Have you ever been invited to a festival by a mouse carrying an idea that was just too big for people to move? You have now………………
Every now and again, there is a book that takes on a stature beyond its own scale, that reaches out and can even instigate the first tremors of change. ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ has been sending out its message calling for a better way to greet and accept everyone for some years. Now, it has its own festival which took place for the first time on 8-10 July, 2022. As with everything in Heartstone, everyone was welcome and however big the ideas, with the mice involved, it was fun – they always make sure of that! The greatest journeys are said to begin with a single step and the greatest stories start by turning a single page. Sometimes the journey is a story and the story is a journey, an odyssey.
The odyssey spans hundreds of years, joins continents and cultures, in good times and in bad, and reaches forwards from the British Raj in India to a young Indian woman, Chandra, in London in the 1980’s. She is a dancer and her love of her art is tested to the limit when her show is cancelled after threats are made, except that becomes the night she first meets the mice who have been waiting for her for two hundred years and, with their help and friendship, she goes on to become one of the most influential performers in the world, speaking of and to the most important challenges we all face, especially the threats to the natural world and the environment.
So this event turned out to be a sharing of a tale of how the smallest can achieve the greatest things, of how your destiny can be forged for generations before you, of an adventure set in the history of Britain, a quest in India following someone’s journey from hundreds of years ago and a fight for justice against prejudice, kindness against hate and hope from a place where there seems to be very little. The mice would come with a cushion and a piece of chocolate cake but what made this special for everyone who joined is what they all brought to it. It was the start of a new adventure, not just the story that is told but what it sets out to achieve.
Over the weekend, we had the involvement of some wonderful contributors who each brought to life a different aspect of the themes covered in ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’, including for the first time, themes from Book 2 which takes place mostly in India. The programme was arranged with three different sections:
- ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ stories – presentations directly connected with the books;
- India stories – presentations connected with India, as covered in both Books 1 and especially book 2;
- Children’s stories – presentations from inspirational people today who lived through extraordinary circumstances as children, which would shape the rest of their lives, highlighting the importance of what happens to us as children – including the books we read and the friends who help us!
Each brought a different facet to this story to life. providing an insight into new worlds and lives. Reaching all ages from 9 to 99 or even older, there was something for everyone – from astronomy, the natural environment or the world of the Civil Rights movement in the Southern USA in the 1950’s and 60’s.
The Festival was launched on Friday 8th July from UCLan in Preston by the High Sheriff Martin Ainscough on behalf of Book Festival Patron, Lord Charles Shuttleworth, the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire. Other special guests who took part included Shri Bijay Selvaraj, Consul General of India, to mark the involvement of India through Culture in Book 2 of The Heartstone Odyssey, which was introduced for the first time from this event. Ms Ranvir Singh, the well known Good Morning Britain and Loose Women presenter, joined from London and Sir Derek Jacobi, who had recorded a special opening introduction. The Mayor of Preston said:
“The Launch of the Heartstone Odyssey Book Festival was astounding, showing the width and breadth of support that the project enjoys. And rightly so! The passion of all involved shines through and the work they are striving to achieve in educating children in the values of tolerance and acceptance is wonderful. All books open our minds to new ideas, especially when we are young – but the Heartstone Odyssey Project is taking this further by linking children to communities around the world to forge connections that will stay with young people for a lifetime. Children in Preston are lucky to have had the opportunity to be involved in the project and they will be the richer for the experience; I know they are already looking forward to the next stage of this exciting journey.”
Particularly exciting was the presentation from Barrie Osborne, joining from Los Angeles, producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, Mulan, The Matrix and many other Hollywood blockbusters, who presented his vision of the Heartstone Odyssey on big and small screens.
HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED OVER THE WEEKEND….
Saturday 9th July:
1-1.45pm Sir Derek Jacobi – read from the book with Sitakumari storytelling
Sir Derek Jacobi, the iconic British actor and director, who became Heartstone’s Patron after reading Book 1 of ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ opened the Festival with a reading from the book. Sir Derek was given a knighthood for his services to theatre by the Queen in 1994 and is a member of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog. In addition to being a founder member of the Royal National Theatre and winning several prestigious theatre awards, Sir Derek has also enjoyed a successful television career, starring in ‘I Claudius’ in 1976 for which he won a BAFTA; in the titular role in the medieval drama ‘Cadfael’ series (1994–1998), and numerous other tv productions. In 2019, he played Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor, in the third season of the critically acclaimed Netflix series, ‘The Crown’. Though principally a stage actor, Sir Derek has appeared in a number of films – Othello, The Day of the Jackal, Hamlet, Gladiator, The King’s Speech, Cinderella and Murder on the Orient Express.
