Cheriton Winter Grotto

For the first installment of their Cheriton Artland programme Strange Cargo presented The Winter Grotto, an installation at the company’s workshop, The Factory, 43 Geraldine Road in Cheriton. It was a complete celebration of the local community. More than two thousand little houses, a floor sized Ordnance Survey map of the area and one hundred local voices reading Charles Dickens classic novella - A Christmas Carol, combined to create a stunning experience for visitors.

The Grotto was the first project in Strange Cargo's programme of new work that aims to bring extraordinary, creative interventions to unexpected places, raise the profile of the arts in the Cheriton area and open up opportunities for much wider creative collaborations to develop across the UK and beyond. Strange Cargo worked closely with ArtReach consultants to attract new income to enable this exciting work to happen. Free workshops ran between the 1st and 23rd of December inviting people to decorate a house to add to the map room.

Thanks to Arts Council England and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.