Golowan festival procession in full swing

PENZANCE is the main market town in Penwith, in the far west of Cornwall. It's a place where people feel isolated from policymakers in the rest of Cornwall, let alone further 'up country'. A place where the community has traditionally led major events, making its own entertainment. The area is also home to a significant number of creative Cornish people - artists, playwrights, poets, musicians and newcomers who are attracted by the outstanding natural beauty and rugged coastlines, choosing to stay despite the lack of money and conventional jobs.

In the last few decades there have been attempts to revive and renew local traditions, and connect with the wider Celtic community of Brittany, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man and beyond. Golowan is an outstandingly successful example of a community-led event that helps to give a vibrant identity to a town, supporting a deprived area's renewal in ways that are hard to measure using conventional 'box-ticking' analysis. Community pride is not an easy factor to fit into the evidence base.

Stephen Hall, director of Golowan was one of the founders of the project. 'Since 1985 I had been running a local history research project, the Penwith Community Archive, in Penzance. We discovered references to and descriptions of Gol Jowan, the Feast of John. It was a unique midsummer celebration, which involved the working communities of the town. Recorded in the first history of Penzance over 500 years ago, the feast was suppressed as a rowdy outdated superstition in the closing years of the 19th century.'

How Golowan started

'In 1989 a group of us decided to revive Golowan with an experimental one day event.' says Hall. 'We had little official support and were probably seen by many as a strange assortment of hippies. It coincided with the Penzance chamber of commerce's initiative to start a one day event to put Penzance on the map - a Poldark or Humphrey Davy day were suggested. We got together with them, the town council, Kneehigh [today an internationally respected theatre group] and Alverton primary school, who had already been inspired by an Archive Golowan exhibition to revive a traditional serpent dance.

'Mazey Day took its name from the "mazey dance" described by Valentine le Grice in the 19th century. In Cornish dialect mazed or mazey means confusion, topsy turvy, everything upside down. On our first Mazey Day in June 1991 it poured with rain all morning but by midday the skies cleared. All agreed it was a complete success! We worked with several local schools helping children make their own costumes. We also made banners to decorate the streets, and set up market stalls around the town centre.'

Since then the festival has grown to 10 days with Mazey Day as its highlight. Dozens of professional, paid artists (several of whom are now nationally and internationally recognised) are involved in community and school workshops. Golowan also runs community activities all through the year, working especially closely with schools. This helps to widen children's experience of their own and different cultures. Despite its distinctive Cornish identity, the festival always aims to attract an international feel, with music, dance and performers from across the world.

Modern, traditional, Cornish, international

Participation by local schools forms a key part of the Golowan festivities

A typical Golowan festival involves the largest open-air public art display in the UK with hundreds of community made Mazey Day banners and flags, world music, local music, poetry, Cornish lessons, story-telling, writing - both new and traditional, workshops, town trails, ghost hunts, cliff walks, Cornish and Celtic films, talks and lectures, and a feast of Cornish dance and music.

Traditional elements include the election of a Mock Mayor of the Quay (lord or lady, sometimes both, of misrule), a Quay Fair at the harbourside, the Summer Fire fireworks display, echoing the blazing tar barrels and bonfires which once filled the streets. The ancient serpent dance winds through the streets led by Penglaz, a mysterious figure with a horse's skull, shrouded in black. The long established Feast of John brings together 'more mayors than you can shake a stick at' as well as church representatives and other representatives of the community. The Golowan band leads the processions. Bagas Degol, or 'Feast day band', Pendans, formed from the Golowan band, and Dalla have all entered into the spirit of the Cornish music revival. Golowan is a great place to showcase their talents.

The mid 1990s crisis

By 1996 it became clear that the organisation was outgrowing its voluntary capacity and it lacked clear direction, leadership or funding to develop as a professional community arts organisation. A focus weekend was held to decide on the way forward. It was decided to draw together a board of trustees and to register Golowan as a charity and company limited by guarentee. With the help of creative consultants Perfect Moment, the trust applied to PESCA SW, an EU initative, for grant assistance to support core wages and festival development for two years. Stephen Hall was appointed as director, later joined as administrator by Stephanie Hayward, who had helped with accounts as voluntary treasurer.

