This is my view while I'm writing this blog post for you.




Let me tell you that this picture cannot, in any way, capture the beauty that is surrounding me in this moment.

A father and his son are also here,fishing.I am wondering whether I'm disturbing them. I am trying to be as quiet as I can be.
They haven't caught a fish yet but what others might experience as a failure or waste of time, doesn't seem to worry these two. I can only imagine, what it must mean to experience such a moment with your child. To share something you love with your son on such a beautiful day in such a beautiful place.

Sharing something you love in a beautiful place, I guess that's what we are doing too. Two days ago we arrived in Dale, Pembrokeshire. We that are 19 artists (find them here http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/profiles/blogs/announcing...) plus Simon, Katherine, Rebecca and myself. We are living in a Fort, which is situated at the end of a long coastal path. We are surrounded by the ocean. And you can imagine how much fun we are having when I tell you that some of us live alone in rooms with up to ten beds and that yesterday, Josh used this opportunity to build a Fort in his bedroom. So we are living it up in Forts inside of a Fort. If that doesn't sound like fun to you, I really don't know what would.

Both the Fort itself and its place in the landscape are extraordinary.we have spent the past two days with a wonderful artist called Phil Smith. Phil's work includes a lot of walking and exploring. He takes a space, and this can be a room, a house or even a whole city. He points out specific features about the site, tells stories and gives suggestions, ideas and task that help us, the participants, to connect with the space, make it our own. On reflection I believe no one would get angry at me when I say that we all had a great time getting to know our new surrounding through touching, transforming, using and performing in the space that will be our home for the next two weeks.

To find this connection not only to our surroundings but also to each other have been our main body of work for the past days. I personally believe we had a great start in Cardiff on Monday, which ended in a wonderful party that featured everyone of is wearing self-made and, let me say this, stunning party hats. And I also believe that things have gotten only better from there.
Since I started this blog post I have now moved to a place inside the Fort since the sun is stating a good example for a hard worker and I didn't apply any of the sun cream Katherine got in the shop earlier. And I'm sitting here and I can see people walking past me. Many of them in groups,some in pairs. Rachel and Jack are working with Sojung on a film that has something to do with love. Ailsa and Heloise just hung up their bathing suits, which I take as an indicator for swimming session. Jac and Dom have also just returned from the beach where they shot some under water material with the Go Pro and I spotted Ben and Catriona earlier at the jetty checking out the place for a performance. It makes me very happy to see this because I know that going to an unknown place with a group of strangers can be a very challenging situation. Especially because we are here to share some of our work and that's something that is very close to our hearts and to who we are as people.

Today is the first day that is a little more lose in its structure since Phil had to leave us this morning. We also had David over to give us a talk on sustainability and Katherine made us all pitch ideas for an digital approach to shows that include literally crawling into someone's head and a greasy spoon van. There was chocolate for the best ideas.
Today is the first day during which the artists make their own timetables and decide what to work on and who to collaborate with. It's an important introduction to what summer camp is about. Finding time for yourself to work on your practice, on your ideas but also to collaborate with other artists and challenge yourself and your safety zones.

Today John arrived and we are looking forward to his talk about directing, a cabaret during which I am allowed to read one of my depressing poems and hopefully some wine.

I'll go and get some cake now (yes there is a lot of cake, A LOT).
Talk to you again soon.If you want to know what we are up to, find us on twitter. You can find us under #ntwsummercamp. We are happy about every tweet and other interaction from the outside world.Haha.
Christina