CREATIVE ENQUIRY: HOW DO I USE DIGITAL Technology TO ENHANCE THE NARRATIVE OF 'THE SECRET GARDEN OF FAKE BELIEVE'

Reflections of Scratch Night, and a conversation with Lisa. 

Reaching a creative enquiry after the Scratch has been challenging. I have been exploring various elements to find out how my practice might enable the reimagination of The Secret Garden. After a conversation with Lisa in my tutorial, I have decided to focus on the Opening Section of the live work and now to explore how I might use digital technology to enhance the narrative of the work. Through processing reflections from audience feedback and my own personal thoughts and feelings that have come out of sharing the work, I am now really interested in how digital technologies might be able to explore low interventions and high level tech for future iterations. 

As I prepare to write my script and construct my presentation, I am starting to draw my findings together to explore ; 
How can an immersive digital storytelling support the possibilities and potential to reimagine the story of The Secret Garden? 

Positionality 
I am a dance creator that draws upon multi-disciplinary practice. My work involves lived experience, multiple realities, active listening, tender conversations, physical forms, hope, and choice. I create hybrid work within the physical and digital interface. Devices and choreographic language vary based upon the subject matter or main objective of the work. I work in a people focussed methodology and adopt a collaborative approach to co-create inter- disciplinary creations. The notion of freedom sits at the heart of my practice. 


I am a dance and aerial practitioner, digital and multi- disciplinary thinker and maker, dance advocate, experience curator, experience seeker, and cultural activist. My portfolio career enables me to carry out a variety of roles, whilst on a personal quest to empower people to live a creative life. My personal practice draws upon lived experience, ground based and aerial creative processes, choreography, facilitation, teaching and learning, youth work, yoga teaching, bungee workout instructor and creative producing, project and events management. http://www.tuckshopdancetheatre.org/laurentuckshop.html


I set up Tuckshop Dance Theatre in 2018 and have been refining and diversifying our offer ever since by listening to the voices of young people. I work collaboratively with other people to create, to develop and to explore. We are in early stages of our development, but our ambitions reflect the vision of the young people we connect with. Tuckshop Dance Theatre develop innovative practice to amplify youth voice, stories of humanity and issues of global concern, with a commitment to excellence and diversity.
We work with people to shape cultural learning opportunities and meaningful experiences to transform people’s lives. We empower young people to celebrate their individuality, organise and express their creativity through shared lived experiences. We celebrate the power of young people and creative practice to lead change, ideas and actions that connect people, give back to their communities and ignite the spark for life long cultural learning. For more information please visit: http://www.tuckshopdancetheatre.org
Values 
We recognise that all of our values are iterative, active and creative processes.

• Diversity as a fundamental demand of the mission of Tuckshop Dance Theatre. We work to ensure our work is inclusive for everybody. We recognise diversity as the engine for creativity and humanity. We thrive off the idea that bringing together multiple perspectives, different modes of thinking, practice, looking through many different lenses, and processing what comes through our senses, will enable our work to truly reflect the diverse world in which we live. 
• Authenticity as an active and creative process, to stay true to who you are, to develop belonging and ownership. 
• Curiosity as a key driver for all of our developments, evolution and innovation that serves to inspire and engage. 
• Empathy as the connecting principle to marry different points of view, perspectives and thinking, to enable personal progression. 
• Dynamism as a vital component to progressively move effectively, and show the ability to take many forms, in a rapidly changing landscape. Our work is dynamic, responding to changing circumstances, environments and needs. 
• Collaboration to deepen the learning process and create collective impact. Working in partnership with children, young people, parents, carers and other agencies is essential in promoting young people’s welfare, and providing equality of opportunity to access, progress, develop talent and leadership skills and provide clear pathways in to the creative industries and other professional sectors.
• Kindness as an active process of openness and humility, with the interests of the people we work with, by and for. 

Since the pandemic, my personal life has included caring responsibilities, isolation, a personal storm, grief, and suicide bereavement, as I navigated my own healing journey, I was drawn to a deep connection with nature. The garden became the place that captured my imagination, and after many tender conversations around my lived experiences, collaborative conversations around the notion of freedom and escape, with creative peers, and children and young people. I have started to explore how to reimagine the story of the Secret Garden, to make a piece that is relevant. This is an opportunity to tackle the problematic aspects of the classic tale such as ableism, othering, racism and gender issues, to explore mental health and wellbeing through an immersive participatory experience.  The Secret Garden touches upon experiences of a personal storm, collective grief, connection, the healing forces of nature, to continue to inspire audience’s ‘innate capabilities to heal and grow.’ And ultimately find freedom. (REFERENCE, p.129) 

