Imagineer Productions

This year the award winning Godiva Carnival celebrated its 10th year since its re establishing in 2000. The theme for this year was ‘Coventry Greats’and Vortex Creates were commissioned as the designers. From industry to art, from engineering to innovation, each section of the carnival payed homage to some of the great things to come out of Coventry both past and present. Ribbons, clocks, bicycles, cars, musicians, sporting heroes, scientific developments, artists & inventions – all found themselves represented in carnival this year.

One section was dedicated to the Olympic and Paralympic Games as this year also marks the beginning of the city’s journey to London 2012. Each following section took one of the colours of the Olympic flag to mark this journey.

Working alongside schools, community groups, businesses and a number of partners including Coventry & Warwickshire 2012 Partnership and NHS Coventry, Imagineer Productions created the spectacular floats, large scale structures and masquerade costumes that have become our city’s trade mark over the past 10 years.

MAD UK Competition 2009

This years theme was all about creativity, ingenuity, imagination and vision, from gadgets to contraptions, conception to construction, machines to fabrications, and fiction to discovery - and the designers rose to the challenge of pushing their designs to an extreme and celebrating the innate creative genius of great inventors of any place and in any age.

The MAD UK Finals took place in the City Centre on Saturday 22nd August as part of the City’s first Festival of Invention.

The competition was judged by MAD UK patron and leading fashion designer, Zandra Rhodes and Kollette Super of Coventry University School of Art and Design.

This years winners The design category was entitled Great Inventions and the judges awarded: First Prize to Trudy Rees-Marklew for Sparky Crankshaft

Second Prize to Anna Lewis - The Navigator, Introducing the Magnetic Compass and the Chronometer

Third Prize: Antonio Reche - Theatrical Invention

The winner of the open public competition, MAD Heads, was Davinder Richards

Design led performances also included:

a specially commissioned percussive orchestra made from bicycles and a newly commissioned choral piece by BAFTA winning composer Ilona Sekacz sung by Singing City Choir

Osadia, Barcelona based hair sculpting company

MAD Heads street theatre performance from Imagineer

performances from the Blue Ladies

Plans for MAD UK 2010 will be announced in the Autumn.

Festival of Invention 2009

This year Imagineer placed MAD UK within the context of a Festival of Invention and Design, which was piloted in August 2009. The city’s Image Working Group has been developing a new branding for Coventry as the City of Invention. This branding embraces Coventry’s heritage, present and future industries. The festival was intended as a visual showcase of the inventiveness of Coventry’s diverse industries (past, present and future); including creative industries, manufacturing, engineering, new technologies. Companies exhibiting included:

Coventry Transport Museum, Coventry Design Institute, Coventry University, Serious Games Institute, CVOne/Parenthesis, CDP - FARGO Development, Vortex Creates, Jaguar Landrover - displays from cars to bikes to guitar hero games, laser cutting machines and Formula One cars

Imagineer decided to run MAD UK as a celebration of the inventiveness of designers/visual artists/costume makers within the framework of this umbrella festival.

The festival was organised by Imagineer in partnership with CVOne, Parenthesis and Coventry City Council and the company plan to build on it and make a citywide event next year.

Imagineer are planning three outdoor city centre weekend events as part of the City Council’s annual Cultural Events Programme, building on the successful Celebrating Coventry street festival, which marked the UK Schools Games in 2007.

Celebrating Coventry: Play the Streets - Saturday 25th July The city centre comes to life with street, theatre, music and dance, with a hint of sportiness to celebrate the London 2012 open Weekend which runs from 24th - 26th July across the country. The programme will run from 12 noon - 4 p.m. in Broadgate, with walkabout performances throughout the City Centre Precinct.

Performances will include:

walkabouts from Creature Feature who will be Goin’ Ape plus weird and wonderful sporting characters from the Natural Theatre Company

clowning from portuguese performer, Pedro Tochas whose performance ‘The Sculptor Clown’ is the one man equivalent of “Wallace and Grommit”. It’s a visual treat for all the family that will never cease to entertain and amaze. Akin to your favorite silent movie, expect with an elaborate language of facial expressions, the telling of (convoluted) tales filled with immortal love, a full entourage of discombobulated feelings and all the mishaps and mayhem that accompanies the beautiful evolution of life.

