Western Morning News (Saturday)
Islanders get their creative mojo back
The Isles of Scilly is rekindling its cultural life after Covid. Martin Hesp reports
THE cultural side of island life on the Isles of Scilly is struggling. Where exactly do you rehouse more than 10,000 valuable and historic items which have lived happily in a museum for decades? Where can you display them for the benefit of the huge surge in tourists which returned to the isles this summer? And how do you rekindle an interest in the archipelago’s cultural offer?
Ever-resourceful islanders have come up with an answer and it begins this weekend. The Creative Scilly Festival is a celebration of music, theatre, storytelling, visual arts and island life which continues until the end of the month. “It’s all about promoting the cultural dimension of the visitor economy and it’s also for residents,” says Jeremy Brown, project manager for Creative Scilly who invited the WMN to take a preview this week.
For years the archipelago has staged Arts Scilly each spring which allows people to throw open galleries and studios, run pop-up events, workshops and classes and encourages participation in creative industries. Mr Brown said last year was a disaster. “I had to cancel 70 events”, he revealed. “So we’ve been reviving things under the Welcome Back fund to stimulate business and increase footfall.”
Working with local artists such as the women who run the Phoenix arts cooperative just outside the island capital, Hugh Town, Jeremy’s team have booked a couple of theatre companies which will be staging performances and running workshops and bringing in writers and bands to compliment the arts and crafts offering already burgeoning across the isles. “It’s a bit of an experiment to see if we pull some additional visitors over here during the autumn half-term period,” he told the WMN as we began a tour of
St Mary’s in one of the island’s fleet of hireable golf buggies that are a handy way of touring the myriad lanes.
First stop was the temporary new museum space which has been put together at the town hall. Called Isles of Scilly Museum on the Move, it has been replicated across the four off-isles where other minimuseums have been set up in hotels and public halls.
“We had to do something fast because the old museum, which was built in 1977 and which was held up on a metal frame, was condemned,” explained Jeremy. “The structure was more or less disintegrating and the surveyor literally said, ‘Put on your hard hats and clear out everything of value!’
“So the trustees have been phenomenally resourceful and we’ve had support from Cornwall Museum Partnership in helping to store some 10,000 artefacts from small pieces of ancient pottery to large scale gigs.”
Now there are ambitious plans to completely rehouse the vast and impressive collection in a new extended museum at the town hall which, having structural problems of its own, is to be massively refurbished. But until that happens the resourceful Scillonians have developed a mobile phone app. “The Museum on the Move allows visitors to still enjoy some of our artefacts with the help of the free app,” explained curator Kate Hale.
There are some 40 freelance artists and designer-makers currently living and working on the islands creating everything from gin to watercolour paintings and cosmetics to chocolate. The Isles of Scilly has been granted priority status by the Arts Council – one of 53 regions in the UK which have been recognised as areas that have not had enough arts funding.
At the Phoenix Craft Studios (to be found on theislandmakers.com) eight female artists and craftspeople create all manner of Scilly inspired treasures. Studio founder and glass-artist Oriel Hicks told us: “Scilly is becoming a bit like what happened in St Ives and with the Newlyn School 100 years ago. Artists come here for the light, the granite and the silver sands. There is nowhere else quite like it – there are no rivers pouring into the sea here so there’s no sediment, which gives the water that perfect clarity, and that, in turn, allows for all those amazing colours.”
“There are new people coming to the isles because they’ve been inspired and want to create things – and quite often it’s alongside another job,” added linocut artist Vickie Heaney. “Most of the work here at the studios does reflect the islands and the landscape – but people aren’t just buying something to take home, they are also buying a memory of coming to see the artist at work. And every time they look at the item they remember that.”
After a visit to watercolour artist Stephen Morris’s Glandore Galleries, it was time for lunch at the ever popular Juliet’s Garden perched so scenically above St Mary’s Harbour. And in the afternoon there was a chat with island story-teller and wildlife expert Lucy McRobert who will be entertaining Creative Scilly festival goers with tales of the now famous Wally the Walrus.
For more go to www.visitislesofscilly.com/creativescillyfestival or phone 01736 334220 and quote CREATVIE21 to get 10%off travel to the isles.
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