This unique event sees the Murri Collective collaborate with The Golden Thread Project to commemorate the centenary of the song-collecting trips taken by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles to the Appalachian region of the USA. Folk enthusiasts are invited to celebrate this significant collecting trip in an evening of creative workshops and musical performances by a range of artists, including the award-winning folk artist Lisa Knapp.
Led by artists, Aidan Saunders and Geoff Coupland (aka ZEEL), The Golden Thread Project is an ongoing initiative which celebrates folk song and folk culture as an ongoing source of inspiration in the form of illustration, printmaking and comics, but also via craft, writing, music and moving image. The project has delivered an exhibition featuring folk song comics by 28 emerging illustrators and established artists, each responding to a song from Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles’ Appalachian collection. It is currently on display for the general public to view at Cecil Sharp House until 29 July 2018.
However, for one night only, The Golden Thread Project, alongside former folk disco, Murri, will be taking over Cecil Sharp House to mark this centenary. Previous contributors to the Murri Collective, Harriet Vine (Tatty Devine), and Stephen Fowler, as well as writer and illustrator Desdemona McCannon will lead several workshops in jewellery making, rubber stamp printing, and badge making respectively – all areas which contributed to Murri Collective’s visual appeal in the early 2000s.
Workshops will then be followed by an eclectic array of musical performances featuring folk artist Lisa Knapp, freestyle Appalachian flatfooting dance team Dan Eccles and Jake Jones, and exhibiting artists Orson Coupland and Jim Stoten, Drew Webster, and Nick White. Musical celebration will continue with DJs and dancing to close a memorable night paying tribute to the golden thread linking UK and USA folk song.