Balkan gypsy music with middle eastern influence from The Baghdaddies

Choral music from around the world from Coventry based Worldsong

Freeman Dance with a specially commissioned dance performance

Masterclass with bhangra dance and dhol drummers, plus an open workshop for anyone who wants to have a go

plus spectacular performances with a carnival flavour from Imagineer and the Far Gosford Street mas camp

Celebrating Coventry: PERFORM YOUR ARTS OUT!

Saturday 8th August 11.00 a.m. - 6.00 p.m.

University Square

Where were you when The Specials played outside the Coventry tech in 1979? Come and watch the next generation of stars!

A fun, free, frolic filled festival will be hitting the streets of Coventry on Saturday 8th August,

Full of amazing bands and acoustic artists, fascinating theatre companies and energetic dance troupes, University Square near Coventry Cathedral will be buzzing with all the delights from some of Coventry’s up and coming new talent.

The creation of Freddy Davidson (aged 15) and a team of young producers collaborating with Imagineer Productions , Perform Your Arts Out! is a young people’s festival with local bands The Satin Dolls and The Strikes, dance troupes, Highly Sprung and Freeman Dance and special performances from The Suggestibles, an improvisation comedy group based in Newcastle.

For the latest updates join our facebook events page by searching for Perform Your Arts Out on the events listing

This project is supported by the Youth Opportunities Fund.

Celebrating Coventry - Festival of Invention

Saturday 22 August 11.30 – 4.15

Upper Precinct and Lower Precinct, Market Way and Smithford Way

Imagineer’s newest event, a one day celebration of the innate genius of Coventry’s Inventors , past present and future. With everything from bikes to elephants, hair sculpting to cutting edge design projects from local businesses and education.

The programme included:

MAD UK Live 2009 – the live finals of MAD UK, a unique sculptural costume design competition, themed around Great Inventions and judged live in performance by iconic fashion designer, Zandra Rhodes.

MAD HEADS – an open public competition, urging the public to Be Inventive – to design and turn up in the most inventive headwear for a chance to win a cash prize

Osadia – unique and mesmerising performance from Barcelona based street theatre company of hair sculptors, creating outrageous and extravagant hairstyles on members of the public

A specially commissioned percussive orchestra sculpted from recycled bicycles and accompanying the Singing City Choir performing songs that celebrate Coventry and Warwickshire conducted by BAFTA winning composer, Ilona Sekacz

Be Inventive! - a display celebrating the inventive streak of Coventrians past present and future

visual and interactive stalls, shop windows and exhibitions from Coventry’s most inventive industries and organisations, plus learn more about Imagineer’s plans for the 2012 Olympic celebrations

Companies exhibiting included Coventry Transport Museum, Coventry Design Institute, Coventry University, Serious Games Institute, CVOne/Parenthesis, CDP - FARGO Development, Vortex Creates, Jaguar Landrover - displays from cars to bikes to guitar hero games, laser cutting machines and Formula One cars.

The Festival of Invention was organised by Imagineer in partnership with CVOne, Parenthesis and Coventry City Council and the partners plan to build on it and make a citywide event next year.

‘The Usual Auntijies’

By Paven Virk

‘The Usual Auntijies’

The Calendar Girls meets Shirley Valentine. ‘The Usual Auntijies’ is a story about three South Asian women or in this case, the auntijies and a new Indian bride called Gurpreet. What happens to four women when they are cut off from their family and community? Four women who have struggled to achieve the best they can in this country? Three of the women with very different personalities are confined together in one house? This is the story of The Usual Auntijies, women who are all in their late fifties and early sixties. They have many stories to tell, but no one to tell them to, not all of hardship, but of romance and the magic of life! Where did it all go wrong for them?