Golowan festival procession with trademark giant creatures heading down Market Jew Street

The essential PESCA core funding allowed Golowan to undertake year round project work whilst SW Arts, Penwith district council and Penzance town council continued to make annual grants to festival costs. However, in 1999, with no alternative long-term core funding in place, the charity was faced with insolvency. 'We held various meetings and made a public appeal, with newspaper publicity, to ask for support' says Hall. 'After a public presentation to Penwith district council, they made us an extraordinary grant of £45,000 over three years. The council acknowledged that the festival alone brought an estimated economic benefit to the area of an additional £4.4.million. Newly appointed Penwith chief executive Jim McKenna said £45,000 was a minimal investment for such a substantial return.'

In 2002 Golowan entered into a three year £48,000 per annum service level agreement with Penwith district and Penzance town council. The first contract of this kind in Cornwall, it has enabled the presentation of the annual festival, public art and winter events. In September 2004 this agreement is being renegotiated on the basis of essential core year-round running costs. The emphasis is on Golowan becoming, like several other local creative organisations, a 'strategic partner', rather than a client. 'I'm hoping We might get an increase,' says Hall, 'if the true value of Golowan's work is fully recognised, thanks to our close working relationship established over many years.'

Currently Golowan gets no support from the Arts Council and just £1,000 a year from Cornwall county council. The town council provides £12,000 a year. and puts on a spectacular fireworks display on Mazey eve, just after the mock mayor elections.

Longer term sustainability

So how is Golowan going to manage to keep going? 'We are fortunate to have premises in a building we wouldn't usually be able to afford. It's provided by a family firm who have historically supported the arts.' says Hall. Short term projects allow Golowan to employ project staff, but core costs of around £65,000 are the issue.'We often get asked "Why can't Golowan stand on its own feet?" My answer is "invest in us and we can" '.

The festival costs around £148,000 to organise and stage, and just about breaks even. 60% of the costs are covered by street collections (people attending give around £2,500), tickets sales, franchises, advertising etc,

The Golowan band processing around Penzance

Festival costs are going up by around 10% every year. They include all sorts of things that did not feature in the days when it was first set up: health & safety (lots of ladders are used), risk assessments, licences, transport, insurances, public liability, security, contractors, site crews all have to be paid for.

Golowan has got funding for and successfully run a series of projects, which provide some element to fund administration but it places huge pressures on a small but committed core staff.

The New Oppportunities and Neighbourhood Renewal funds have supported projects like 'We know our place' and 'Word of mouth'. These interpreted people's sense of place in arts and writing projects. Heritage Lottery funds supported the creation of a Newlyn heritage trail, which followed the success of the Penzance town trail. The next parish phase, the Mousehole trail, is being planned. Golowan's arts network team have created banner and flag schemes throughout Cornwall. Most recently they created the 'Ordinalia' angel banners, flying high on the Penwith skyline, to mark the performance of the Cornish medieval mystery cycle performed in its entirety in St Just in summer 2004.

Golowan is also the custodian of 180 cassette tapes recorded in the mid 1980s for the Penwith community archive's oral history project. They represent an extraordinary resource of dialect, accent and social history, and they are fast deteriorating. If an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund is successful, the tapes will be copied to longer lasting digital media, and made available for academic and local study. They could inspire a wealth of interpretative and educational projects

Some of the schools whose hundreds of pupils look forward every year to taking part are beginning to say they can't justify the £600 needed to pay for professional artists' fees and materials in making giant images and floats for the processions. This view among some schools is probably based on an assumption that Golowan is funded by the Arts Council, local authorities etc. Over the next few months Golowan will be working to ensure children can be fully involved in their celebration of place and still fulfil the deamnds of their curriculum - another potential sticking point for some. Hall states that 'additionality is the bugbear of arts organisations nationwide. It is unfortunately very difficult to find monies from arts funders to do what is intrinsically and provably worthwhile'

