Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

A place for discovery: the Playhouse's Rose Garden

Bradford Playhouse's very special rose garden will be in bloom for just one week in July. And, while its 'gardeners' say this will be a place to unwind, it will also feature the very latest in performance art and dance, not to mention films, animation and live music.

Artist Eleanor Barrett is the landscape gardener, so to speak. She first developed the rose garden idea for Shunt, an experimental arts venue in London, but Eleanor spent the first 24 years of her life right here in Bradford and she's very pleased to be recreating the garden here in her home city.

Before Eleanor left Bradford to go to university in Sheffield, she worked in a hostel and drop-in centre for young people who were homeless. She says: "That was my main job. I didn't do anything artistic." But she's more than made up for it since then, doing things like founding a cabaret company in Sheffield and working in TV.

Eleanor the self-confessed rose obsessive

In Brighton she started a project for people who were both homeless but also long-term heroin addicts. The experience left her with some very definite ideas about the role of art: "I'm very keen on a very immersive hands-on interactive experience where people share their ideas and share their skills and it's not about me as an artist coming in and going, 'I know everything about art and you can learn from me. That's not what it's about. I learn just as much from other people and their experiences. I think anyone can be involved in the arts and be an artist. I think it can be really transformative for people whatever kind of live you've had and there are ways you can use art to enhance your life or make you think about things, especially people who have had difficult experiences."

For Eleanor the rose garden is a "multi-disciplinary kind of space so anything can happen in it" but volunteers in Bradford have taken a big part in putting it together: "Everyone involved makes it what it is. Depending on who is building it, it looks different each time."

However, you don't have to have been involved in putting the garden together to enjoy the shows: "The idea with the garden is that you can encounter different parts of it which you discover as you walk around. In the original [London] one you might come across musicians and then you'd walk around the corner and someone would be interacting with people. It's like an exploration of space and people can wander about and go into little corners and discover things." She believes anyone who knows Bradford Playhouse well may be quite surprised by the transformation.

For Eleanor the rose garden also represents an inner journey: "It was almost like an internal journey or an internal world that became real. It's for whatever you want. You can respond to it, however you like - obviously I've got my inspirations but somebody else might have a different take on it."

It should be said that this particular rose garden offers a wide variety of pleasures, some of which are aimed at different audiences. Sunday July 12th is Family Day with a 'Fairies and Bugs Picnic' but only people over 18 will be admitted to the last two nights (Thursday 16th and Friday 17th July) and proof of age is required.

Sam the "celestial gardener"

Sam Musgrave, Venue Manager at Bradford Playhouse, explains: "We want this place to be a home for all the audience who would normally come to Bradford Playhouse as well as extending our audience. We do have a platform for new work which is sometimes braver...[but] some images that are inspiring and interesting to some people would be upsetting for others."

Sam has also been managing the project from the West Yorkshire end so for one week only she sees herself as being something of a "celestial gardener". She says: "My role has been really really rewarding. I've got a great job here at the Playhouse which involves me pulling great people together and really lovely ideas, but this one is ever more special to me because it's really pulling together a lot of gorgeous things and people and I'm going to get to play around in the garden myself. [Sam is also performing]. Building it, just getting hold of this stuff and touching it, It's really great to come to work and do this...It's the best of all worlds really."

And recreating the rose garden at the Playhouse has given Eleanor the opportunity to get back to Bradford: "It's been lovely for me because it's like coming back...It's quite interesting how that's become external. The rose garden's taken me from something that was internal. I made it real, then I met Sam and I've taken it back by coincidence to my home town which I've not been to for 16 years and reconnect with it, and it's quite moving actually. It's something that I'd forgotten and lost, part of myself that I'd lost. That's the most important thing for me."

The Rose Garden is at the Bradford Playhouse from July 9th to July 17th 2009.