MESKLA Legacy
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MESKLA continues to follow the kravorigow ha neus/tendrils and threads laid out in the first stage of the work to look at the impact and meaning of the Cornish diaspora, the significance of links between the Celtic nations and indigenous languages networks, and the relationships with and to land through both ownership, kinship, labour and sympathy.
Using the marker of the 10yr anniversary of National Minority Status to question how we move forward. Facilitating and caring for a modern, open, embracing culture, that makes space for those who feel the import of ancestry, and those who choose Kernow/Cornwall as their home and identifying culture.
MESKLA TIMELINE
Independent queer arts & heritage consultancy ButCH/* formatively evaluated the first stage of the project in 2022.
In late 2022 a pamphlet was produced with texts by Emma Underhill and BuTCH/*, and a drawing by Sovay that responded to the connections and communications that are so essential to the MESKLA methodology. This pamphlet can be viewed here.
MESKLA presented conversations, exhibition and workshops with The Writers’ Block, Tate St Ives and at Murdoch Day and the Internation Pasty & Mining Festival, both in Redruth. MESKLA Lead Artist Sovay Berriman brought Liwyow a Gernow (Colours of Cornwall), a MESKLA mini-project, to her commissions for Hospital Rooms Cornwall Project and the inaugeral Flamm Cornwall programme with a new workshop series, sculptural installation and film mini project entitled Gwyrdh Glas. MESKLA also continued the relationship with Lowender festival with a screening of Gwyrdh Glas and Liwyow a Gernow workshops.
Sovay’s Gwyrdh Glas work for Flamm Cornwall hosted rubbish workshops to make rock sculptures informed by the carns of Kernow, which were painted in colours that connected to participants’ identities. We looked for suitable Kernewek/Cornish language words for those colours. If a fitting word did not exist, we created one through conversation, use of Kernewek/Cornish dictionaries and support from Kernewek speakers. The colours and their words - Liwyow a Gernow (Colours of Cornwall) - will be added to the MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh archive, and offered to the Cornish Language Office for the ever evolving langauge of Kernow/Cornwall.
Sovay self-published her short story Catching Copper within the MESKLA project, see images below. Catching Copper speaks to some of where the MESKLA project has come from for Sovay. It is a story about loss, change, and power. It considers how people, place and experience form who we are; it wonders about relationships to land, labour, and what we leave behind; and it pays attention to the impact of small moments. You can listen to an audio version listen via youtube, scan the QR code or click the embedded player below. The audio is 22mins30secs in duration, it’s recommended to listen via headphones. To buy a riso print copy of the story with an illustration by Sovay please visit the shop.
Sovay wrote a commissioned piece about MESKLA and Kernewek identity for VASW (Visual Art South West) - Thinking & Practise on the 10 year Anniversary of the Recognition of the Cornish as a National Minority.
Sovay says,
“Celebrating Cornish Minority Status and Cultural identity is empowering and joyful, it is also a way to name responsibility. A request to England and the wider UK to hear, recognise and respect our story in the way that we tell it. And to Kernow, to own its relationship with the world not only as a colonised culture, acknowledging that our heritage of invention and influence supported exploitation and violence. It is essential that Kernow is outward facing, looking to make reparation and reconnection beyond our coastline, as peers with shared and vastly different experiences. By doing so we model another way to lead, be, create and care.”
Sefryn Penrose and Angela Piccini of ButCH/*'s text Gathering Precious Fragments: Reassembling Heritage through MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh responds to the first year of MESKLA. Placing the project within a broader historical and contemporary context. The text was submitted to the Cornish Language Service at Cornwall Council for translation and as hoped has led to new language.
'Can a Cornish deep map of place and vista that includes moorlands, farmlands, granite towns, coastal villages also include nightclubs, clootie trees, roads, bus stops, toxic remnants, seashell kitsch, the granite carpark bollards that Berriman and Sibungu laugh over? Can the messiness of being in this place present a more progressive set of possibilities? It is this Cornish speculative futurism that Sovay Berriman’s work with reclaimed plumber’s copper and collective “rubbish” sculptures occupies. New-not-new, not from nothing. Reused. Extraction never really moves on: it leaves its fissures and fractures and waste. How might we bind together precious fragments to craft culture and identity, meaning and belonging, traction, from the leftovers?'
Penrose, Piccini, 2023
"Having the entire text translated into Cornish has pushed the Translation Service to the limit – but it was done. The ‘new’ words in Cornish were passed through the Terminology Group and duly entered into the on-line dictionary. So what? Well, Kernewek grows, more artists and more of the Cornish public get to meet their indigenous language and even Google Translate gets better. Meur ras dhe Sovay."
Pol Hodge, translator
2025 and Beyond
The MESKLA Archive exhibition tok place at Kresen Kernow in February & March 2025 as a precurser to the project joining Cornwall’s archive centre.
To continue the discussions of MESKLA I intend to produce a small publication of the Liwyow a Gernow colour swatches and CMYK/RGB numbers, plus prompts, provocations and guidance for holding your own rubbish sculpture conversations about Kernewek identity.
Copy to follow.....
MESKLA continues to follow the kravorigow ha neus/tendrils and threads laid out in the first stage of the work to look at the impact and meaning of the Cornish diaspora, the significance of links between the Celtic nations and indigenous languages networks, and the relationships with and to land through both ownership, kinship, labour and sympathy.