Background on ‘The Usual Auntijies’

Five workshops with different South Asian women’s groups based in Coventry took place in 2005. Jasvir Kang (a Punjabi poet, writer & radio presenter) and Paven Virk led the workshops, with the objective of using story telling to inspire the women to share their stories. The findings of the workshops and the process of storytelling led to Jasvir and Paven writing a synopsis. Then the Belgrade Theatre (Coventry) commissioned Paven to write the first draft of the script for ‘The Usual Auntijies’, which was completed in 2006. The Hampstead Theatre (London) was approached to develop the script within their literary department. Hampstead Theatre worked on the script with Paven, which led to a week long development process with a company of professional actors. The final draft of the script was completed in early 2007.

The play is ready to go into production and is exciting because it deals with and explores issues that were important to the women that participated in the workshops in 2005 and are relevant to thousands of women today; issues that are taboo and are rarely discussed. These include the identity and placement of women after they are forced out of their home after years of only knowing one kind of life and the forced marriage of a woman from India to a man with learning disabilities in England. The latter is high up in the agenda of local and national government as it deals with forced marriages. This play will aim to inform and educate audiences about issues related to forced marriages. All these issues and stories are beautifully captured and told through powerful drama and humour.

About the writer

Paven Virk has recently finished a writing attachment with The National Theatre Studio, has written her first feature film ‘Liberation’ with Noel Clarke (‘Kidulthood’ and ‘Adulthood’) and is about to start working on two other feature films - one about a female hustler involved in the 90’s rave scene and an adaptation of her own stage play ‘England’s Lane’.

Partners

‘The Usual Auntijies’ has been supported to date by Multi Arts Nation, Imagineer Productions, The Belgrade Theatre and Hampstead Theatre.

Please contact Hardish Virk at info@multiartsnation.com to learn more about the play and the process to date.

Imagineer worked in partnership with Coventry City Council and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to create a programme of community and education projects which culminated on Sunday 25th January at the national commemorations held at the Belgrade Theatre. The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day was Stand up to Hatred.

Imagineer took the creative lead on a number of projects including:

Cat and Mouse – 24th January – Sat 14th February B2, Belgrade Theatre

CAT AND MOUSE is a bold and unsettling visual exploration of the lives of children who were caught up in the horror of The Final Solution. Stories, testimonies and diaries from those who were interred in Auschwitz, Belsen and Terezin have been bought boldly to life by a young cast from Coventry whose ages range from 6 to 21 The story begins in an attic in Warsaw, where a population of mice strive to carry on their day to day lives under the growing threat of the deadly feral cats, whose only objective is to annihilate each mouse one by one. (Tickets are on sale now and full details are available on www.belgrade theatre.co.uk)

What the audience said:

‘People should come and see this because we should all remember why and how it happened, and to see what children like us can do. So as children grow up in today’s world, we must stop and think about how we treat people.’

Lucy Hewitt, aged 7

‘For me, an Auschwitz Concentration Camp Survivor, one of the highlights of the weekend was the production of “Cat and Mouse”, which moved me so very much.’

Fred Knoller, Auschwitz Survivor

What the critics said:

‘The story is acted out in elaborately choreographed mime by the company, whose fantastic costumes in the mice world contrast starkly with the bleak striped uniforms of the camp. The movement is delivered with seemingly effortless precision by the entire ensemble. Julia Smith’s new show connects young generation with the central tragedy of the 20th century.’

Terry Grimley - Birmingham Post

The Chain

Working with five schools in the city ‘The Chain’ explored the lives of five people who were affected by the holocaust. Working with artists from different fields each school had a suitcase which acted as a starting point for the children to undertake a creative exploration of the causes and effects of the holocaust. At the end of the project each school developed a creative piece of work, which was shown publicly within a city centre trail on the weekend of the Holocaust Memorial Day, this included performances and installations at the Herbert Art Gallery, a retail unit in Market Way, the Lower Precinct and the Cathedral Ruins. Participating Schools included Caludon Castle, Finham Park, Westwood and Cardinal Wiseman.

Stand Up To Hatred - Shoes

Following the successful buttons exhibition in Newcastle in 2007 and Respectacles exhibition in Liverpool in 2008 Coventry created a dramatic piece art of public through donations of people’s shoes – linking directly to the theme of Stand up to hatred.

