Parade Skills Workshop (2018) by the Rough Band. Photos by Merry Grey.
CREATION
(2018 - 2021)
Rough Band • Death Walk • Community • RitualThe Pyre Parade took a decade to come into being. Three months before the inaugural parade took to the streets, the Rough Band held a public conversation at the Think Tank to share their extensive thinking and research, and to discuss symbolic elements of the project. To promote that event, the following text was distributed in print and online:
CREATING THE PYRE PARADE
A NEW COMMUNITY RITUAL
Come along to this salon and hear about the evolution and development of the Pyre Parade - a public purging of bad news, a celebration of letting go and moving forward. the Pyre Parade will add a mass participation event to SPILL, focused on peace. It is designed to take place at a peak moment within the festival - at nightfall on the Saturday night of SPILL’s final weekend.
A high visibility, region wide call out will invite thousands of potential participants to submit bad news - divorce papers, bank statements, colouring in that has gone over the edges - to a commissioned sculpted structure positioned centrally somewhere in Ipswich. On the evening of the live event, the bad news will be paraded through the town accompanied by musicians, floats and costumed participants, arriving at Christchurch Park, where the structure will be burned. This will take place directly before the town’s annual fireworks display, sharing some infrastructure with that event. A shared purging of woe before winter and mass public wish for peace.
This salon brings together artist Robert Pacitti, who conceived of the Pyre Parade, with archaeologist Lucy Walker, participant and co-creator Mark Offord, and members of the public, for a free-flowing conversation about how the Pyre Parade has developed. This event is for anyone with an interest in the role of ritual, the heritage of the area, outdoor work, public participation, masks, effigies, and how to get permission to burn stuff.
PREPARING FOR THE FIRST PARADE
The first Pyre Parade was created for the SPILL Festival of Performance in October 2018. In the weeks leading up to the festival, the Think Tank hosted a programme of Parade Skills Workshops for adults and children, led by The Rough Band with guest artist Kirsty Thorpe. Participants made costumes, masks and noisemakers in response to an overarching visual brief developed by The Rough Band, creating many of the elements that would later appear in the procession.
Local architectural practice EDRM translated The Rough Band's concept for the central effigy - a tree carried within a boat - into a buildable design and oversaw its construction. Ipswich Borough Council worked closely with the team on the parade route, burn site, permissions and health and safety, while Pacitti Company, producers of the SPILL Festival, coordinated the overall production.
The procession brought together hundreds of participants carrying their handmade creations alongside musicians, performers and the effigy before culminating in the ceremonial burning in Christchurch Park, immediately ahead of Ipswich's annual fireworks display. The parade established the template for what would become an annual civic ritual: a shared act of release, marking the approach of winter through procession, spectacle and the symbolic burning of collective bad news.
PARTICIPATORY WORKSHOPS
While the parade occupied a single evening each year, much of the project unfolded over the preceding months. The Rough Band developed an extensive programme of free workshops, inviting people of all ages and backgrounds to become active contributors to the event rather than simply its audience.
As part of the long-lead development of the first Pyre Parade, an In Remembrance workshop introduced the use of sage as incense within the event, giving people time to grow their own herbs if they wished. Hosted by Merry and led by artist and horticulturalist Carolyn Roy, the relaxed, practical salon explored sage’s long history as a medicinal herb and its use in purification and smudging rituals. Participants learnt how to grow, harvest, dry and burn sage, before taking cuttings from plants in the room and making their own smudge sticks. Everyone left with a propagated cutting - the living - and a smudge stick to dry - the dead.
Hosted in community venues across Ipswich, other free workshops explored costume-making, mask-making, music, banner-making and performance, giving participants the opportunity to develop skills while contributing directly to the evolving character of the parade. Alongside these creative activities, people were invited to share their own "bad news" to specially commissioned collection boxes, watched over by the parade’s distinctive Black Shuck dog effigies, becoming part of the ritual before the procession had even begun.
Each year, workshops culminated in a shared public rehearsal, bringing participants together the day before they took to the streets alongside musicians, the Pyre Choir and guest performers. Through this extended process of making, meeting and rehearsing together, the Pyre Parade became a genuinely embedded and collaborative work, shaped over time by the many people who helped create it.
EAST OF ENGLAND CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY & SUFFOLK MIND
In 2019, The Rough Band further developed the programme of Parade Making Skills workshops after Pacitti Company secured funding from the East of England Co-operative Society to support young people's mental health.
Working in partnership with Suffolk Mind, the workshops combined practical parade-making with activities exploring wellbeing, resilience and collective expression. Sessions were delivered with Outreach Youth (an LGBTQ+ organisation), 4YP, Gainsborough Library, Ipswich Deaf Children's Society and a group of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC).