Sitakumari followed Sir Derek with a storytelling introduction to set the scene using her background as an Indian Classical dancer/storyteller, bringing to life the story’s heroine, Chandra.
Sitakumari has devoted her life to dance/storytelling and to her work as the Director of Heartstone, which produces story – literature, photodocumentary, history – and presents them through exhibitions, events, stage performances, publication and online. The UK-wide network of Story Circles use Heartstone stories, especially The Heartstone Odyssey, as the foundation through which to connect people, build contact, understanding and empathy, challenge prejudice and intolerance and discover a common humanity, helping to bring the world described in The Heartstone Odyssey to life. Set up in 1990, Heartstone has staged events in some of the UK and Europe’s most prestigious venues including the Southbank Centre in London, the City Art Centre in Edinburgh, and the European Parliament.
2-2.45pm Vasant Nath – adapting ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ for screen
How do you take a story as complicated and inter-connected as ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’, on the surface a children’s story with fantastical characters but with a much deeper thread making it equally enjoyable for adults and dealing with one of the most difficult issues in the world today – the need to challenge all forms of prejudice, and adapt it for the big and small screens.
Vasant Nath, the well known Indian screenwriter, one of the writers on the Netflix ‘Sacred Games’ series and numerous other screen adaptations, joined from his base in Mumbai. In conversation with Sitakumari he talked about the difficult challenges he faces in the process of adaptation. Vasant was brought to ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ screen development project by Barrie Osborne. He saw in Vasant a creative screenwriter who is capable of walking the fine line making a screen adaptation work across cultures for audiences in east and west. Vasant spoke about the challenges this presents and what it takes to ensure the richness and intense plot of the story is maintained, whilst keeping it fun for family audiences and packaging the novels into the timing and edited presentation for film and TV.
3-3.45pm Dr Valda Montgomery – from Sailvoyage to Selma and the Safe House – growing up in the house next door to Martin Luther King, The Harris House
Revd Dr Martin Luther King is mentioned in ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ very close to the start of the story. The Festival brought some of the real people who were part of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and experienced this extraordinary time as children. Dr Valda Harris Montgomery’s family lived next door to the Kings and became an important part of the Civil Rights movement. Her family home was a location for many of the campaign meetings and became the famous ‘Harris House’. As such, she met some of the most famous people who were part of the movement. Her family were one of the few who had a car and she remembers vividly how this was used to help people, who had boycotted the buses, on their journeys. Valda said,
“During segregated times and periods of social unrest, Harris House was a safe house for activists and leaders similar to the necessary locations for the Underground Railroad. It played an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, and the Selma to Montgomery march. Major decisions were made there that have affected the course of history.”
4-4.45pm Meta Ellis – growing up with Martin Luther King’s family, Rosa Parks and other leaders of the movement
The Montgomery Bus Boycott had white supporters who stood alongside the black communities in their fight against the racial injustices of the time. Meta Ellis was the eldest daughter of Rev. Robert & Jeannie Graetz, two of the white supporters and leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She spoke of her experiences as a child during this time, living through a period when their home was bombed twice by the K.K.K. and the family was targeted repeatedly. Her family were close friends with Martin Luther King s family, Rosa Parks and many other leaders in the movement.
Her childhood experiences have helped shape her adult life. Meta has devoted her whole life to fighting injustice. She has been a life-long activist for human and animal rights in Montgomery as well as California, Arizona, Ohio, and Washington, DC. Meta is now the Director of Montgomery Pride United and the co-founder of the Bayard Rustin Community Center. Meta was also selected to represent Alabama in USA Today’s “State By State: Faces of Pride” June 30, 2017 edition, and co-recipient of the 2018 Billy Jack Gaither Humanitarian Award.
She says:
“There is power in passion,” Ellis said. “But beyond the passion, you have to be ready to work. It isn’t all fun stuff either. Sometimes it’s just showing up and being the person who is wiping down items, organizing stuff, calling people.”
Meta is known fo showing up.
Now together with her wife, Emma, she is helping to bring he Heartstone Odyssey to Alabama.
5-5.45pm – James Arnold, Curator, Harris Museum, Preston and Mario Kkounnous, lead digital animator, UCLan – The Heartstone Odyssey and history, the north west England connection, and creating the concept art for the books.
The Heartstone Odyssey starts in India in the late 1700’s and tells of the epic journey of Sailvoyage Stonekeeper, the mouse who leaves his home, family and friends on a journey to Britain, knowing he may never return but that he has a great mission – to find a resting place for a single fragment of the Heartstone in Britain, the land from which the soldiers who had broken the Stone had come. He arrives in London in 1796 to a world which was changing – the Industrial Revolution, slavery, European colonial expansion to countries including of course India, his own land. What did he, and his beloved companion Lavenderwhiskers, see when they arrived in Lancashire and what did they feel about it?