Stand Up To Hatred Walk

A city centre walk on Saturday 24 January with individuals, representatives from community groups, professional organisations and businesses coming together along with five holocaust survivors to make an active commitment to Standing Up To Hatred.The walk attracted several hundred participants and culminated in a series of speeches and acoustic performances of Missing Words and Bob Marley’s Redemption Song by Pauline Black, Neol Davies and Aitch Bembridge of The Selecter in the Cathedral Ruins.

Extract from Brundibár Lower Precinct Saturday January 24

Locally based composer and BAFTA winner, Ilona Sekacz, worked with 12 soloists and an ensemble who perform this children’s opera throughout the Holocaust Memorial weekend.

Originally composed by Jewish Czech composer Hans Krása,Brundibár was performed by the children of Theresienstadt concentration camp in occupied Czechoslovakia.The name Brundibár comes from a Czech colloquialism for a bumble bee.

Carnival Connect is a West Midlands Carnival Network forum which was created following the establishment of the national Carnival Arts Strategy. The network brings together artists and producers to share skills, learn new ones, to gain and share knowledge and to unite in the promotion of the Carnival Art Forum leading up to 2012 and beyond. The network has been funded by Arts Council England, West Midlands and is currently being hosted by Imagineer Productions with Nicola Richardson acting as network co-ordinator.

Sunday 17th February saw the launch of the network’s dedicated website - www.carnivalconnect.co.uk. The day began with a number of artists, producers and other carnival enthusiasts exploring the sights, sounds and moves of carnival. There were opportunities for networking, and sharing information, particularly about plans in the region for 2012. The day rounded off with a discussion about carnival connect, what it is now and what it could be. The website was then officially launched at St Mary’s Guildhall in Coventry, with a speech from Rachel Griffin ACWM, a glass of rum punch and entertainment from Phase One Steel Pan, and Frontline AV. If you would like to get involved or would like more info regarding the network please email Nicola at info@carnivalconnect.co.uk

More than 1500 people took to the streets for this year’s Godiva Carnival. Three designers worked with a host of professional artists and makers and hundreds of local people through the mas camp programme to create the most visual and spectacular carnival to date. Carnival also took to the road in 2008 with a band travelling up to take part in Stockton Carnival and also to Kendal Torchlight Procession where members of Highly Sprung Performance Company and of the Wood End mas camp teamed up with a band of veteran carnival revellers including Mark Worth, Dave Barrett, John Leahy, Steve Bant, Kathi Leahy and others scooping the Cup for the best performance on the road.

Imagineer join forces with Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership 2012 Games, Coventry City Council, CVOne and Kinetika for a day of performances and events celebrating the Olympic handover from Beijing to London.

Sunday 24th August 1.00 – 5.00 p.m. University Square, Priory Street, Coventry

The Imaginator’s working overtime, Renny Renaissance has woken up, the city’s growing expanding and changing. Eyesore and Deadloss are tied up in red tape. Through the eyes of a child the city becomes a magical and spectacular place full of possibilities. The seeds are scattered and sown for an amazing journey to 2012 and beyond. Germination is an outdoor carnival styled street theatre performance, culminating in a spectacular finale, bringing together 350 performers from Coventry, London, Nottingham, Stockton, with live music, drumming, giant puppets and amazing carnival costumes.

Germination marks the launch of Imagination Our Nation (ION), an ambitious project led by London based carnival arts company, Kinetika,that explores cities of the future with young people across the UK and beyond. ION is a local, regional and international project that explores contemporary British cultural identity over five years leading up to 2012 through music, dance, carnival, street arts, circus, theatre and digital arts and has young people from the UK at the heart of it!

The launch of ION will be the culmination of a whole programme of free events celebrating the Olympic handover including: • Live screening of the Beijing closing ceremony and handover from Beijing to London • Parade of Coventry and Warwickshire’s Olympic and Paralympic legends
• Sing the Nation – an interactive choir • Free Olympic sport sessions • An exhibition looking forward to Coventry and Warwickshire’s Cultural Olympiad

Imagineer Productions are producing a day of dance performances and workshops to showcase the work of local dance companies in the city centre as part of the City’s annual cultural events programme. The showcase will feature performances from Coventry’s celebrated Kombat Breakers who have worked with the Mini Kombats, the Ernsford Crew and the Woodend Crew to create a 15 minute showcase of street dance around the theme of rivals. Other dance company’s will include Highly Sprung, Freeman Dance, and Zanity.
Open workshops will be on offer for anyone who wants to try their hand at different dance styles. Dancing in the City will take place on Saturday 9th August from 12.00 – 3.00 under Broadgate Canopy, Coventry City Centre.

