First Cornish Performance Archive Symposium and Nick Darke Award Presentation

At the first Cornish Performance Archive (CPA) Symposium this Thursday (4 November 2010) at University College Falmouth's new Performance Centre, performance practitioners, academics and professional archivists will reflect on the process of establishing the Archive and consider the future uses of this invaluable new resource.

The archive of Cornish performance is held by UCF following generous donations from Kneehigh, WILDWORKS and the family of the late Nick Darke, and will ensure invaluable performance materials are preserved and kept in Cornwall.

Speakers at the Symposium include Sarah C Jane, UCF's resident Archivist; Mercedes Kemp, core Artistic team member of WILDWORKS theatre and Senior Lecturer at UCF; Sally Gilbert, Archivist at Rambert Dance Company and Dr Misha Myers, live artist and Programme Leader of Theatre at UCF.  Artist and filmmaker, Jane Darke and General Manager of Kneehigh, Charlotte Bond will join the speakers as panellists with Dr Larry Lynch, UCF's Head of Performance chairing the symposium.

Between 5pm and 6.30pm, guests will have the opportunity to learn about the array of materials held in the CPA; how donations of artefacts came about; the process of gathering materials together ready for deposit in an Archive; the possible future uses for the CPA and how the records of the Rambert Dance Company, Britain's oldest active dance company, are currently used.

A panel discussion will reflect on questions and issues raised in the presentations and consider what the concept of a ‘second life for performance records' really means.

There will be a drinks reception in the foyer of the Performance Centre from 6.30pm to 7pm followed by readings given by the 2010 Nick Darke Award winner, Jessica Fletcher, from her script entitled Paradise and previous winners.

The Nick Darke Award is a competition dedicated to the memory of one of Cornwall's best-known playwrights that nurtures emerging scriptwriting talent.  The £3,000 prize is funded by Kernow Education Arts Partnership, (Cornwall's strategic arts in education agency), The Works, as well as UCF, and offers writers who are 16 and over, and resident in the UK, the chance to compete by submitting a script for a stage play, a screenplay, a radio play or documentary film with a broadly environmental theme.

From 8pm there will also be a screening of the Art of Catching Lobsters about the life and death of Nick Darke.

Staff, students and members of the public are welcome to attend.  Although this is a free event, booking is required as seating is limited.  To book your seat via the Hall for Cornwall please call 01872 262466, visit www.hallforcornwall.org or call into the Hall for Cornwall, Back Quay, Truro TR1 2LL.

All attendees are invited to join the reception for the Nick Darke Award from 7pm and the screening of The Art of Catching Lobsters that will follow (please note that booking is also required for these free events, as above).

For further details about the Cornish Performance Archive, please contact archives@falmouth.ac.uk or call the Archive and Special Collections Service reading room in the Learning Resources Centre at Tremough on 01326 254303.

The Cornish Performance Archive is part of a growing number of collections that are being preserved by University College Falmouth, that also include the archives  of best-selling novelist, Patrick Gale and artist, Tom Cross. UCF wishes to document all aspects of Cornish Performance activity and will consider further collections. Interested parties should contact Sarah Jane at archives@falmouth.ac.uk or by telephoning 01326 254303 in the first instance.

For further information about Theatre, Dance and Music courses at University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/art-perf, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 213730.

UCF is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the right to award degrees in its own name. The University College has two campuses - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns and jointly manages with the University of Exeter).

UCF's merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008 created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Dance, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing.  The Dartington-based courses have now relocated to an impressive, high-specification £19M Performance Centre at the Tremough Campus, which launches this October.  The ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) Convergence Programme invested £12,266,667 in this development which will prepare performance students for success within the creative industries.  The South West Regional Development Agency's Single Pot Fund contributed a further £3M, with the remainder being invested by the Higher Education Funding Council for England's Strategic Development Fund.

The Performance Centre is the latest phase in UCF's ambition to create a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2013/2014 that will be unrivalled in the South West.

UCF is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

Ends

For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby Dip CIPR MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email:  jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

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