Sadie and Dave in the States

Sadie and Dave Green, our Chair and Membership Secretary are bound for Manteo, Bideford’s twin town in North Carolina, on America’s Eastern seaboard.

Sadie goes as a Sir Winston Churchill Fellow on a travel fellowship. Her role is two-fold; firstly on a fact finding research mission to find out where North Devon’s pottery, exported in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries, ended up. Thousands of pieces of slipware left Bideford’s quay for the New World, supplying the early settlements with domestic pottery and the finely decorated sgraffito harvest jugs and other wares. First stop is Jamestowne where she’ll join Dr Kelso on an ‘in the trenches’ tour to see where many jugs have been dug up. Sadie then goes on to the State capital, Raleigh, where she’ll spend some time at the North Carolina Arts council, the Museum of History and the Office of State Archaeology. Following this a tour of Seagrove, where North Carolina’s craft pottery industry is based; she’s looking for evidence of any influence from North Devon’s tradition on contemporary ceramics. Sadie’s final stop, and vast majority of the time, will be based on the 12-mile long and 3-mile wide Roanoke Island, which straddles between mainland USA and the 105-mile long Outerbanks; like Westward Ho!’s pebble ridge only a lot bigger. Good relations have already been made through email and phone with some of the key players in the arts in Manteo; Carl Curnutte 111, Executive Director of the Lost Colony Production, an open-air play in it’s 73rd year which attracts 1,000’s of visitors a year; Laura Martier from Dare County Arts Council and Sharon Enoch, a potter and owner of the Full Moon Café-grille and Gallery. Sadie wants to build on these relationships, develop more, and hopes to start the process of arts exchanges and residences for a wide range of artists in both towns on her return.

Dave is representing Bideford Bay Creatives (BBC) and goes partially supported by a Networking Artists Network (NAN) Go-and-See bursary. His role is to extend the hand of friendship from our local artists to those across the water in Bideford’s ‘sister city’ Manteo. Dave is hoping to find ways of solidifying the twinning process by building real relationships through the artistic community in both towns. He is also a photographer and will spend some of his time exploring and documenting the similarities and differences between Manteo and Bideford.

You can follow what Sadie gets up to by viewing her blog at www.sadie-green.blogspot.com and Dave’s blog at http://bidefordmanteo.blogspot.com/