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1 Five Years Song Workshop

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The Charmers 2025 events – gigs and talks

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The Charmers in Ayr, Scotland.

It’s a song for the witches and cabaret boys

It’s a spell for the dreamers

It’s a song for the dykes and faeries and queens

It’s a song for the exiles

It’s a spell for the the mollies, the dreaming shebeen

It’s a spell for the banished

(From: Song For the Leaving, Robinson, 2023.)

Taking the work to Ayr resulted in many wonderful conversations and exchanges – not least with local women from the organised Remembering the Accused Witches of Scotland’ whose exhibition of research into the local witch trials at the Carnegie Library overlapped – in the calendar and even in the stories of some of the accused witches – with my own time at Narture. Then Laurna Cron from the group came and spoke with our audience in the Cutty Sark Centre in June. Members of this Scotland-wide group also joined us in Edinburgh,

Detail from the Remembering the Accused Witches of Scotland exhibition in Ayr Carnegie Library, Dec. 2024.

Laurna Cron from RAWS speaks with the Charmers’ audience at The Cutty Sark Centre in Ayr, June 2025.

The research I developed at Beaconsfield began in the archives, in my home town of Ayr in southwest Scotland from which I left as a young queer person in the late 1970s, and led to this work in which the fugitive Ayrshire ‘witches’ land in times of queer visibility and change. The songs, the film experiments, and especially taking this work – on tour with the band – back to my home town, may also be an experiment with life. As if by magic..

‘If you say I am a witch, a witch or charmer

If you say so, so I am

(From: The Ballad of the Charmers, Robinson, 2025)

The Charmers in Ayr

The Charmers at MAKE, Narture and The Cutty Sark Centre, Ayr, Scotland

Workshops:

The conversations about witches, outsidering, and memory continued through practice exploring song-making, broadside ballads and collage:

At The Feminst Library:

Lead artist Anne Robinson was welcomed into this wonderful, open discussion space for a performative lecture and themes in the work.

The Charmers at Triangle

Our first outing at Triangle LGBT+ Cultural Centre, Deptford – and a very special queer audience engagement for this work!

The Charmers at Five Years and Muttonfist:

Workshop prints – Broadsides produced with Muttonfist Press using silkscreen and in conversation with Spud Club:

Music scores and documents at Five Years

The Charmers workshopping at The Premises:

Song film and drawing experiments:

Earlier phases of the work: ‘The Charmers’ has been shown, presented and explored in various engagements since 2023 following the summer 2022 residency in London and these have included:

Middlesex University ACI Research: Jan. 2023

Queer Materialities – Live! at Glasgow School of Art, March 2024

Coming Soon.. The Charmers! at Five Years, London, May 2024

The Ballad of The Charmers at Five Years, November 2024

The shows have featured work in progress including experimental movement, collage, performance and drawing. Recent print, broadside and film collaborations were supported by DYCP – working with the Mutton Fist Press on ‘contemporary ‘ Broadsides – from the lyrics of a new piece currently in development with support from Debbie Armour: ‘The Ballad of the Charmers’ which draws on traditional forms as well as work using 16mm frame re-filming with Erewhon/James Holcombe. The new silkscreen prints have had a temporary installations during 2024 along with film experiments, monoprints, drawings, digital prints and sound.