On 20^th October 2013 artsNK successfully ran the Zygote Festival event in Sleaford with help from the Sleaford REP Liaison Panel's Community Fund. The fund granted artsNK £3,000 towards the festival which was a showcase of commissioned performing and visual artists’ pieces alongside artwork that was produced by and with the local community in the public engagement programme.

Project Overview and Description

"Dancing acrobats glide through the trees; kinetic sculptures scuttle along a cable, raining water on the crowd below. Gymnasts unfurl from swathes of silk, chrysalis like, spreading their arms to reveal gossamer screens on which projections flicker in swirls of light and fire.”

Zygote was Sleaford’s festival of light, live performances and digital artworks in 2013, celebrating this small market town’s history and important heritage links to the seed industry, including a programme of training and workshops to get there. It had two main elements; the festival for an audience of 3000, with hundreds taking part, and a year long programme of training and workshops, equipping local professional practitioners' to work longer term, with local groups.

Notes to Editors

Zygote enabled artsNK to:

• establish a fully trained & licensed pyrotechnics team to make this expertise available to the county and to integrate their work into the creative development team, ensuring what we do is original, unique and locally shaped
• train artsNK’s Dance Development Team in aerial, silks and lyra techniques equipping them with the circus skills & knowledge in order to roll out a new aerial dance programme in the county presently not available
• purchase a freestanding 6.4m aerial rig (as well as 3m training rig) in order for the above aerial activities to go ahead- this included the commissioned aerial performance as part of the evening of Zygote Festival. (funded separately from this pot of funding)
• provide artist led workshop opportunities with 5 local primary and secondary schools in creating kinetic sculptures, animations and i-pad drawings
• work with local young dancers in kNacKer’d Youth Dance and aDance to produce bespoke site specific performances in St.Denys Church and Bristol Arcade
• create new partnerships and work with members of local voluntary groups,

e. g. Sleaford in Bloom, The Nettles Volunteer Group, Sleaford Hub Writers and Sleaford Museum Trust producing new artwork with artists and the artsNK’s Visual Arts Development Team

• commission a site specific 3D projection by artist Ade Hiatt
• commission international music composer, Scanner,  to produce a new sound score for the entire festival which linked all sites, artworks and performances together
• commission 3 kinetic sculptures by international artist/designer Martin Smith
• commission emerging artist Anna Pope to create a new kinetic sculpture
• create a collection of fire sculptures that can be used for future festivals and village events.

Facts & Figures

Total number of artists: 12

Total Workshop Participants (schools): 200

Total Workshop Participants (community): 90

Total number of new performances created: 5

Total number of new artworks created: 6

Total Audience attendance: 3000

Moving Forward

Our 2015 festival planning is due to begin in January 2014 and will be collaboration between the NK Arts Partnership comprising artsNK, National Centre for Craft and Design and Design Factory. The overarching theme will be the Magna Carta national celebrations and we intend to use our learning from Zygote Festival; its successes, new artworks and new skills learnt to produce a bigger, more spectacular and wider reaching community arts celebration across NK and the county.