Cornish Performance takes centre stage with gifts from Kneehigh, WILDWORKS and Nick Darke

An archive of Cornish performance held by University College Falmouth (UCF) following generous donations from Kneehigh, WILDWORKS and the family of Nick Darke will ensure invaluable performance materials are preserved and kept in Cornwall. The launch of the Cornish Performance Archive (CPA) forms part of Platform, UCF's new, year round programme of contemporary public performance launching this October and heralds the arrival of Theatre, Choreography and Music courses to Falmouth.

Among the three founding collections of the Cornish Performance Archive (CPA) there are materials relating to the three plays, Red Shoes, Blast! and Kind of Prussia, that make up Kneehigh's current programme Asylum running outside Truro until 29 August.

Also included are Kneehigh's plans for a mobile theatre which has spanned many years and has now been realised in the Asylum project; Nick Darke's notes and orginal texts for plays performed by the RSC, The National Theatre and Kneehigh and sketches sent to Morecambe and Wise; a set design of an angel on a trapeze by Bill Mitchell for Kneehigh's Nights at the Circus; extensive correspondence; numerous promotional print materials (programmes, flyers, posters, postcards); audio visual records and a large number of photographs, in particular those taken by photographer Steve Tanner who has worked extensively with all three donors.

Bill Mitchell, WILDWORKS Artistic Director commented: "We are proud to be asked to be part of the UCF archive of Cornish culture. We have long wanted to share our process and the reasoning behind our events with all those who might be curious about the work. We believe this new UCF archive of contemporary Cornish arts is important for the future. We need our work to be accessible to anyone who wishes to find out why we do what we do, why we did what we did and how WILDWORKS history, intention and values interconnect with the wider artistic community."

UCF's resident archivist, Sarah Jane, said "The foundation of the Cornish Performance Archive is a major achievement. Students, academics and members of the public will be able to access never seen before materials that document the artistic processes that influence Cornwall's best known theatre companies and creative minds.  I hope these records will also act as inspiration to a wide range of practitioners in the artistic world".

These recent donations have been facilitated by the visionary merger of UCF with Dartington College of Arts in 2008 and the consequent expansion of Falmouth's Art, Design and Media disciplines to include Theatre, Choreography and Music.

Larry Lynch, Head of Performance at UCF commented: "We are very grateful to these founding donations that will ensure the continuing value of performance in Cornwall and alongside the exciting arrival of the Performance programme to the County, will open up numerous opportunities to the public, local community and creative industries as well as to students and staff."

In addition to the launch of the CPA, the launch of the Performance Centre will be celebrated by a dynamic and impressive public performance programme (PLATFORM) running from 28 to 31 October with an emphasis on the archive on the 4 and 6 November.  For full details please contact Events & Exhibitions events@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone 01326 213756.

Although cataloguing is still in progress, the Collections are available to view, by appointment in the Archive and Special Collections reading room in the Learning Resources Centre at Tremough.  Anyone wishing for more information should contact Sarah Jane at archives@falmouth.ac.uk or 01326 254303.

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

Kneehigh Theatre

Kneehigh Theatre has built a reputation as one of Britain's most exciting touring companies, creating vigorous and popular theatre for audiences throughout the UK and beyond. Their theatre is created in locations within communities, village halls, marquees, harbour sides and less conventional places using a wide range of art forms and media with Cornwall as their physical and spiritual home. www.kneehigh.co.uk 

WILDWORKS

Led by Artistic Director Bill Mitchell, WILDWORKS is an Internationally acclaimed company of artists, musicians and theatre makers based in Cornwall who create large-scale theatre events in unusual sites working with the extraordinary communities who live and work there. Their productions have been sited in derelict mines, abandoned department stores, a Napoleonic citadel, the Green Line in Nicosia and a Royal Palace. www.wildworks.biz

Nick Darke

Nick Darke acted in over 80 plays before starting to write in 1978. He won the George Devine award in 1979. Everything he wrote for theatre was produced - twenty seven plays in twenty eight years, performed and translated throughout the world. He also wrote screenplays for radio and for television and made the documentary The Wrecking Season with his wife Jane Darke. Most of his work reflects Cornish culture. He died of cancer in 2005, aged 56. nickdarke

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

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the right to award degrees in its own name.  UCF 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 are relocating to Cornwall this summer to a high-specification £15.4M Performance Centre at the Tremough Campus that will launch in September 2010, paving the way for the creation of a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2013/2014 that will be unique to 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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