Weds 6th, 7:30. Storytelling and Song

Ruth Blake & friends invite you to an evening of music and storytelling at The Fisherman’s Cottage.

MUSIC from ethereal songstress  Ruth Blake, who carries her audiences on powerful wings across lyrical skies, through ever-changing landscapes that prise open our hearts, connecting us to our most intimate pains and joys. In one moment simple, hypnotic guitar riffs and crystalline vocal melodies lead us open-eyed into the darkness of the void; at another her wild spirit calls our human community to unite with rousing lyrics for this time in history –  inspiring us to return to the truth of the heart.

Having tentatively begun performing solo in the Autumn of 2014 with just 3 of her own songs; Ruth then wrote, crowd-funded, and recorded her debut album, ‘Lullabies for Grown-Ups’ in a flurry of inspiration, releasing it just 14 months later on the Winter Solstice of 2015.

She has been compared to Joni Mitchell, Nessi Gomes and Ayla Nereo, with her newer material adding flavours of Florence and the Machine, Portishead and PJ Harvey.

Through blazing fire and icy waters, flirting with the clouds in their mischief, or plunging deep into the beating heart of the earth… wherever she takes us, we can trust that she will always lead us home.

STORYTELLING from Outrider Anthems’ Director, Jennifer Leach. Bees and Black Holes, the mad & funny How Animals See in the Dark? followed by an interactive story that invites its audience to participate.

Thurs 7th. 7.30pm. Seven Coats – Divesting for Beginners

One myth

Seven gates

One set of instructions

Sometimes the only way is down. Sometimes, in a rocky time, you have to go back to the beginning to know how to start again.

Seven Coats: Divesting for Beginners is based on two stories that happen underground. The time is 3500 BC in Sumer (now Iraq) and 1991 AD in London, UK. One follows the myth of Innana, Queen of Heaven and Earth, as she steps into the kur, the Underworld, in search of her sister Erishkigel; the other a real-life voyage of ‘divestment’ from a culture fuelled by the oil that flows beneath the desert floor.

The challenge is to go through the seven gates of the ‘Great Below’ and unshackle yourself from a civilisation that began in the reedbeds of the Tigris river. It’s an upside down Cinderella tale for a world that has forgotten about consequences. But it is also an imaginative encounter with the Earth and the transformative life-forces that Innana, and those who follow her track, forgo their privilege and power to secure.

Part performance, part-presentation, part-discussion, Seven Coats – Divesting for Beginners asks: how do we get ourselves off the hook? What kind of people we do need to become for the future to happen?

With dance moves and tea! Come and join us as the year tips into the dark.

Charlotte’s blog post shares more on the backstory and inspiration for this event.


Charlotte Du Cann and Mark Watson are writers, editors and cultural activists based in coastal Suffolk. They have worked and collaborated together since 1991. Their first publication was the travelogue Reality Is the Bug That Bit Me in the Galapagos (Flamingo).

In 2008 they began reporting on community-led projects: first online in several collaborative platforms, and later as co-founders of the quarterly grassroots newspaper Transition Free Press. Today they are both part of the core team behind The Dark Mountain Project.


DATE – 7th Sept 2017
TIME – 7.30pm
VENUE – St  Barts Theatre, Palmer Park