Hall has a novel suggestion, based on the evidence of Golowan being a community initiative and high profile marketing event for the area. 'After fouteen years it's worth thinking whether we've built up enough support within the local community to see Golowan receiving some funding through a local council tax precept. For example, there are around 10,000 households in the Penzance parish. £1 per household would bring in £10,000. But we also need to look further afield. We have run a small friends and business scheme for a number of years. Now it's time to launch a patrons' scheme, directly aimed at businesses and richer supporters who want to be part of Golowan's work, helping us to fund new projects and ideas'.

Connecting with the wider community

Golowan has been criticised for being a bit cliquey, and not seeming open to new people. But as Stephen Hall points out: 'We gather new volunteers of all ages every year, in our pre festival volunteer nights. Our aim is to involve as many people as we can - it's about ownership, "belonging" '. Events and projects ranging from an interdenominational church service, ancient images, community banner workshops, school and community arts projects, creating a mobile 'Winter Wonderland' to bring round to young families in disadvantaged areas, model boat building classes and races, history and archaeological talks, pasty making competitions and a Sea and Sail day on the Sunday, involve hundreds of people and show how the wider community makes Golowan happen.' There's even a special Mazey Ale, brewed by Skinner's of Truro.

Penzance town council has been involved with Golowan from the beginning. Councillor Caroline White, who has spent her time as the real mayor, parrying jokes and mock insults from the mock mayor, shows her appreciation: 'In a shrinking world where cultures are increasingly assimilated people have a basic need to express their individuality. Golowan is such an expression of our Cornishness, Celtic identity and sense of belonging. Few people appreciate the huge contribution of voluntary effort that makes Golowan so special'

Music is very important to the festival. Dozens of bands from around Cornwall perform at Golowan festivals. In addition the wider Celtic connection comes through bands - traditional musicians Celtish, the Iron Horse from Scotland, Sin É from Ireland, Celtic based Anam, the mid Argyll pipe band, Brittany based A bout de souffle, Skolvan and Le Gop and Cor Meibieon Crennant (Welsh Cryant male voice choir) have all performed. Some bands are regular visitors.

Contemporary films from Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Brittany have also been shown and premiered during Golowan.

Partnerships with local organisations have been part of Golowan from the start. Penzance Chamber of Commerce, Penzance town council, Penwith district council and the Acorn theatre have provided vital resources from the beginning. That has not just meant money. Trustees, space for banner and flag making workshops, a venue for bands to perform have all been needed. Enthusiasm and creativity from schools and thousands of hours of voluntary support have all played their part. The expertise of the Acorn theatre is also used to sell tickets to Golowan events. Golowan also works with new Cornwall-based initiatives and agencies including Creative Partnerships, Creative Skills and KEAP (Kernow Educational Partnership), Cornwall Arts Marketing and Creative Kernow.

Streetscape

Golowan has recently been involved in producing a 'Streetscape design manual' with Cornwall county council, architectural consultant Nick Cahill, and Penwith district council. It's the lead artistic organisation working to integrate public art into urban design throughout Penzance. This innovative process will ensure that public spaces will be given back to people rather than 'just being full of tubs of trees'. There's a chance to involve craftspeople, metal workers, masons, and artists in the many regeneration initiatives that are taking place in the Penzance area.

Boosting local income

Golowan is not just about celebrating Celtic culture and having fun. The extra visitors to the town, before the main tourist season begins in July, provides a significant economic boost to bed & breakfasts, cafés and other local tourist attractions. The organisation's good practice in local involvement, local sourcing of services and skills and cultural integrity has been recognised by Sustainability South West in its 'Future Footprints' guide to sustainable tourism (www.sustainabilitysouthwest.org.uk)

Stephen Hall has the last word. 'If there wasn't a Golowan, it would have to be invented. It's a way of life. It's a new tradition. It's a business. And it's not sufficiently valued.'