Community Artist / Deep Listener / Sound Therapist / Performer
Turtle Key Arts
In 2002 I got a call from Darryl Jaffray, then Director of Education and Access at the Royal Opera House (I worked with her from the mid-90s until she left in 2006). “There’s a project I think you would like and someone I want you to meet” she said.
I duly went in to the ROH and there met Charlotte Cunningham, Artistic Director of Turtle Key Arts.
Thus began a relationship both as colleagues and friends that continues to this day, and I sincerely hope will never stop.
‘Where the heart is! – discovering places with friendly faces’ sharing rehearsal for Turtle Song 2023 @ the Jacqueline du Prés Music Building, St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. Photo: Simon Hutchens
Turtle Key Arts are an amazing organisation. Formed in 1989 with the burning desire to answer these questions: Where were the physically accessible spaces – both for audiences and disabled performers?
Was there a space for new physical theatre or contemporary dance? Where could you combine education and disability arts work with mainstream performance?
Where could we try out the kind of work that we wanted to produce?
‘Momentous Moments! – a celebration of significant anniversaries’ – 2019 sharing @ Jacqueline du Prés Music Building, St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. Photo: Simon Hutchens
That commitment to providing high quality artistic engagement in widely varying community settings has been unwavering. Community Arts as highly crafted and valued art in high quality spaces. Just look at their project page: 15 different ongoing strands of work, initiated and expertly produced by the small dedicated team.
The phone call from Darryl Jaffray led to me being on the first Turtle Opera initiatives in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Turtle Opera is an ongoing drama and music project for 10-14 yr olds on the autistic spectrum. Over 10 Saturdays we engaged with drama, plot, script, costume, composition, singing and playing and the end result was shared to family and friends in The Clore Studio at the ROH. An amazing, rich experience for ALL, including us as artists.
JOY Community Workshop sharing at Hammersmith & Fulham Mencap, October 2025. Photo: Alan Bowyer, primodv
In 2012, with my father several years through his journey of living with Alzheimers, I began working on Turtle Song. In this project, a group of people living with dementia or other memory problems and their loved ones/carers join together for 10 sessions to write a song cycle and perform it. Music students join the team to provide a high quality musical experience and a crucial and delightful inter-generational aspect to the project.
The sharing performance is filmed and all participants end with a DVD and CD of the performance and songs.
We know that the new neural pathways created during the project (the brain maintains plasticity even in its process of deterioration) last and become important new memories for attendees and their families. Songs continue to be sung together, performances watched, laughter shared.
I have now been part of 24 iterations of Turtle Song, and all but 1 of them have been with my amazing colleague Carolyn von Stumm in the role of Director.
We both come from a movement background so we always begin sessions with a body and voice warm-up involving much silliness and laughter. We both love to engage with what I like to call the ‘serious business of play’. 3 words to sum up Turtle Song: singing, dancing, laughter might do it.
Turtle Song manifests in many places around the country, with many different delivery teams so it has had a very large reach over the decades. As always it strives to deliver a high quality artistic experience for all involved. You can listen to songs from the archive on the Turtle Key Arts website:
https://turtlekeyarts.org.uk/turtlesongarchive
Turtle Song didn’t stop through lockdown – we were early Zoom adopters and some of the work I’m most proud of came from those virtual sessions.
Here are 2 songs to watch and enjoy, created at the height of the first lockdown when the Government guidelines were at their most restrictive.
Turtle Social Proximation Party – a song describing our locked down yearning to be able to get together and what we would do once we were allowed to socialise again.
The Last Hat In The World
Over the weeks we noticed that there were a lot of hats turning up in our ‘zoom windows’ so we made a feature of it, asking everyone to bring wear a hat of their choosing and share why they had chosen it. So many wonderful stories emerged and I was at a loss as to how to connect them. Then I realised how it needed to work – the song is a Love Song from Hat to Owner, and reciprocated back again from Owner to Hat, praising it as the The Last Hat in the World, The BEST Hat in the World!