We have just had a superb family day out in Willington to see the amazingly spectacular Man Engine.
This is a the biggest mechanical puppet in Europe standing 11.2 metres tall and weighing in at over 50 tons. Designed and built by Golden Tree Productions its a lottery funded initiative which won the Lottery Funded Best Arts project in 2017 and has been on the 'Resurrection' tour over the last few months coming as apparently the last date to the wee town/ village of Willington to celebrate the County Durham mining Heritage so rich in this area.
Not entirely sure about this but I'm given to understand that its thanks to the Northern Heartlands this was a free event which is pretty brilliant and much appreciated.
The whole affair was very well organised with loads of information available free easily accessible parking - Dr Fred and I took my daughter and two grand children and we had a picnic on the site while watching the entertainment, stilt walkers, street theatre - there were Fire engines, ambulances, police vans to sit in and My eldest grand daughter even managed to try on a bobbys helmet.
It was an excellent community event and when the man engine was 'fired up' it was to rousing cheers and total amazement. Its no timorous beastie, but incredibly clever and not at all scary, half machine half miner. Giant in stature but friendly in spite of its great presence. On some of the tour date they did an evening show as well and I can imagine this might be quite a bit edgier using lights, fire and fireworks but for family entertainment and as a excellent local and wider history educational tool it worked fine for me as an afternoon event.
Its hard to give the scale of the actual puppet here but check out the website https://www.themanengine.co.uk/ and if he ever tours your way its well worth a visit. we had a lovely picnic, ice creams, there was space for the girls to run about in - we watched the parade with some amazing flags made by local schools and organisations.
I've posted a couple of videos I don't know if they'll work never managed to get them to post before!! but they do give a better sense of scale then the photographs!
Brilliant piece of performance art! Excellent well deserved family day out! (too much ice cream but we will survive!!)
This is a the biggest mechanical puppet in Europe standing 11.2 metres tall and weighing in at over 50 tons. Designed and built by Golden Tree Productions its a lottery funded initiative which won the Lottery Funded Best Arts project in 2017 and has been on the 'Resurrection' tour over the last few months coming as apparently the last date to the wee town/ village of Willington to celebrate the County Durham mining Heritage so rich in this area.
Not entirely sure about this but I'm given to understand that its thanks to the Northern Heartlands this was a free event which is pretty brilliant and much appreciated.
It was an excellent community event and when the man engine was 'fired up' it was to rousing cheers and total amazement. Its no timorous beastie, but incredibly clever and not at all scary, half machine half miner. Giant in stature but friendly in spite of its great presence. On some of the tour date they did an evening show as well and I can imagine this might be quite a bit edgier using lights, fire and fireworks but for family entertainment and as a excellent local and wider history educational tool it worked fine for me as an afternoon event.
Its hard to give the scale of the actual puppet here but check out the website https://www.themanengine.co.uk/ and if he ever tours your way its well worth a visit. we had a lovely picnic, ice creams, there was space for the girls to run about in - we watched the parade with some amazing flags made by local schools and organisations.
I've posted a couple of videos I don't know if they'll work never managed to get them to post before!! but they do give a better sense of scale then the photographs!
Brilliant piece of performance art! Excellent well deserved family day out! (too much ice cream but we will survive!!)
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