Mayflower 400

“The biggest success has been the way that the city has embraced the festival,” says Professor Chris Bennewith, Head of the School of Art, Design and Architecture, and the University’s lead for Illuminate. “There is a real sense of building social capital here, and people saying ‘this is ours; we have it, it’s not Exeter’s or Bristol’s.’ It’s about civic pride.” 

Chris has seen first-hand the impact that a home-grown cultural entity can have upon the identity of a city. He was part of the team that created the LUX Light Festival in Wellington, New Zealand, which drew crowds in excess of 100,000 people over nine days. And when he moved to Plymouth in 2017, he immediately saw the potential for the city to do something similar. 

"Wellington is roughly the same size as Plymouth, and with similar demographics and natural capital, the potential was immediately apparent,” he says. “In the same way that Vivid Sydney has created satellite points of interest which it then connects into a central festival, so Illuminate is growing and reaching out across the waterfront and into the Sound.” 

For the 2019 event, Illuminate moved beyond the environs of the Royal William Yard to create very different installations at Mount Edgcumbe and the Barbican. It’s an emerging theme as Chris confirms that Drake’s Island and the Plymouth Breakwater could well be included in the 2020 programme. 

"Last year was interesting because it marked the point at which you could no longer see all of Illuminate in one night,” Chris says. “We had these three distinct areas – the festival vibe at Royal William Yard, a magical forest trail at Mount Edgcumbe and a more contemplative art ‘gallery’ in the backstreets of the Barbican. The idea is that we will keep building up without it ever feeling like it is spreading too thin.” 

Student involvement has also been a key ingredient for the development of Illuminate, with undergraduate architects, 3D designers, and art and fine art students from both the University and Plymouth College of Art rubbing shoulders with established international artists. 

“It’s a nice mixture,” adds Chris. “Lots of festivals simply commission work, but Illuminate is bridging across into the wealth of talent we have in the city. It’s another reason why it has become such a key event for Plymouth.”

“The drama plays out over nine scenes, each framed around a pivotal figure or event,” Robert says. “For example, the third chapter, Arrival 1620, begins with a libretto using a quote from William Bradford, the second governor of the Plymouth colony and most significant chronicler of the Mayflower narratives, which reads, “God has cleared a space for us in the wilderness”. This is the point where we see the dawn of this conflict of philosophies in relation to the land.” 

Robert, an internationally renowned concert pianist from New York, developed the piece after taking up his post at the University in April 2018. He initially worked with Kathryn Gray, Associate Professor of English, to create a ‘sweeping panorama’ of the Mayflower narrative, and then began an intense process of distilling it into a form that would make ‘an evening of drama’. 

An alumnus of Princeton University and The Juilliard School, as well as a Visiting Professor at Princeton, Robert has worked with two composers – Jane O’Leary, from Galway, Ireland (whose ancestor Richard Warren, 12 generations ago, was on the Mayflower), and Jonathan Dawe, from New York – to develop the music. Randall Scarlata, a leading US baritone, and the Grammy Award-winning soprano Deborah York were the singers / narrators, and nine string members of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra the live music ensemble. And the visual component, which includes maps, photos and video, was created in collaboration with the production team at the Theatre Royal Plymouth.

“I don’t think anything like this – regarding our home, our planet – has been done before involving live music and video and images,” Robert says. “And we’re hoping to share it with many people.” 

And in that act of sharing, what does he hope the audience will take away from Some Call It Home? 

“My hope is that the audience is both moved and inspired,” Robert reflects. “This is not a romantic comedy. It’s taking a key historical event – something so intrinsic to American iconography – and imbuing it with life and relevance for a modern audience. I hope people will ask of themselves, ‘What can we learn from this conflict of philosophy?’ Well maybe we can learn to shepherd our home in a way that will preserve it for the future.” 

Some Call It Home was scheduled to play at the Theatre Royal Plymouth in March 2020, but unfortunately had to be postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. New dates will be published as soon as they are known.

