SALISBURY CATHEDRAL BECOMES A HUGE PROJECTION SCREEN FOR FINALE OF BBC ARTS PROJECT "CONSEQUENCES"

Visit Salisbury Cathedral after 6.00pm on St George’s Day, 23 April, and join in the fun and excitement as its huge roof and West Front are used as giant projection screens for the climax of the BBC South/Arts Council ‘Consequences’ project, part of the nationwide ‘Made in England’ project.

Creative Producer, Mark Hewitt, is very pleased with the whole project. “Made in England is a national partnership between BBC English Regions and Arts Council England to explore our country through its people and its art. ‘Consequences’ is an original, hugely creative literary arts project involving a large number of people and highlights the distinctive characteristics across the BBC TV South broadcasting region.”

The project began in the second week of March with four writers working with people in four very different towns and cities across the South of England - Brighton, Weymouth, Oxford and Salisbury - discovering stories from each area that give a real feel and understanding to the uniqueness of each place and what it’s like to live there. These have been condensed into micro-stories which will be combined and ultimately projected onto the Cathedral ‘screen’ as one vast piece of artwork. A visual record of images which accompany the project will be screened on the cathedral’s majestic West Front.

People in Salisbury worked with Hattie Ellis, the award-winning writer and journalist who is “constantly interested in new creative ways to tell the tales of the everyday and extraordinary”. “It’s been a wonderful opportunity to meet so many interesting people, talk to them and discover a myriad of ‘secret stories’ which I have worked into just fifteen micro-stories to tell the story of Salisbury today. I wanted to get across the diversity of the region and celebrate that in a creative way whilst having some fun. It’s been a huge challenge too as each narrative has a set structure of four sections – beginning, development , unravelling and resolution - and can be no longer than 1020 characters!”

The sixty stories – fifteen from each of the four areas – are now posted on-line at www.madeinthesouth.co.uk for everyone to read. At the press of the mouse, you are able to produce a digital permutation of the combined texts, in effect a random scrabble, and have fun playing a gigantic game of literary ‘Consequences’, creating new texts which can be either thought-provoking, tell a deeper story, or just plain nonsense prose - another popular English literary genre.

The stories will be published in a book and one will be kept by the Cathedral. A further copy will be held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford where each story is also archived in its developmental stages for perpetuity. The BBC is producing a book which will be available as a print-on-demand piece online.

The Dean of Salisbury, the Very Revd June Osborne, is fascinated by the project. “ I see this as a celebration of the South and its heritage, vibrancy, creativity and diversity. I love the idea of something quirky and innovative, very creative and contemporary being projected onto our great building which has such great history and tradition – the contrast and combination of the experimental and the rooted, the ‘ancient and modern’. When the Cathedral was built it was a focus for great artistic creativity and for the communities around it that remains the case today through activities like this one. We’re used to sharing our story with many people from across the region who come to visit us and are looking forward in turn to hosting their stories on 23 April.”

Timings for the evening:
5.30pm Writers who have been collecting local stories arrive
6.30pm Live broadcast on BBC TV South
7.15-8pm Stage event: writers talk about experiences of the project
8pm Words start to scroll across the cathedral roof and images of storytellers are projected onto the West Front

BBC Radio Wiltshire will be in The Close throughout the day and BBC TV South will broadcast live from the Close in the evening as well as televising a round-up for transmission the next day.

This project is just one part of a nationwide project which is a major collaboration between the BBC and Arts Council England. For further information visit: www.bbc.co.uk/madeinengland

Hot drinks and snacks will be available from the Kiosk in The Close from 6.00pm.