Inside the Cave of Wild Humphrey Kynaston

Shropshire Council's Great Outdoors website have kindly used my text about Wild Humphrey Kynaston in their new virtual walk-through of his cosy cave abode. Thank you, Folklore Thursday for first publishing my article titled, A Real Robin Hood: Tales of Wild Kynaston and his Satanic Steed, Beelzebub, in which I retell some of the surviving tales about the Shropshire outlaw and highwayman, whilst looking at the real historical backdrop to his life. 

Nesscliffe Hills and The Cliffe Countryside Heritage Site is steeped in 3,000 years of human history, an Iron Age hillfort, saw pits where trees were planked by hand on site, World War II trenches, squatters cottages, an observation post, a terrace where archery competitions were held two hundred years ago, and Kynaston's Cave - hideout of Wild Humphrey the Highwayman. A new online walkthrough takes you inside, accompanied by my text commentary...

 

You can make a virtual visit via this link - scroll down the informative article to find VR compatible, 360° walkthroughs of the Nesscliffe Hill Camp dig - conducted during the summer of 2021 by Southampton & Oxford University Archaeology Departments; and a look inside the small but, for the time, well-appointed hideout of Kynaston’s Cave - a Scheduled Monument, situated high up and cut into the vertical quarry face of distinctive red sandstone, accessible only by a long flight of treacherous steps that are not safe for public use! 

...onward into 2022

Happy New Year! 

Here is a brief round-up of things I did in 2021 that may be of interest to others... 

I already summarised the first quarter HERE which saw plenty of my writings published, about film and art, plus a virtual author's tour of schools for World Book Day following-on from a couple of virtual residencies. 

The summer saw more writing, but a lot of it was 'in the background', including a new lease of life for an array of television script ideas, due to an injection of funding to facilitate their collaborative development. It may be a while until any of that is likely to be unleashed, though! 

My visual art also explored avenues anew and collided with text to take things in a whole new direction... I wrote a related piece for Signifier about this merging and morphing into post-literate abstraction - click image below to read for free: 

Writing to Escape the Words in Signifier

I am honoured to have been accepted as an Arts Council of Wales Associate and looking forward to exploring all that may entail. In my role as Creative Consultant in Education I offered distanced learning, a mentoring programme, and also oversaw a collaboration with the forward thinking school Ysgol y Foryd, near Rhyl, and two inspiring artists, Sal Maguire of Round the Twist, and Liam Rickard aka WorldWideWelshman, who helped the pupils explore illustration, folklore, climate, and to write and perform their own original (and super-catchy) songs - one about the myth of the fearsome, flood-bringing Afanc, and another that's a pop party anthem.

This creative adventure continues with the preliminary planning of a second educational project, and I'm looking forward to developing this into 2022 with three new Creative Practitioners - Tara Dean, along with Libby Edwards and Stuart Loughland of Magic Light Productions. The potential is immense and I can only expect... the unexpected!  

I was inaugural Curator for Signifier : Six : Shot : Gallery which featured a dozen artists in its first year: Stephen Green, Julie Upmeyer, Lou Gunstone, Tim Pugh, Elin Hughes, David Thomas, Jan Gardner, KK Sharma, Géraldine Swatridge, Darren Neave, James Milne, and currenlty samples from my Biodes series are the January 2022 exhibition. The Signifier’s Six Shot is an online gallery that showcases just six images linked by aesthetics, techniques, processes, philosophies, formal or conceptual elements. The accompanying statement by the artist may not necessarily explain the work but will help build a deeper and more meaningful engagement with it. 

(I am currenlty sorting out the Six Shot schedule for 2022, so if you would be interested in showing work, feel free contact me with your proposal and a request for guidelines.)

I continued to contribute regular articles on art, design, and media to the Signifier publication and you can 'jump in' with these selected examples - try to guess the subject before clicking on the image: 

 

...and I enjoyed writing regular reviews of film and television as a critic at Frame Rated. Here are a few choice retrospectives, 'deep-dives', and reviews I particularly enjoyed - see if you can identify the movies from these stills before clicking-through to the reviews: 

 

If you have enjoyed any of my art and writing, please consider showing some love and support. Simply spreading the word via your social channels would be a big help and won't cost a penny. So, take a moment to share articles, art, and reviews that you found of interest because, chances are, others may also. 

Much of my online writing is syndicated to the Medium platform where I am listed as a Top Writer in the categories of Art and Movies. If you haven't yet, please consider subscribing to Medium via - this link - I receive a small referral fee and you get unlimited access to The Signifier publication and Six Shot Gallery, plus Frame Rated and all the quality writing on Medium, which is focussed on providing a smooth reader experience across multiple devices and platforms. It’s a great deal!

The best way to support any indie author, is to purchase their books! If you enjoy the work of a writer, then a reader review on your preferred peer-sharing platform is a brilliant way to show support and get the word out to others who may also enjoy their books. If you know anyone who enjoys reading “imaginative fiction at its best,”  This, That, and The Other is my latest series of epic fantasy adventure novels, written with Zel Cariad, and the first four are available from The Red Sparrow Press.

That's all for now, except for me to wish you and yours all the very best for 2022!

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