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.
![](https://i0.wp.com/thesnowwitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/arta_albertrd4.jpg?resize=640%2C640&ssl=1)
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.
![Logos-Slate-All](https://i0.wp.com/thesnowwitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Logos-Slate-All.png?resize=640%2C384&ssl=1)