Imagineer have teamed up with CVOne and Parenthesis to provide some dynamic entertainment at this year’s Godiva Awards at the Belgrade Theatre on 16th October. Pre-show entertainment comes in the form of Imagineer’s newest creation ‘The Blue Ladies’, with music during the awards ceremony from Dave Barrett, Drumestra and Foxford School Band and Paul McGrath with the University of Warwick Wind Orchestra. A fusion of dance comes from the Kombat Breakers and Ka fusing african, street, hip-hop and breakdance

Imagineer Productions collaborated with Birmingham based Leaps and Bounds on this new production, with Producer Jane Hytch managing the production and Imagineer lending financial management and administrative support to the project.

Eighty ‘at risk’ young people from Dudley, Sandwell, Telford & Wrekin and Walsall took to the stage on 17th & 18th October to perform a brand new musical, Chasing Fate.

The new piece of musical theatre was inspired by the real life experiences of the young cast whom worked with a team of professionals including artistic director Christopher Key (Avenue Q, Les Miserables) writer James Hall (Eastenders, The Bill) composer Douglas Whyte (Les Miserables, Pop Idol) and Laurence Olivier Award winner actor David Bedella (Jerry Springer The Opera).

All the young people stepped up to the mark and gave a performance of lifetime for each of the three shows. They sang and danced with great confidence, enthusiasm and professionalism to tell the story of troubled teenager Sam who would rather walk the streets than go home. One night, as the pressure at home mounts to new heights, Sam’s search for meaning in his life brings him into contact with new friends. The attraction of his new-found family is put to the test one fateful night when he makes a choice that will change the course of his life forever. Gangs, dares, deals and dreams follow as Sam makes his choices as he pursues the true path of his destiny.

These young people have been on a massive journey to reach this point - performing on one of the largest stages in the country! They have worked hard at every step of the way and it was clear from the reaction of the audience that they didn’t fail to disappoint

The finals of MAD UK Live 2008 took Warwick Arts Centre’s Butterworth Hall by storm on Thursday 8th May.The show was headlined by Coventry’s Kombat Breakers and compered by former Mercia Sounds breakfast presenter John Dalziel. Some 22 MAD UK finalists and a whole host of MAD Heads strutted their stuff in front of a packed audience and the panel of judges, including iconic British fashion guru, Zandra Rhodes.

MAD UK 2008 – Award Winners

This Sporting Life

Winner – The Monarch of the Glen – Anna Lewis

2nd Prize – A Portrait of the Deity Bacchus in the 21st Century – Neil Hughes

3rd Prize – Out and About with Colonel Badshot by Junkart

Living Architecture

Winner – Hysterical Coventry by Trudy Rees-Marklew

2nd Prize – The Silhouette of Venice – Mirjam Maramaa

3rd Prize – The Inner City Sunset - Joanne Kelly

Time Travel

Winner – Where time becomes a loop – Mariane Taviner and Nichola Richardson

2nd Prize – Medea by Sunwoo Chun

3rd Prize – The Powerful and the Powerless by Olympia Anek

Science of Happiness

Winner – My Sweetheart by Emma Walden

2nd Prize – Let’s Get Fizzy by Jodie Martin

3rd Prize – Memoirs by Natasha Worrall

Special Commendation by Zandra Rhodes - Where Time Becomes A Loop – Mariane Taviner and Nichola Richardson

Plans for MAD UK 2009/10 are currently under development - watch this space for more details, coming soon.

Following the successful establishment of carnival mas camps in 2007, Imagineer Productions set up a further three ‘mas camps’ around the city for 2008 to enable people to get involved in the Godiva Carnival Procession, through becoming part of a mas camp in their own neighbourhood. Mas camp is a place where local people come together to design and make carnival costumes, masks and backpacks. Each mas camp is located in a community venue or school and the making sessions are led by professional carnival artists. It offers a chance for communities to come together, make new friends, learn new skills and have a good time.