James Arnold, Harris Museum Curator, demonstrated some of the objects currently held in the Museum and in conversation with Sitakumari, he was able to ‘paint a picture of this world’, to see England through the eyes of Sailvoyage. One of these is a painting originally hung in a Lancashire stately home clearly depicting attitudes towards the Indian ‘natives’, the elephant and tiger, both symbolic of India and its domination by the colonial rulers. He also spoke of the role of cotton in Lancashire, slavery and the link to Sailvoyage’s journey from India.
Mario Kkounnous followed with a visual feast of scenes from ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ which he, as the digital animation lead for the University of Central Lancashire, has created. He also provided an insight as to how he starts from the narrative story, as told in the book and ends with a powerful artistic interpretation of the text, concept art which is now being used as part of the project being supported by Barrie Osborne, Oscar-winning producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, to take the books to big and small screens.
Sunday 10th July – The Heartstone Odyssey Books 2 and 3
‘India & Beyond’, ‘Moonrise Over Five Continents’ and ‘Children’s Stories’
1-1.45pm Dr T V Ramachandra – Snakes of ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’, Cultural beliefs about snakes in India and the link to Conservation
Snakes play a central role in ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ books. One of the main antagonists in the story is Noname, the serpent. Evil snakes are depicted at the start of the Heartstone story – with the breaking of the stone, and then throughout the adventure. However, there are also overwhelmingly good snakes in the story as depicted by the great Naga. This representation of both danger and good in the same species is something that is found in cultural beliefs about snakes throughout India. Local communities also believe some snakes, such as the Cobra, will only harm a person if they have done some harm to the creature. It is therefore not surprising this concept is found in ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ books. But there is more to this than just being an interesting belief system……
Dr T V Ramachandra (left) is one of the authors of a paper in 2021 which highlights the role cultural beliefs about snakes in India actually help with their conservation. He is currently the Co-ordinator of the Energy and Wetlands Research Group and the Convenor of Environmental Information Systems at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. His work in the field has led to numerous awards connected with forests and climate change.
Sitakumari presented, in her storytelling style, the snakes of ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ and then talked to Dr Ramachandra about his work focussing on one of the areas of India where snakes are found in plentiful numbers, the forests of the Western Ghats, home to the most venomous species of snakes in India. He has been able to show how the local population’s reverence towards snakes and the sacred groves, which exist as a result of these beliefs, has ensured their world is protected. He also spoke of the growing threat to this ecosystem by current commercial pressures and the increasing emphasis on development of the forested areas. The Western Ghats have a further significance – it was on the journey through this part of India that ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ was first conceived by the author from which the rest has followed!
2-2.45pm Shri Rajiv Bhartari, Corbett Tiger Reserve – Elephants and Tigers in ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’
There are many animals depicted in ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ and two of the most prominent in Book 2 are elephants and tigers. Corbett National Park also features in the story as it is the location of one of the clues on the Heartstone trail to find the broken pieces of the gem, which are hidden in a cave somewhere in the Himalaya mountains. Corbett is in the foothills of the mountains and therefore, not surprisingly, one of the stops on the journey.
In conversation with Sitakumari, Shri Rajiv Bhartari, Chairman, Uttarakhand State Biodiversity Board (right), spoke about Corbett Tiger Reserve and how it came into being, marking a change from hunting the tiger, during the time of the British in India and the time of ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’, leading to its near extinction to conservation efforts in the relatively recent past to save the animal and the successes the Reserve have seen. He also spoke of the role of the elephants at the Reserve, the conflicting issues they have to cope with and where he sees this going in the future, including the important role of tourism in conservation efforts. Rajiv is the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chairman of the Uttarakhand Biodiversity Board and has represented Asia at International ecotourism summits.
3-3.45pm Arvind Paranjpye, Director – Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai – the Jantar Mantars of India, who built them and why, the Heartstone clue hidden there and a tale explaining how the eclipse and comet were formed.
Arvind Paranjpye has had a lifelong interest and passion for Astronomy. What started as a hobby became a career, from an assistant in the photographic lab of the Indian Institute of
Astrophysics, Bangalore, to a high altitude infrared observatory in the Himalayas, to becoming one of the first Indians to discover a new asteroid for which he and the team were awarded the Astronomical Society of India Medal. He believes strongly in the need to raise awareness and ‘popularise’ astronomy and in addition to writing scientific papers, he regularly writes columns for major Indian newspapers and periodicals as well as appearing on radio and TV and hosting his own live sky show on All India Radio. He is currently working on creating all the shows which are taking shape with the new state of the art digital technology at the Mumbai Planetarium. He talked about the role of astronomy in Indian culture, the Jantar Mantar observatories, and astronomy in the present and its future in India.