Each group met over a series of workshops to make costumes, masks, banners, instruments and performance material, while developing their own contribution to the Pyre Parade. The emphasis was on participation, creativity and coming together through a shared process of making.
On the evening before the parade, all the groups gathered for a full rehearsal. Many were meeting one another for the first time. Participants shared tea, conversation and a run-through of the event before taking to the streets together the following night as part of the Pyre Parade itself.
The workshops extended the life of the parade beyond a single annual event, using the creative process as a way of building confidence, connection and a sense of collective ownership.
PAPWORTH TRUST & THE JOB CENTRE
Alongside its open workshop programme, The Rough Band developed bespoke Parade Skills sessions with the Papworth Trust and Ipswich Jobcentre. These workshops were designed for people who had told the team they would not ordinarily take part in arts projects, creating a welcoming introduction to the Pyre Parade through shared making and participation.
Like the wider workshop programme, the sessions encouraged creativity, confidence and collaboration, enabling participants to develop their own contributions to the parade. Many returned for the procession itself, often bringing friends and family with them, becoming part of the growing community that gathered around the event each year.
PYRE CHOIR & PARADE SKILLS AT HOME
Participation was not limited to workshops. In the months leading up to each Pyre Parade, The Rough Band created a range of ways for people to take part, whether in person or from home.
The Pyre Choir welcomed singers of all ages and abilities to learn traditional folk songs that were performed together at the burn site, adding a collective musical voice to the closing ritual.
Alongside the weekly Parade Skills sessions at the Think Tank, The Rough Band also produced a series of free Recipe Sheets - illustrated guides showing how to make costumes, masks, noisemakers and miniature effigies at home. Available in both printed and digital formats, they enabled people to join the parade on their own terms and helped foster the event's distinctive visual identity. They also introduced an element of surprise: each year, participants arrived wearing and carrying creations that had been made independently, meaning the full scale and character of the procession only became apparent as it assembled.
Across the life of the Pyre Parade, many thousands of people participated in various capacities - as workshop participants, performers, musicians, volunteers, makers or audience members. The event became a much loved annual community ritual, centred on creativity, participation and the symbolic act of letting go.
Maquettes, The Pyre Parade (2018) by The Rough Band. Photo by Richard MacRae.
Boat build, The Pyre Parade (2018) by The Rough Band. Photo by Richard MacRae.
Effigy build, Pyre Parade (2018) by The Rough Band. Photo by Merry Grey.
Boat build, The Pyre Parade (2019) by The Rough Band. Photo by Richard MacRae.
Rook cut outs, Pyre Parade making workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Black Shuck pieces, Pyre Parade making workshops (2019). Photo by Merry Grey.
Black Shuck build, The Pyre Parade (2019) by The Rough Band. Photo by Merry Grey.
Black Shucks, The Pyre Parade (2019) by The Rough Band. Photo by Merry Grey.
Painting things to bang, Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
In Remembrance sage workshop, Pyre Parade making (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
In Remembrance sage workshop, Pyre Parade making (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
In Remembrance sage workshop, Pyre Parade making (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Painted spoon bangers, Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Cloaks and bangers, Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Facilitator Kirsty Thorpe, Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Mask making, Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Mask making, Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Noise sticks, Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by Merry Grey.
Noise sticks, Parade Skills Workshops (2018). Photo by O.
DOCUMENTS
Creating The Pyre Parade - Transcript of public conversation about the Pyre Parade, August 2018.
Parade Skills Activity Sheet - Tips on making masks, dressing up, and being noisy.
CREDITS
Date: Various across October 2018
Place: Think Tank and various locations across Ipswich
Duration: 3 hours
Original concept: Robert Pacitti
Research, development and realisation: The Rough Band
Effigy design and construction: EDRM
Parade Making Skills: Kirstie Thorpe, Rough Band
Production Manager: Bernd Fauler
Producer: Pacitti Company, for SPILL Festival 2018
Delivery partner: Ipswich Borough Council
Funding: Pacitti Company, Arts Council England, Ipswich Borough Council
Special thanks: Amy Wragg, Arts Council England, Ben Lewry and Titans Security, Bernd Faulaer and all the tech crew, Carolyn Roy, East of England Co-operative Society, EDRM, Ellie DeGory, Future Female Society, Heather Leech and the Hastings Bonfire Society, Ipswich Borough Council, Ipswich and dSuffolk Council for Racial Equality (ISCRE), Kim Trotter, Job Centre, Kirstie Thorpe, Lindsey Dawson, Lucy Walker, Mark Whiting, Outreach Youth, Papworth Trust, Richard MacRae, Suffolk MIND, 4YP, and everyone who took part in parade workshops, choir sessions, and community-led research and development conversations.