This presentation will outline ways in which ‘The Secret Garden’ could be reimagined through a multi disciplinary participatory performance experience,  enhanced using low-tech and hi-tech digital interventions;  with suggestions of things to do in the present iteration of material presented in the Scratch Night, today’s presentation, as well as looking towards future developments. I operate within a process orientated framework and will draw upon prior learning experiences through other live and digital hybrid approaches leading up to this moment to inform how I will strengthen the narrative and move this work forwards in future. 
The choreographic investigations have highlighted considerations for many aspects of the whole story of The Secret Garden documented on my website. Within this presentation I have decided to focus on the opening section of the phygital trail that explore’s the beginning of the character of Mary Lennox’s story of transformation, growth and healing, which will begin in an indoor setting and culminate in an outdoor performance environment. Modern day Mary Lennox, feels powerless, is grieving, feeling the physical and emotional effects of loss, ruled by digital, with a desire to stay human in the online world and a desire to wander outdoors, she asks audiences to help her to find a key to the magic garden. 
This presentation focusses on digital storytelling and how digital technologies can enhance and support the narrative of the work and makes further recommendations for digital storytelling to help interpret the story of The Secret Garden further.

Proposed recommendations: 

I will redevelop a short section of material to support my presentation. 

In the opening section of 8 minutes I aim to: 

Introduce the Character of Mary  and her behaviours, emotions, thoughts and feelings at the beginning of the story. 
I will create a sensory world with use of projection on my body wearing white, the parachute and white umbrellas. 
Continue to explore the possibilities of  the parachute as a metaphor for lived experience of crippling grief held within our bodies. 
Introduce the trapped nature and desire to escape, involve audience buy in 'I can not do it alone' and ask for help from the audience. 
Introduce the idea of the quest to find the key using digital media and QR code on costume and in space. 
To develop the material on the aerial lollipop, to leave the portal, and go in search of Freedom with the help of the audience. 


Reading to underpin my next steps... 

Thomas, T. H. (2016). The joy-maker in the garden: cognitive behavioural therapy in The Secret Garden (1911). International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 21(2), 128–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364436X.2016.1182895
Dinter, S. (2015). Spatial Inscriptions of Childhood: Transformations of the Victorian Garden in The Secret Garden, Tom’s Midnight Garden, and The Poison Garden. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 40(3), 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.2015.0030
Swamidoss, H. (2012). “You”re so yeller’: identity, land, and the third-culture subject in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. The AnaChronist, 17, 161–.


  Gupta, P. (2016). The Female Explorer and the Child Wanderer in George MacDonald’s “The Day Boy and the Night Girl” and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. North Wind (London. 1982), 35, 4–.


  Lelekis, D. (2014). ‘Pretty maids all in a row“: power and the female child in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s ”The Secret Garden. Anglica (Warsaw, Poland), 23(1), 63–71.




  Dixon, S. (2007). Digital performance a history of new media in theater, dance, performance art, and installation. MIT Press.



Auslander, P. (2008) Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. 2nd ed. Oxon: Routledge.


Causey, M. (2006) Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture: From simulation to embeddedness. Oxon: Routledge.




Lonergan, L. (2016) Theatre & Social Media. UK: Palgrave.


Bree Hadley. Theatre, Social Media, and Meaning Making. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, v + 256 pp., £89.99 (hardback), £71.50 (PDF ebook).
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Contemporary Performance Practice
Blast Theory
Matt Adams interviewed by Andy Lavender (Interview). Interview
 Contemporary Performance Practice. (2016). Digital Theatre.


January challenge - curates people’s interpretations of an artistic brief through instagram
https://64millionartists.com/thejanuarychallenge/




Eureka! digiPlaySpace (a digital exhibition from a few years ago)
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10155054841341361


Social Media and Its Effects in the Commercial Dance World
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dj8x3wp


Punchdrunk - Schools
https://www.punchdrunkenrichment.org.uk/schools/


Bo Burnham - Inside (interesting lo-tech visual effects)
https://www.netflix.com/title/81289483


Digital Storytelling
https://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/page.cfm?id=27&cid=27&sublinkid=29


Social Media as an Art form
https://medium.com/the-mission/the-reason-social-media-will-soon-be-an-art-form-35742a32bcf2#


https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-in-the-instagram-age-how-social-media-is-shaping-art-and-how-you-experience-it/


5 Social Media lessons I learned from Peter Pan
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/5-social-media-lessons-i-learned-peter-pan


Projection Mapping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkXrLZmnQ_M


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GlHeDFs0ZA


The Posthuman Condition - a great book that look at the future of humans as we advance with more technology and how we may be integrating it.
https://www.intellectbooks.com/the-posthuman-condition


Joseph Campbell - A Hero With a Thousand Faces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936


Joseph Campbell - The Hero’s Journey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Zxt28ff-E
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heros-Journey-Joseph-Campbell-Collected/dp/1608681890