This year the mas camps ran at:

The Junction, Far Gosford Street

Wood End – Family Project Centre

West Indian Centre, Spons Street

Broad Street New Horizons Centre, Foleshill

Willenhall - WEETC

Way of the Goose - Hillfields

Hillfields Family Centre

Cheylesmore Comunity Centre

The mas camps ran from late May to early July, with each mas camp making their own mas costumes and then forming a carnival band in the Godiva Carnival procession on Saturday 5th July in the City Centre.

The programme of mas camp development has been financially supported by Arts Council England.

In 2007 Imagineer Productions were commissioned to produce ‘Made in Coventry’ for the Official Opening Weekend celebrations at the Ricoh Arena, the city’s new state of the art football stadium. Made in Coventry was a showcase of as many artists living and working in the city as we could uncover - a kind of living arts audit. Following a city-wide public recruitment campaign fronted by Belgrade Theatre Box Office stars, Kaye Moore and Linda Grimmett, some 1400 artists took part in an extraordinary display of creativity with exhibitions, performances, talks, information displays and workshops from across a huge range of artforms including literature, stand up comedy, visual arts and crafts, classical, contemporary and world music, video, radio, dance – tap, street, bollywood, Chinese dragon dance, contemporary, Irish etc, cheerleaders, carnival, drumming and theatre. The event was open to all and a series of special commissions formed a framework for what was an enormous, eclectic and hectic five hour programme.

Made in Coventry complemented a series of events co-ordinated by Arena Coventy Limited to mark the official opening including; an international ladies football match, the Official Opening Ceremony with Sports Minister, Richard Caborne and gold medal winning athlete Kelly Holmes and culminating in a concert by Beverley Knight. It was a great day for Coventry’s community to celebrate this new landmark in the city and some 14,000 people came along to join in the celebrations.

MAD UK 2007 attracted some 52 entries from across the UK with 21 going through to the finals at MAD UK Live. The show incorporated live video, a celebrity judge in the form of Wayne Hemingway, founder of iconic fashion label Red or Dead, street dance from the Kombat Breakers, finalists of Britain’s Got Talent, performance by Barcelona based, hair sculpting company, Osadia and the launch of MAD Heads – the audience’s chance to participate by designing and wearing their own expressive headgear. The finalists produced a stunning array of grand designs and extreme costme sculpture:

Category - Renaissance Winner - ‘Polymoth’ Designed and modelled by Deborah Mingham. Runner up - ‘Invoiced in Full’ Designed by Team Assailant Creative, modelled by Diana Morton.

Category - Party Pants Winner - ‘You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at a Party Pants’ Designed by John Leahy, modelled by Kathy Joyce Runner up - ‘Fancy Pants Dance’ Designed by Chloe Marsden, modelled by Kate Johnson

Category - Peace and War Winner- ‘The War Bride’ Designed by Anna and Kiri Lewis, modelled by Eliza Jackson Runner up - ‘Chiotonic Eggshell’ Designed and modelled by Chio Ohajura

One of the largest events in Imagineer Production’s calendar, the Godiva Carnival Procession, moved up a scale this year in line with an expanded Godiva Festival which celebrated it’s 10th birthday in July. 1,100 participants worked with artists to make and perform in carnival and an estimated 30,000 revellers took to the streets to celebrate carnival in Coventry.

New artistic developments for 2007 saw Ali Pretty, Artistic Director of London based Kinetika Arts International (the foremost carnival arts organisation in the UK) training Coventry artists in silk painted costumes. The inclusion of large scale moving puppets for the first time also gave a new dynamic to the procession.

The overwhelming success of carnival 2007 was the establishment of the mas camps in Willenhall, Foleshill – Broad Street New Horizons Centre, Hillfields – Hillfields Family Centre, Schools Yardley Street, St Peter’s Centre, Radford and the West Indian Centre which saw upwards of 150 people getting involved in carnival for the first time making costumes, masks and backpacks within their own community venues and taking part in the procession itself. The programme of mas camp development was financially supported by Arts Council England.