Astonomy plays major part in ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ from the outset and even reflected in Chandra, the heroine of the story, whose name means ‘moon’ in Sanskrit. Sitakumari, in conversation with Arvind, highlighted this and some of the principal characters, including Professor Watchmoon, the leader of the astronomer mice, the ‘nine planets’ sculpture and the Delhi Jantar Mantar, the location of one of the clues on the journey north in Book 2 of ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ to find the hidden pieces of the Heartstone.
4-4.45pm Karen Gray Houston – the first stirrings against injustice, a child’s story
Karen Gray is an award-winning journalist with her career in broadcast news spanning 41 years at radio and television stations and networks in Boston, New York City and Washington, DC. Karen worked as a radio and TV correspondent for NBC News covering the Reagan White House, was a reporter/anchor for WTOP News-radio in DC and WHDH-AM in Boston and anchored on the ABC Radio Network. Karen was a writer/associate producer at WCBS-TV in New York and a reporter/writer/editor with United Press International in Boston.
In 1950 before Montgomery, Alabama, knew Martin Luther King Jr., before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger, before the city’s famous bus boycott, a Negro man named Hilliard Brooks was shot and killed by a white police officer in a confrontation after he tried to board a city bus. Thomas Gray, who had played football with Hilliard when they were kids, was outraged by the unjustifiable shooting. Gray protested, eventually staging a major downtown march to register voters, and standing up to police brutality. Five years later, he led another protest, this time against unjust treatment on the city’s segregated buses. On the front lines of what became the Montgomery bus boycott, Gray withstood threats and bombings alongside his brother, Fred D. Gray, the young lawyer who represented Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the rarely mentioned Claudette Colvin, a plaintiff in the case that forced Alabama to desegregate its buses.
Karen Gray Houston is the daughter of Thomas Gray and in conversation with Sitakumari, who made the link with characters in Book 3 of ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’, spoke about her experiences as a child with a father and uncle, whose selfless actions changed the nation’s racial climate and opened doors for her and countless other African Americans.
5-5.45pm Lynda Blackmon Lowery – being on the Selma Montgomery march age 15, a child’s perspective
The final speaker for the Heartstone Odyssey Book Festival was Lynda Blackmon Lowery, a civil rights activist, award-winning author, and co-producer who was the youngest foot soldier to march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. She was an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement right from her earliest days. Lynda authored a book named, “Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom” to appeal to young readers and provide insight to how impactful segregation was in 1965 and how she navigated through that burning desire to see equal rights for herself, her family, and the African American Community.
Lynda travels the world telling her story from the eyes and experiences of her 14-year-old self. Locked in an iron, windowless room called the sweatbox, Lynda recounted the horror of being jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday and the 35 stitches on her eye and back of her head from being beaten by white state troopers and sheriffs on Bloody Sunday.
She was part of the Movement that would change the world, showing how everyone can ‘make a difference’, however daunting the task and as such, was the perfect final speaker for the Heartstone Odyssey Book Festival.
SITAKUMARI closed the festival with a final reading from ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’.
Our grateful thanks to the many funders and supporters who have made this very first Heartstone Odyssey Book Festival possible, including:
Preston City Council and PWLREDC, The Harris Charity, the Lord Lieutenancy, Edwin Booth DL, Dennis Mendoros DL, David Sanderson DL, Ishwer Tailor DL, Robert Webb DL, Suzana Sheldon-Edwards DL, Michael Conlon, Robert Binns (Cotton Court, Preston), Rank Foundation, Fort Foundation and Shepherd Street Trust. Our grateful thanks to Ribblesdale School for IT support for the art competition.
We must also thank all the wonderful contributors who donated their time to be part of the event and now supporting the spread of The Heartstone Odyssey and Story Circles into India and the USA.
IF YOU ARE A HEARTSTONE STORY CIRCLE AND WOULD LIKE ANY OF THE RECORDINGS FROM THE BOOK FESTIVAL, CONTACT:
alice@heartstone.co.uk
To order a copy of ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’, (£10 + pp) contact the Heartstone office at:
Tel: 0044 (0) 1349 866066
OR order online – UK and USA:
Search for The Heartstone Odyssey
All profits after costs from sales of ‘The Heartstone Odyssey’ go to Heartstone for its Story Circle programme.
To order a copy of Daughter of the Boycott by guest contributor for the Festival Karen Gray Houston, go to author’s website:
