We will be running some family friendly activities in the M Shed studio for Love Local Events and The Chocolate Festival.
Share your favourite chocolaty thoughts, recipes, imaginings and memories, get messy with art and craft, see the development process from bean to bar, handle the raw materials, and watch fascinating archive film from the Bristol Records Office. We will also be offering a guided walk and talk around some of Bristol city centre’s chocolate related sites.
Easter weekend, 7th & 8th April, M Shed. Bristol
To see what else is happening at The Chocolate Festival
Update on the creative development work.
Tobacco Factory, Prototype
On Sunday 4th March we presented 15 minutes of material as part of the Tobacco Factory Theatre’s Prototype programme. Following previous feedback from audiences at Exeter Bikeshed and the international Challenging Histories conference (see below) we decided to focus on the emotional content of the piece.
The extracts we tested were quite deliberately a collage of styles. They included a ‘brand awareness’ game, verbatim text from interviews, life moments featuring chocolate from christenings to funerals, a micro media documentary, a song, and some physical/visual theatre.
Jack Price of Studiofilm filmed us rehearsing for his blog, Act Bristol, and asked us what it was all about. You can watch the film here.
You can listen to the song, a Polish lullaby, here
Is Chocolate a Challenging History?
On 25th February we presented some work in progress to an international audience of over a hundred academics and heritage professionals attending The Challenging Histories Conference at The Tower of London.
We asked for feedback. Here are the questions, and just some of the many interesting responses.
What elements of the story speak to you?
I really enjoyed it moving backward and forward between small scale and large analysis. Paying attention to the value of chocolate – normally something you would ignore.
I found a parallel between Cadbury’s in UK and Bata in pre WW2 Czechoslovakia. Very concerned about the increasing contradiction between the global village on the one hand, and the lack of human relationships on the other
Good to see female industrial heritage and personal stories. Community and company relationships resonated with me, from personal experience.
What is your most vivid chocolate memory or experience?
Waiting for real/really good West German chocolate being sent to us (by friends) in East Germany….
Chocolate Letters in Netherlands connected to Zwarte Piet (Epiphany).. Chocolate as a love food. Bed food. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Imaginative. Ypres Battlefield tour with tourists that were only interested in buying chocolate
I remember photographs of my childhood covered in messy chocolate (but not the experience of it). Opening Kinder Eggs with the toy! Multi-layered Mum’s Chocolate Cake.
Thinking of Bridget Jones. Hearing from Grandfather about getting Fry’s chocolate and amazement of experience. At a wedding with a chocolate fountain and grumpy ‘chocolate officer’. At Maison du Chocolat in Paris having a chocolate drink with spices – amazing.
When I was a child I remember jellies in chocolate and I hated them. We always had them for Christmas. Also the Kinder Egg, we asked the shop assistant to weigh them so we could buy the heavy ones! I remember I loved (larder?) bars, and when my parents were buying if for me, I was hiding them under my bed so my sister couldn’t find me
Draw your impression of what you see in our work.
Really revealing! We’ll add the doodles to the blog when we have scanned them.