A collaboration between Imagineer Productions and Coventry City Council, Celebrating Coventry played host to over 200 performers, both from the city and nationally, to bring key open spaces alive with free music, dance and performance and included a series of newly commissioned street performances.

Tied in to celebrate the city’s hosting of the UK School Games, the aim of the two days was to celebrate the diversity of Coventry’s community and the growing reputation of Coventry as an event city.

With everything from Swedish aerobics to kissing coppers, living statues to robots to choirs to a giant suckling pig, the programme was designed to have something to appeal to everyone, Coventrians and visitors alike.

Many of the Coventry acts went go on to perform as part of Birmingham Arts Fest.

The UK School Games are an annual sporting event bringing together the best young athletes in the UK together to compete across eight sports.

In August 2007 Imagineer Productions and London based Kinetika teamed up to collaborate on ‘The Truth About Lies’, a large scale carnivalesque outdoor performance, which was the centrepiece of the Celebrating Coventry weekend. It was a powerful and moving narrative tale of the oldest story in the book - the battle of good versus evil and incorporated drumming, giant puppets, dance, carnival costumes and pyrotechnics, 150 performers and 70 live musicians. The production was inspired by Ti-Jean and his brothers by Derek Walcott.

MAD UK is a unique design competition for the UK’s makers, designers and engineers of the imagination, challenging entrants to make, design and bring to life an amazing sculptural costume. The event is a partnership between Imagineer Productions and Coventry University. The event began in 2001 with a tiny pilot which was judged in a scruffy old car showroom (our carnival making space) and attracted just 6 entrants. In 2003 the competition was scaled up and attracted 20 entries and saw the inaugural MAD UK Live, the choreographed showcase performance, at Coventry’s newly refurbished Transport Museum.

In 2005 the team created and produced the Opening Ceremony for the International Children’s games at Coventry’s newly opened rugby stadium, the Butts Park Arena. This spectacular, carnivalesque performance told the history of the City of Coventry with music, dance, aerialists, choirs, drummers, carnival floats and backpacks, fireworks and live opera singing. Some 1200 local people and school children took part, performing alongside just one professional actor.

The games were a landmark event for the City and the Opening Ceremony proved to be a very special night for Coventrians and international visitors alike.

“Last night will long be remembered in Coventry… but it will be remembered like the Millennium Eve event… As a turning point when Coventry showed what it could do, to itself and to the world. It was stunning” John McGuigan, Director of City Development

“The ICG was an amazing event and definitely worth the money, demonstrating that the UK can hold major events successfully and adding to the regeneration reputation of Coventry” Government Office West Midlands

“Superb, spectacular, brilliant, out of this world, the best Opening Ceremony ever. This has made me proud again to be a Coventrian.” Cllr John Mutton

Whilst at the Belgrade Theatre, the team revived the Coventry Mystery Plays, which had not been performed since 1990. The Mysteries were re-imagined and restaged in 2000 as part of the City’s Millennium Celebrations, with the aim of contemporising them in order to speak to a modern and more diverse audience. The first of these productions, The Millennium Mysteries, was a collaboration with Teatr Biuro Podrozy, a world class Polish street theatre company and won the largest grant from the Millennium fund in the country. The production transformed people’s expectations of the Mysteries using powerful visual imagery, minimal text, strong physical and street theatre skills and a powerful musical underscore. The Millennium Mysteries saw the stories of Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood and Moses enacted by three community companies each with its own director. The new interpretation of the Coventry story, the life of Christ, was performed by 6 Polish and 8 British professional actors. The production received high critical acclaim and played to sell out audiences.

The Millennium Mysteries marked the beginning of a new and very different Mystery Play tradition in Coventry and opened up the possibility of reinventing the production each time it is staged. The plays continued in a three year cycle, with the team producing a co-production with Ireland’s premiere outdoor company, Macnas, in 2003 and a spectacular production of a newly commissioned version of the story by Ron Hutchinson in 2006, directed by Barry Kyle. The Belgrade Theatre will continue to stage the Mystery Plays, with the next production being due in 2009.