We are delighted to announce news of funding from Arts Council England to further Olivia's story. We begin the project entitled OLIVIA in February.

OLIVIA will be an animated film & zine based around the ‘outsider’ life of Olivia Parkes who lived off grid in a stilted boathouse in Ventnor IW for 40 years.
A series of community workshops will develop the content examining themes of isolation, mental health & alternative perspectives.



OLIVIA will be a community co-created film, zine & website, that retells Olivia Parkes's extraordinary life story to promote better understanding of mental health & well-being. Olivia’s life raises many questions about how unconventional people are treated within society. These themes of alienation & loneliness are still relevant today. The project intends to provide creative opportunities for people still experiencing these issues as well as younger people to stimulate self-expression, raise awareness & promote inclusivity. This will be achieved through community workshops, walks & interviews (oral history).
Output from the activities will be synthesised into: a zine & animated film to be premiered at Ventnor Arts Club as well as a site specific installation at Ventnor Fringe 2023.

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from On The WIght http://wig.ht/2pin

As our residency in Ryde was packed up we were invited to show our research in the window of an old Toy shop in Sandown. This really engaged passers-by, and brought elements of the story together in the form of an evolving storyboard.

We wanted to develop previous experiments with frottage and were particularily interested in using the  kind of clothing that Olivia may have worn .

Miss Olivia Parkes ran a sweet shop on Pier Street ,Ventnor when she first moved to the Island in the 1920's. She was imprisoned for selling sweets after hours and faced a month in jail. Teresa remembers visiting the Kandy Box every morning in the late 70's whilst waiting for the school bus, The shop remains one of the longest running shops in the town.

Various light sources were played with to explore the potential of shadow to inform key scenes from Olivia's life.

We began to make models out of wire and newsprint to get a sense of scale to accompany the boathouse models.

To start our residency for Ryde Arts in the window of the Department, (formally Elizabeth Pack's Department Store in Ryde, Isle of Wight), we set the space for two sessions of Life drawing. The character of Olivia Parkes as enacted by Teresa Grimaldi in a tableau Vivant visible from the street. Bothe sessions were extremely well received and resulted in striking experimental drawings from all . Passers by were intrigued.