Amazing Madame Midnight - Solstice Celebrations!

Working with local groups, we’ll design rituals that strengthen our connection to the land, encourage us to observe seasonal changes and commit to protecting it and each other - in a dynamic and entertaining way.

In the form of a guided walk around Railway Land at the Winter and Summer solstices and the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes, as the sun sets, theatrical interventions will inspiring us to see familiar territory afresh. Using natural elements, fire, water, earth and air will be central to scenes on our journey and we’ll learn about the plants, trees and beasts we find along the way. Together, we’ll consider: what do we want to leave in the old season? What shall we take forward in to the future?

Live and recorded music, visual effects, lights and performers will encourage us to stop, look and listen and experience our surroundings in a richer way. As the project develops, we’ll introduce characters from Railway Land’s past, present and future, who will reveal what’s been lost and what’s left.

The Solstice walk has come out of our Light Up Lewes project in the first lockdown, which brought the town together whilst apart to light up their homes and sing and our online immersive Amazing Madame Midnight experience produced by Fireraisers in the depths of the second lockdown. Participants agreed that they’d reconnected with nature during quarantine and believed their own wellbeing was inextricably linked to the wellbeing of their habitat. They wanted to be able to come together to have a collective experience. Here at Fireraisers, we believe that now is the time for a fresh start for us all: a coming back to life.

This pilot plants the seed which will grow in to a 2-3 year project, making the Sussex community stakeholders and co-creators of our project and positively changing the way we all interact with our habitat. Counteracting ‘climate doom’, we aim to empower, as per the Margaret Meade quote: if we all band together, we can change our world.

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