Metal

King Cotton was a unique music theatre piece developed by Metal in collaboration with the writer, Jimmy McGovern, musician, Ian Brownbill and Jude Kelly as director in 2007. The story is based in historical fact whilst exploring universal themes – personal freedom set against the needs of a wider community, love, loss, joy and redemption. These themes are worked out through the plight of African slaves in Southern America, and impoverished workers in Lancashire cotton mills. The story traces how the lives of these two distant communities were inextricably linked through cotton with devastating effect during the American Civil War.

Based on the research and the original idea of Ian Brownbill, the story and format was developed over two years at Metal. In 2007, co-producers The Lowry and Liverpool Culture Company took the story on to its stage debut at The Lowry in Salford and The Liverpool Empire, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the parliamentary abolition of slavery.

Alongside the production, Metal developed an ambitious education project that worked with a large and varied community in and around the Metal house in Kensington with the support of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant.

King Cotton in Kensington

Funded through a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, and a donation from PH Holt Charitable Trust, the King Cotton in Kensington project worked with St Francis of Assisi City Academy, Shorefields Community School, Phoenix Junior School, young patients at Alder Hey Hospital, Kensington Fields Community Centre, and a wide variety of individuals living and working in the Kensington neighbourhood in an arts-led project designed to highlight the histories and heritage captured in the King Cotton story that can be traced directly to the social, economic, cultural and physical aspects of the Liverpool landscape.

Through the process of researching and creating art works in different disciplines – music, visual arts, written word and drama – participants investigated different aspects of their own history, and explored the physical traces of this heritage through local architecture and the local museum collections with guidance from Merseyside historian Laurence Westgaph.

'The whole experience was stimulating and hugely enjoyable, culminating in the magnificent production of King Cotton.' Josie Hughes, Project Participant

Our aim in developing the project was to place the production of the theatre piece at the heart of a vibrant Liverpool community – of which we are part – building up the communal sense of purpose as we work together to look at how a large piece of creative work can focus its opportunities and impact in a defined neighbourhood and ask the help of the local population to inform, help create, learn from, and build towards a new theatre production which is then performed in their city.

The artists involved have brought their expertise from around the world, and locally, to the project.  Musician Dede Saint Prix (Martinique), storyteller Inno Sorsy (London via Ghana: pictured above) theatre company 20 Stories High (Liverpool), visual artist Holly Murray (Brighton), and Liverpool’s Youth Music Service all worked with the community around the Metal House to create work that was presented in the theatre foyer on the opening evenings of 14 September at the Lowry and the 25 September 2007 at the Empire Theatre.

To be free through the open door

Doing what you want.

What do you want?

I want to be like a bird

In the open air

No walls, no boundaries

On the wind, over the sea

Fly as far as the eye can see!

By Oliver, Lee and Daniel, patients at Alder Hey Hospital.