THE production company behind Hull's Freedom Festival has won a top national award for its work at Derry's UK City of Culture 2017 celebrations last year.
Walk The Plank, who have produced the past two Freedom Festivals, won the best outdoor event at this week's 2014 Event Awards for The Return of Colmcille, a spectacular two-day project that formed the centrepiece of Derry's UK City of Culture programme.
It featured five individual shows, involving 1,000 local people, telling the story of the city's founding saint, in a collaboration with London Olympics opening ceremony writer Frank Cottrell Boyce.
John Wassell, Salford-based Walk The Plank's creative producer, said: "We are incredibly proud of what we helped the city achieve across the course of those two days.
"This project was all about us enabling Derry-Londonderry to bring those brilliant, and often overlooked, histories to the surface to tell a new story about itself, in its own words.
"The magnitude of creative collaboration that went into realising this event was quite staggering; from bringing Frank's often larger-than-life narratives to life, through to large-scale community participation and ownership.
"To watch that initial reluctance in people transform into active involvement demonstrates exactly how powerful of a tool arts experiences are in terms of developing advocacy and helping people not only to understand themselves and the world around them, but to tell other people that story, too."
Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the Derry Culture Company 2013, said: "I describe The Return of Colmcille as the defining moment of our UK City of Culture year and in every interview I have done, I have paid tribute to the expertise and brilliance of Walk The Plank.
"They are a truly wonderful bunch of people and their work brings joy, awe and inspiration into people's lives.
"Long may their creative midwifery and vision prevail."
The Return of Colmcille was a £1.2m commission, designed to be the highlight of the first ever UK City of Culture programme, which Hull is now aiming to follow in 2017.
It told the story of Derry's monastic founder, his mythical battle with the Loch Ness monster and his role in spreading literacy and the concept of peace-making across Europe.
It was billed as the most ambitious outdoor arts event in Northern Ireland's history and featured pageantry, processions and spectacular music, theatre and fireworks shows, attracting about 40,000 spectators over two days.
Walk The Plank will also direct next year's Freedom Festival in Hull.
Scale of show a pointer for 2017The scale of the show put on by Walk The Plank in Derry last year for its UK City of Culture year gives us a flavour of what might be on the horizon for us in 2017 when Hull is set to become the UK City of Culture.
The Return of Colmcille saw 1,000 local people taking part in a spectacle that took place over two days.
Processions, site-specific theatre, dance, music and literature events were all staged on the city's streets before a showdown finale on the River Foyle between Derry's founder Saint Colmcille and a 70m-long, 18m-high fire-breathing Loch Ness monster.
BBC arts correspondent Will Gompertz hailed the event as a pinnacle of the overall UK City of Culture programme.
He said: "It was reminiscent of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, capturing the same spirit of participation, cultural celebration and storytelling."
More than 89 per cent of the people who took part said the experience had encouraged them to get involved in future arts activities, while 100 per cent said they felt the event had a positive effect on the community.
