Yes, that time's finally arrived! After months of planning and meetings and more than 6 weeks working full time to creat the amazing costumes and wearable art pieces you're seeing tonight, as well as many workshops and rehearsals with groups of performers from PACE Youth Theatre, Right2Dance, Historical Adventures & St Catherine's Primary, there's just one day to go before this...
It's been a busy month already with 53 workshops over two weeks for Blas Festival, then straight into the studio developing content for the 2nd Paisley Halloween Parade, a week touring schools in Westport, Ireland, developing content for the first Wesport Arts Festival Parade & their 40th Anniversary and now Mòd week! It's been a long and challenging journey since that one intense day...
It's Blas Festival time and Ariel is touring again for the festival and High Life Highland as part of the Community program! Yep, Blas is a blast and the feedback for the two new workshops, Big Gaelic Beasties and Adventures with the Gaelic Tree Alphabet has been fantastic - you can read some feedback and more about the workshops here and many thanks again to High Life Highland, Blas and...
Apart from Stilt Performance and general Ringmaster-style work, the other main circus feather in my cap is the art of Balancing, or Equilibristics, to give it its fancier technical name. Maybe it's linked to having spent so many years on stilts, but it comes quite easily to me, which means lots of scope for taking it further. Here are some shots taken at Comar's Festimull, by Sarah Darling...
Big things are afoot, as we move to the final stage of confirming and signing contracts for two major bilingual street theatre & spectacle projects, one working with Irish Gaelic in the West of Ireland first up and another with Gaelic closer to home in Scotland shortly after. As I've been working and training for the last 15 years to get to this point, it's a very exciting time and I'm...
So June and July have been very busy months, with workshops at two festivals in Scotland as well as for Irish-language Summer Schemes in Northern Ireland, and the work as part of Mull's first Festimull, organised by Comar Arts, Tobermory, being my absolute highlight! My work included well-attended bilingual Gaelic workshops in Circus Skills, Graffiti Art and Lantern-making and fantastic...
I'm building up quite a collection of these now, but nonetheless, they're never expected and by no means come from every single project or workshop I give - which makes them all the more touching when they do come in. I know that they're often teacher-instigated, but the drawings and valient writing attempts never fail to put a final warm glow to a project. The letter where a child outright...
Craobh nam Miann - Wishing Tree Project @ Coast Festival, Banff, Aberdeenshire... So for the last two weeks, I've been honoured to have been Community Artist in Residence at Coast Festival... I've never worked harder or longer hours, creating a nearly 2m tall 3D Wire Sculpted Wishing Tree whilst also delivering 6 Community Lantern-Making workshops. It has been one of the most beautiful...
Fantastic day at Scottish Storytelling Centre with totally sold out Gaelic Goldilocks event! Many thanks to the 30+ parents & children who came and especially to the centre for taking such lovely photos! Now to work on Big Gaelic Beasties & Adventures with the Gaelic Tree Alphabet for Blas Festival in September! Taing mhòr mhòr a-rithist do Arthur Cormack & High Life Highland...
Ariel's going to be at the great Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh this month!
The Real Goldilocks Tale!
Do you want to find out the real story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? What about the lesser-known Purplilocks, or Goldilock's other brothers and sisters with her on that fateful trip to the Bears' House?
Gaelic storyteller Ariel Killick leads an...
March ended up being a much busier month than planned, and though I often receive hugely strongly positive feedback, this month's collective of workshop evaluation forms and feedback stands out, with teacher comments such as "Amazing afternoon of active learning"... "Ariel will increase the number of children who would be interested in developing their Gaelic language skills". With student...
What a year 2014 was! I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work on many wonderful projects this year, starting with another fantastic circus skills, storytelling &
Well it's been a busy time already with the Downpatrick Christmas Lantern-Making & Parade project just finished in Northern Ireland. Down District Council were the lovely people who once decscribed me in print as 'One of Ireland's leading Stilt Performers', so it was nice to return after three years and take not only Araya but deliver a series of community engagement workshops as well....
A fantastic image just received recently from the Paisley Mòd Legacy Halloween Parade Project 2014 with the outstanding cast from PACE Youth Theatre. The image captures perfectly their energy, spirit and just how much both they enjoyed the project and were a pleasure for me to work with. As my third time working with teeenagers in this age group, it was truly a delight from beginning to end...
After nearly two years, the wonderful Inter-Gaelic Rap Project finally came to fruition in Cork, taking myself and the wonderful Ruairidh Greumach, drummer from reknowned Gaelic electronic band Niteworks, and a Gaelic-language tutor and poet in his own right, to Cork, Ireland, to work with the utterly amazing GMC & Bubba Shakespeare, two of Ireland's leading Irish-language rappers.
...
What a busy time November's turned out to be! Amongst all my other projects came a very fruiful and constructive exchange trip to Northern Ireland and Donegal with the amazing CeangalG programme, an EU-funded iniative under the INTERREG IVA programme to help promote collaboration between speakers of Scots and Irish Gaelic and develop the 'Greater Gaeltacht' between the two countries. It...
The National Mòd may be over, but an exciting new legacy project from last year's highly successful Paisley National Mòd has just begun!
Ariel performed at the opening of last year's Opening Procession for the Paisley National Mòd, and is delighted to be now working in partnership with Renfrewshire Council to deliver a exciting series of bilingual Gaelic workshops in Stiltwalking,...
What a week the Mòd Fringe was! While I could easily wallpaper two houses with the amount of press clippings I garned over my 12 years in Ireland with my work, it's fair to say neither my solo stilt performance work or the attendant press coverage has come anywhere as quickly in Scotland. Until now. With some 9 images of my work appearing in Scottish newspapers over Mòd Week (that I know...
Independent State of Happiness proudly presents its program of Bilingual Gaelic Street Theatre, Circus & more at the Royal National Mòd & Inverness Street Theatre Festival! I am deeply grateful to An Comann Gàidhealach & all its sponsors for their support for professional Gaelic street theatre, spectacle & circus and look forward to meeting all those who've worked so hard...
The Great Gaelic Ferries Crew is busy practising our lines & songs because we set sail THIS WEEKEND! You can check out our full performance schedule below & we look forward to welcoming you on board! Part of Festival 2014 & the Merchant City Festival at Festival 2014... and just below is where you can find us...!
Sunday 20th July - Arrival of Queens Baton...