PREVIEW: Barnsley - An Unnatural History by poet laureate Simon Armitage and LYR

Barnsley – An Unnatural History, a poetic and musical happening, will showcase the town’s Eldon Street through its former Natural History Museum, an emporium of fowl and fauna, some of it local, some of it more exotic, once housed in The Civic, writes Graham Walker.

BUY TICKETS: Tickets are limited at £7 each for the live music, spoken word and local history show at Parkway Cinema on Friday, September 23, 7pm to 10pm – get them now at barnsley.parkwaycinemas.co.uk.

3D VIRTUAL TOUR: Find out more about The Civic in a unique time-travelling walkthrough virtual tour as it is today and how it looked when it first opened in 1878 – CLICK HERE.

Barnsley – An Unnatural History, a unique and one-time performance, will explore the spirit of great circuses, fairs and beasts – including elephants and whales – that have tripped through Barnsley’s streets, by way of the town's legendary Bunny Run.

It will tell of the animals that still make Eldon Street their natural habitat, from urban foxes to rare moths and aims to put Eldon Street on the map as a venue where pigeons have nested alongside phoenixes, two headed cattle and other fabulous creatures.

When the museum disappeared under somewhat mysterious circumstances, it lived on in memory and anecdote, with only the odd blurred photograph and dusty paperwork as evidence of its existence.

Armitage has been the artist in residence with the Eldon Street Heritage Action Zone for the past year exploring Eldon Street, its mythologies, stories, characters and used Barnsley Archives as a creative resource.

Digging into the past he and and his band LYR (Land Yacht Regatta) have now metaphorically recreated the museum as a kind of imaginarium of all things zoological, using it to explore the dream life of Eldon Street past, present and future, and creating an extravaganza of spoken word and soaring harmonics.

He was particularly interested in tales of a now almost mythical Natural History Museum that used to exist until the 1960s on the top floor of today’s modern Barnsley Civic.

Filmmaker James Lockey has created original and archive film projections to accompany the performance in the iconic Eldon Street cinema, The Parkway.

A music gig with a difference, it promises to be full of animal and Eldon Street-inspired stories, plus a few surprises along the way.

The audience is being invited to turn up dressed in animal inspired clothes, accessories or just to bring an animal spirit or two.