Hidden in the Landscape – Stories of Cromwell Bottom
Meet the Creative Team
Hidden in the Landscape – Stories of Cromwell Bottom has been co-created by a local group of community actors and writers, who have worked with professional artists to develop their poetry, characters and stories.
Project Funders:
CultureDale
The National Lottery Community Fund
With thanks to:
Cromwell Bottom Wildlife Group
Breaking Barriers
Our community acting and writing company (some pictured below; photography by Ant and Rhys Robling).
Featured Writing
Deb Ash
I am Scarred…
Today is the Kind of Day to be Energised
Willow
Industry Poem
Sally Brown
Centipede
Did You Hear That?
The Water Understands
Helen Crossfield
The River
The Bridge
Ferns
Jennie Forrester
Kingfisher Haiku
Buzzard
Mystic Crumblebottom and Suzie
Janet Griffiths
Did You Hear That?
Woodlouse
Sam Jebson
New Zealand Pigmy Weed
Sam Jebson and Philip Bruce
Quarrymen
Adele Knowles and Iain Young
The Navvies
Lisa Roberts
Untitled
Blue Tit
Water Poetry
Six Spot Burnet Moth (Zygaena Filipendulae)
Anthony Rutherford
Birdsong
Bridge Spider
Iron Woman
Helen Scott
Haiku
Edmund Tirbutt
Getting to the Bottom
Iain Young
Beetle
Emerging Beauty
All the pieces are read by the writers, with the additional voices of Iris Greenwood, Jo Kennedy, Ali Khan, Paul Knights and Joni Sheard.
Steph Connell
Senior Producer
Steph Connell is a freelance Producer working in theatre and events across the UK. Her experience includes producing live theatre, digital and outdoor work across new writing, circus, dance and children’s theatre as well as artist development and community engagement. She is currently producing for Sleeping Warrior Theatre Company, Northern Broadsides and Curious Monkey.
Previous roles included Executive Producer for Glasgow-based company Wonder Fools (2018 – 2024), Producer of Wigan-based company ThickSkin, Artist Development Coordinator at the Tron Theatre and Stage One Producer at the Citizens Theatre.
Steph has also worked for Frantic Assembly, Raw Material, Artichoke, National Theatre of Scotland, Greenwich and Docklands International Festival and the National Centre for Circus Arts. She has an MA in Arts and Cultural Management from Queen Margaret University and is a graduate of the Clore Emerging Leaders Course in 2017.
Ian Humphreys
Poet
Ian Humphreys is Writer in Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. His latest poetry collection, Tormentil (Nine Arches Press) won a Royal Society of Literature ‘Literature Matters’ Award, and is a Yorkshire Times ‘Book of the Year’. His debut collection, Zebra (Nine Arches) was nominated for the Portico Prize. Ian is the editor of Why I Write Poetry, and the producer and co-editor of After Sylvia: Poems and Essays in Celebration of Sylvia Plath (both from Nine Arches). Ian’s work has been highly commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry, and he has written for the BBC.
Jo Kennedy
Sound Designer
Jo Kennedy is a Todmorden based sound artist who uses field recordings, found sounds, spoken word and music to create immersive audio experiences, whether these be fixed pieces, soundwalks or installations. Recent commissions include sound design work for Breaking Barriers Rochdale, BBC Radio 3, Artichoke and the RSPB.
Her creative practice often engages explicitly with ecological issues, responding to questions about our relationship with the living world. She co-produces Nature Tripping podcast and is also a Director at Yorkshire Sound Women Network (YSWN), a CIC working to address gender imbalance across the audio industry. www.jokennedysound.com
Ali Khan
Project Assistant
Ali is a photographer, videographer and director from Halifax. He supports the smooth running of Northern Broadsides’ Park Youth Theatre, as well as more generally on the Iron People project, working closely with our community acting and writing company.
Paul Knights
Environmental Historian
Paul has spent the past 30 years engaged with our natural environment, from nature conservation to agriculture, from academic research and education to community arts. His writing and photography bears witness to the landscape and the lives lived in connection to it; his guided walks explore the hidden histories and embodied meanings of rural places; and his collaborations with artists help shape and deliver the environmental aspects of their projects. All his practice is deeply informed by his background in philosophy and its role in revealing the plurality of values and visions at stake in our relationship with the land.
Marlene Riberio
Additional Music
Formerly a long standing member of Manchester noise experimentalists Gnod, artist and musician Marlene Ribeiro works within a dream-like sphere of exotic psychedelia.
Laurie Sansom
Director
Laurie took up his role as Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Northern Broadsides in June 2019. His work for Northern Broadsides includes Christmas Broadsides, Quality Street, The Aftermath and As You Like It.
Between 2012 and 2016 Laurie was Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) for whom he directed The James Plays trilogy by Rona Munro. They premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2014, where he won a Herald Angel, before transferring to the National Theatre in London, where they won the Evening Standard and Writers’ Guild Awards for Best Play. In 2022, Laurie returned to Scotland to direct James IV: Queen of the Fight.
Also for NTS he directed his own adaptation of Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat, and The 306: Dawn.
Previously he was Artistic Director of Royal & Derngate where he directed the European premieres of Tennessee Williams’ Spring Storm and Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon, both transferring to the National Theatre, London, and winning him the 2010 TMA Award for Best Director and a nomination for Best Director at the Evening Standard Awards. He also directed new versions of The Bacchae, Blood Wedding and Hedda Gabler as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, Frankenstein (with Frantic Assembly), The Duchess of Malfi, Follies and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
He has directed for theatres around the UK including the Traverse, Birmingham Rep, Salisbury Playhouse, Lyric Hammersmith, The New Vic, Leeds Playhouse and the National Theatre.
At the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, where he was the Associate Director to Alan Ayckbourn, he directed over 20 new plays including Villette (with Frantic Assembly) and a micro-musical season. His Watford Palace production of Dangerous Corner was re-mounted at Leeds Playhouse and transferred to the Garrick Theatre, West End in 2002. He also directed Kiss of the Spiderwoman at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Nightfall at The Bridge Theatre and Genesis Inc. at Hampstead Theatre.
Haiku – tiny poems about nature
A haiku is a small poem that originated in Japan. Traditionally, haiku explore the natural world, and are made up of three short lines:
The first line usually has 5 syllables.
The second line contains 7 syllables.
The third line has 5 syllables.
Here’s an example – written by a member of the public – from Northern Broadsides’ Cromwell Bottom audio experience:
Streak blue kingfisher
Scuds along the river bank
Swift fleeting beauty
The next two haiku are by Basho, one of Japan’s most famous poets who was writing in the 17th Century… as these haiku are translations, the syllable count is slightly different:
The summer grasses.
All that remains
Of warriors’ dreams.
Oh, tranquility!
Penetrating the very rock,
A cicada’s voice.
Why not have a go at creating your own haiku?
You don’t have to follow the above rules. Just do your best – and if you can, try to include an image of a flower, tree, bird or any land or water creature you might see here in Cromwell Bottom.
