One of the first ideas that we came up with when developing Cursed City – Dark Tide is that we wanted to have a street artist involved with the project. It was simple enough to conceive of Lissitch, an important character in Matt Wingett’s novel The Snow Witch as a street artist. He is, after all, a mysterious shape-shifting character. One of the old gods perhaps – not sure if this will ever be known with any certainty.
I have always been fascinated by the paste-up art that you see around the city and I thought that perhaps Lissitch could be doing something along these lines. He would be casting a spell, or sending a message to the local population. This would become a main theme for the Cursed City project and we consulted widely among the street art community. We were looking for a collaborator as well as some input and advice on how we might develop the character.
Eventually, we met with Roo Abrook whose stunning work you can see all over the city and she agreed to take on a number of commissions for us. She also agreed to run a public street art workshop for us which we put on at Aspex Gallery. What a wonderful day it was messing about with spray paint, stencils and cut-outs under the expert tutelage of Roo Abrook.
We want to extend a big thanks to Aspex Gallery for hosting the workshop and we look forward to working with them again on future projects.
Cursed City – Dark Tide is funded by Arts Council England to produce a transmedia story experience that will be delivered this autumn as part of Darkfest 2019.
