the Madzines Project to form part of the nationwide Being Human festival. Our focus was on the ways it means to be human, how we might explain and share those ways to a non human (the lighthouse), as well as other humans. We also decided to push the notion of humanity a bit further and explore what the lighthouse might have learnt from the experience. For this we needed a mobile version of the lighthouse, and commissioned Revamp Raccoon.
Our conversations revolved around the idea that lighthouses offered both comfort to the homeward bound sailor and warned of dangers in the vicinity. We were curious as to how the two sides of the metaphor would play out for in the conversations through the project.
As we discussed the plans, we realised Light up Lancaster coincided with the Being Human Festival. It seemed too good a coincidence to ignore. And added a second, drop-in workshop to the events, to solicit more ideas on what it means to be human – from the perspective of younger people. And so we had a five-staged project:
1. A walk to meet Plover Scar, the lighthouse at the mouth of the River Lune, in Morecambe Bay, to consider the elemental home of the lighthouse. How it felt being out on the limb, out of a human comfort zone.
In July we led a small group of hardy walkers out to Plover Scar, eight miles towards the bay from Lancaster. Incidentally this was towards the end of my 14 years of living in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. I didn’t go out to the light very often, not wanting to disturb the birds who fed and roosted there. It was a big deal. A saying goodbye to the light who I’ seen every day for the past fourteen years. To celebrate the occasion, I dressed as Beatrice Parkinson, the last keeper of the light, to channel her spirit to guide us out there
Low water was at 1015, which so happened to be between great squalls of rain. It was a springs low, which gave us plenty of time to get there, be there with no fear of being under threat. We made a slow walk out across the pebbled mud and muscle beds, befitting the pilgrimage it felt. Some silence some chat.
2. A zine-making workshop to process that experience, exploring the difference between being a lighthouse and being human.
That afternoon’s zine-making workshop, complete with seaweed bread, at the Good Things Collective in Morecambe, captured some of discoveries made during the morning.
3. A drop-in creative workshop, sharing what it means to be human with the lighthouse.
The next workshop had over 150 people dropping in as part of the Light Up Lancaster Explore Week. Wendy’s mobile version of Plover Scar drew plenty of people into the workshop.
Here we asked people to share their thoughts on what made them human rather than a light, writing them on pre-made illuminations to give to the lighthouse (who was now in town in readiness for their nighttime wanderings during the Light Up Festival). We were totally unprepared for the enthusiasm people brought to the task.
A short video of the event and more illuminations is here on Charlotte Done’s IG
Virtually everyone donated their wisdom to the lighthouse’s education rather than take their illuminations away with them. The giving of these illuminations to the lighthouse was definitely one of the highlights of the workshop.
4. Plover Scar distributed these illuminations from people with other people, discussing what they provoked in others
A week later during one night at the Light Up Festival, Plover Scar not only attracted much curiosity, but also conversations with a lighthouse keeper, a port authority manager and someone whose research was in metaphor. People delighted in receiving the messages from unknown others, taking them as either a comfort or a warning, depending on their perspective. It was reminiscent of the pleasure in penpals from childhood. This might also have been stirred in the obviously craftiness and nonplastic nature of the light, compared to much of what else was being handed out on the festival streets. The homespun, tactility, the evidence that it came from somone else’s hand into another added to the spirit of the evening.
5. Conversations with Plover Scar on what they’d learnt from the whole experience, alongside more zine making.
To round the series off, we conducted conversations between one of the team and the lighthouse, talking through the whole experience, discussing with the workshop attendees what they made of lighthouses.
The project exceed our expectations for connection with others and for the unpacking of what people felt it was to be human, for people to open up with their dreams, challenges and joys to the lighthouse . The lighthouse as a beacon to make those connections was palpable – on the streets and in the drop-in workshops. It reminded me of the power of puppets, of how in animating things we connect to their and our life force, the force that brings us all to life togther.
It was a project that evolved and developed as we went through, from July to November. We took a leap of faith in how our ideas could connect and inspire others as they unfolded. The hybrid nature of the project – eco-phenomenological participation, madzine research, creative community workshopping, spontaneous interactions – was risky and at times nerve-wracking. Ultimately a wonderful collaboration that held, for me, many of the wonders of collaboration: uncertainty, connectivity, spontaneity, collective participation, trust, fun, joy and generosity.
© all pics Jill Anderson / Charlotte Done
