Fire Springs is a company of storytellers who have worked together since 2000. There’s a significant overlap between Fire Springs and Awen – all of the founder members – Kevan Manwaring, David Metcalfe, Anthony Nanson, and Kirsty Hartsiotis – as well as Richard Selby, who joined in 2003, have work published at Awen. The group’s newest member is folk singer Chantelle Smith.
On the Fire Springs website, the group defines itself in the following terms:
“Fire Springs members aim to –
Fire the imagination of adults and children
Inspire transformation in individuals and groups
Reach different audiences with new and traditional tales
Empower others to tell their own stories
Our artistic roots, as a group, are in the bardic arts – performance storytelling, poetry and song. Individually, our backgrounds are in writing, musicianship and painting, and in education, publishing, the natural sciences, archaeology and art history.
Our performances bring certain artistic qualities found in ancient and modern bardic practice together with the recognition of the centrality, in our time, of the relationship between humankind and the global ecosystem.
We published An Ecobardic Manifesto in 2008 – a vision for the arts in a time of environmental crisis. A well as being a mission statement for ourselves, this draws attention to the considerable ‘ecobardic’ work that diverse artists have already accomplished and raises a cry for more work of this kind.”
That Ecobardic Manifesto can be read on the Awen website – http://www.awenpublications.co.uk/manifesto.html
Find out more about Firesprings here – http://www.firesprings.org.uk/index.html