Using the marker of the 10yr anniversary of National Minority Status to question how we move forward. Facilitating and caring for a modern, open, embracing culture, that makes space for those who feel the import of ancestry, and those who choose Kernow/Cornwall as their home and identifying culture.
MESKLA TIMELINE
2022
A limited edition of small palm-sized pocket sculptures were cast from reclaimed copper and given, on a first come first served basis, to those who contributed to the sculptural workshops, creating a physical legacy, and reminder of the shared conversations.Independent queer arts & heritage consultancy ButCH/* formatively evaluated the first stage of the project in 2022.
In late 2022 a pamphlet was produced with texts by Emma Underhill and BuTCH/*, and a drawing by Sovay that responded to the connections and communications that are so essential to the MESKLA methodology. This pamphlet can be viewed here.
2023
MESKLA partnered with FEAST and Carn to Cove to produce Welcome Words: When do welcome words become dangerous discourse? a sharing day for those artists, arts-workers and venues to share and support each other in corageous inclusive and diverse making and producing for Cornwall. Lara Ratnaraja invited as consultant and host for the event.MESKLA presented conversations, exhibition and workshops with The Writers’ Block, Tate St Ives and at Murdoch Day and the Internation Pasty & Mining Festival, both in Redruth. MESKLA Lead Artist Sovay Berriman brought Liwyow a Gernow (Colours of Cornwall), a MESKLA mini-project, to her commissions for Hospital Rooms Cornwall Project and the inaugeral Flamm Cornwall programme with a new workshop series, sculptural installation and film mini project entitled Gwyrdh Glas. MESKLA also continued the relationship with Lowender festival with a screening of Gwyrdh Glas and Liwyow a Gernow workshops.
Sovay’s Gwyrdh Glas work for Flamm Cornwall hosted rubbish workshops to make rock sculptures informed by the carns of Kernow, which were painted in colours that connected to participants’ identities. We looked for suitable Kernewek/Cornish language words for those colours. If a fitting word did not exist, we created one through conversation, use of Kernewek/Cornish dictionaries and support from Kernewek speakers. The colours and their words - Liwyow a Gernow (Colours of Cornwall) - will be added to the MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh archive, and offered to the Cornish Language Office for the ever evolving langauge of Kernow/Cornwall.
Sovay self-published her short story Catching Copper within the MESKLA project, see images below. Catching Copper speaks to some of where the MESKLA project has come from for Sovay. It is a story about loss, change, and power. It considers how people, place and experience form who we are; it wonders about relationships to land, labour, and what we leave behind; and it pays attention to the impact of small moments. You can listen to an audio version listen via youtube, scan the QR code or click the embedded player below. The audio is 22mins30secs in duration, it’s recommended to listen via headphones. To buy a riso print copy of the story with an illustration by Sovay please visit the shop.
2024
2024 was the 10 year anniversary year of Kernewek/Cornish National Minority status being recognised by British government.Sovay wrote a commissioned piece about MESKLA and Kernewek identity for VASW (Visual Art South West) - Thinking & Practise on the 10 year Anniversary of the Recognition of the Cornish as a National Minority.
Sovay says,
“Celebrating Cornish Minority Status and Cultural identity is empowering and joyful, it is also a way to name responsibility. A request to England and the wider UK to hear, recognise and respect our story in the way that we tell it. And to Kernow, to own its relationship with the world not only as a colonised culture, acknowledging that our heritage of invention and influence supported exploitation and violence. It is essential that Kernow is outward facing, looking to make reparation and reconnection beyond our coastline, as peers with shared and vastly different experiences. By doing so we model another way to lead, be, create and care.”
Sefryn Penrose and Angela Piccini of ButCH/*'s text Gathering Precious Fragments: Reassembling Heritage through MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh responds to the first year of MESKLA. Placing the project within a broader historical and contemporary context. The text was submitted to the Cornish Language Service at Cornwall Council for translation and as hoped has led to new language.
'Can a Cornish deep map of place and vista that includes moorlands, farmlands, granite towns, coastal villages also include nightclubs, clootie trees, roads, bus stops, toxic remnants, seashell kitsch, the granite carpark bollards that Berriman and Sibungu laugh over? Can the messiness of being in this place present a more progressive set of possibilities? It is this Cornish speculative futurism that Sovay Berriman’s work with reclaimed plumber’s copper and collective “rubbish” sculptures occupies. New-not-new, not from nothing. Reused. Extraction never really moves on: it leaves its fissures and fractures and waste. How might we bind together precious fragments to craft culture and identity, meaning and belonging, traction, from the leftovers?'
Penrose, Piccini, 2023
"Having the entire text translated into Cornish has pushed the Translation Service to the limit – but it was done. The ‘new’ words in Cornish were passed through the Terminology Group and duly entered into the on-line dictionary. So what? Well, Kernewek grows, more artists and more of the Cornish public get to meet their indigenous language and even Google Translate gets better. Meur ras dhe Sovay."
Pol Hodge, translator
2025 and Beyond
The MESKLA Archive exhibition tok place at Kresen Kernow in February & March 2025 as a precurser to the project joining Cornwall’s archive centre. To continue the discussions of MESKLA I intend to produce a small publication of the Liwyow a Gernow colour swatches and CMYK/RGB numbers, plus prompts, provocations and guidance for holding your own rubbish sculpture conversations about Kernewek identity.