Herefordshire Council’s Museums, Libraries & Archives Service has been awarded funding from Arts Council England and the Elmley Foundation for ‘Pedlar’s Tales’, a new touring storytelling show.
‘Pedlar’s Tales’ is an intriguing, fun and interactive storyteller’s performance, featuring puppets, music and a mysterious traveller!
Created and performed by Fetch Theatre with support from partner Arts Alive, ‘Pedlar’s Tales’ is inspired by stories drawn from fascinating historical documents kept at Herefordshire Archives and Herefordshire folklore collected at Ella Mary Leather in the last century.
Bite-sized stories held within a quirky pedlar’s cart are chosen and performed, bringing the two-dimensional archive documents bursting into three-dimensional life. New stories will be collected from the audience and added to a ‘magical’ box to create a new archive of contemporary Herefordshire stories.
Jon Chedgzoy, Museum, Libraries and Archives Manager for Herefordshire Council, said:
“Pedlar’s Tales is an exciting way of taking documents and stories from the Herefordshire archives out to where people live across the county. Audiences will enjoy a mix of real events and local folklore with a sound track of local music collected in the last century. The funding from Arts Council England and The Elmley Foundation enables us to work with local arts organisations to create innovative ways of taking our heritage collections to new audiences.”
The first performance is at Kington Library on Saturday 27 July 11am-12.30pm, followed by Leominster Library on Wednesday 31 July 11am-12.30pm. Tickets cost £3 available from the library.
More performances will be announced for the October half term.
