A New History of Barnwell & Beyond is an adaptation of our previous ‘Tales from the Edge of Town’ workshops – Pairing artists with school children to explore and develop their creative writing skills.

We ran workshops at the Galfrid School in Cambridge, where, inspired by some very old artefacts kindly lent to us by  Wisbech and Fenland Museum the year 5 students wrote brand new stories about life in Roman age Barnwell, and beyond!

Our team of professional actor musicians then took the stories into the rehearsal room and created a live show, weaving together the themes from the workshops, and bringing the children’s new legends to life.

We worked the live action together with a fantastic animation of the stories, created by the children along with Oscar-nominated animator Lizzy Hobbs. This was the first time we had been able to include a filmed element of children’s work within the performance.

We hope to continue the project further in 2025/26 – developing the show and touring it to schools and communities in Fenland.

Thanks to: 

* Abbey People

* Cambridge Archaeological Unit for the loan of their prehistoric axes from Must Farm – it’s great to be working in partnership with real archaeologists