Kathryn Gray, Associate Professor of English, specialising in early American literature, and Jo Loosemore, a BBC journalist and the curator of the exhibition, have worked together for the past two years to construct a narrative around Mayflower that is more nuanced and multi-layered than many traditional retellings of the story. 

“We often see a particular history become dominant over time,” says Kathryn, an expert in transatlantic literature and culture, who has researched and written about many of the key historical texts of the 17th and 18th centuries. 

“And for centuries, Native Americans have been lost in the Anglo-American story of the Mayflower. What we are doing is telling parallel and intersecting stories, which includes their experiences both before 1620 and in the intervening centuries.”

This is particularly the case in a second exhibition in development – ‘Wampum: Stories and Shells from Native America’ – which will tour Lincoln, London and Southampton from April, arriving in Plymouth in September. This represents a first acknowledgement of the cultural connection to the Wampanoag people and will include the commissioning of a new wampum belt, and an opportunity for Wampanoag artists to record, interpret and explore one of the world’s largest collections of wampum belts at the British Museum. 

“This project is about voice, and the story of the story,” says Jo. “If we had only told that dominant, traditional one, we would have done our audience a disservice. What we have is much richer and surprising, but also more troubling and difficult.” 

“Many people have been brought up to think about the Mayflower sailing in a particular way,” adds Kathryn. “I hope that the legacy of Mayflower 400 is that we will never be able to tell the story again without accommodating the perspective of the native people.” 

The Mayflower 400 exhibition will be in residence for 18 months, and will include artefacts sourced from the National Museum of the Native American, Harvard and the Leiden Archives.

“This voyage has the potential to be a real game-changer and cements Plymouth’s reputation as a world-leading hub of marine science,” says Professor Kevin Jones, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University. “It gives us the genuine capability to explore new and innovative research opportunities that have not previously been possible. It also raises the bar in terms of autonomous vessels, a world first that could set the standard for others in the field to follow.” 

The trimaran-style vessel will sail using renewable energy and will include three research pods packed with state-of-the-art monitoring equipment. These will include acoustic, nutrient and temperature sensors, along with water and air samplers, that can create a picture of ocean conditions and mammal behaviour right across the Atlantic. 

The hull is being manufactured at a shipyard in Poland and will return to Plymouth this spring for its final outfitting and testing by ProMare and MSubs. And it has also been confirmed that global technology giant IBM will provide the servers, artificial intelligence and cloud-based technology that will help MAS navigate its way across the North Atlantic. 

“The original Mayflower voyage was all about exploration into a new world, and this project is to a large extent the same,” adds Fredrik Soreide, ProMare Project Director. “It takes autonomous marine vessels to a new level and opens up countless scientific possibilities.”

iMayflower 

If Mayflower 400 has been a commemoration of an historic event, iMayflower is its legacy for the future. Thanks to a successful bid to the Cultural Development Fund, the city has been awarded £2.75 million (from a total package of £3.5 million) to develop new opportunities, creative spaces and skills for the creative industries. 

For the University, this money will support a range of initiatives, including business support, leadership development and knowledge exchange programmes for the creative sector. There will be a particular focus on skills and learning through the use of the new immersive media and digital fabrication laboratories in the Roland Levinsky Building. And it will also include the launch of ‘Ignite – A Festival of Creativity’, which will bring together the traditional arts degree shows at both the University and Plymouth College of Art to create a month-long celebration and showcase of the city’s artistic talent, supplemented with events, activity, networking and debates.

“The Cultural Development Fund will enable the dynamic fusion of the region’s creative talent and excellent digital resources, with existing strengths in sectors such as healthcare, marine and tourism,” says Professor Chris Bennewith, who is leading the University’s work on iMayflower. “And through Ignite, iMayflower and our wider work to boost the creative economy, we are helping enable more and more of our graduates to remain in Plymouth and use their talents and energy to help the city realise its potential.”