Following on from two successful iterations of CAST-Off, in the summer of 2022 we offered a new programme of creative activities for local children: CAST-Away. Drawing on aspects of local history and the natural environment, CAST-Away took high quality creative engagement directly to local communities on the Lizard peninsula, with sessions at Poltesco, Polurrian, Porthoustock and Gweek. These four sessions took place between 3 and 24 August 2022.
CAST-Away began at Polurrian Cove with kite-making, sand casting and dam building. Dance specialist Kyra Norman encouraged children to form a shoal, running across the beach together with their silver pilchard kites.
Activities at Gweek explored local nautical knowledge, with boat building, rope making and knots. Gweek boatyard hosted a model boat show and tours of their yard, and Flushing Yacht Club lent a set of nautical signal flags.
At the old Serpentine Works in Poltesco Valley, ceramicist Hannah Lawrence led clay activities, with children making crates of tiny decorated fishes, and local craftsman Don Taylor supervised serpentine polishing, while cuttlefish barges were launched from the tiny quay on the beach. Kyra Norman and musicians Elly Rowbotham and Patrick Ashton created a call-and-response hide-and-seek game between the upper orchard and the lower Serpentine Works, encouraging movement and connection between the two parts of the site.
The rain came in for the CAST-Away finale but eager participants nonetheless turned up to make sound sticks with shells and bells and to join local musicians in a procession from St Keverne down the wooded valley to the beach at Porthoustock, where they took part in a Snail’s Creep dance and built a wood-fuelled kiln to fire ceramics from the previous CAST-Off and CAST-Away sessions.
In a nod to the Cornish tradition of ‘tea treats’, locally baked saffron treat buns were offered at each location.
1,250 people took part in CAST-Away and 1,387 took part in CAST-Off 2022.
Click here to see the CAST-Away Map 2022.
CAST-Off and CAST-Away are made possible by the generous support of The National Lottery Community Fund, FEAST, the Garcia Family Foundation and Helston Town Council.
We should especially like to thank the Garcia Family Foundation, which enabled us to initiate the CAST-Off programme during the pandemic and has made it possible for us to continue the programme since that time.