Sam Horton & Caleb Barron's WildWorks project, Folk On The Edge, celebrated a living folklore of the borderlands between Cornwall & Devon. Inspired by Maying, Mumming, Dusking, Hedge Morris and other traditions ancient and modern, articulating our own seasonal sense of connection to place, I led two borderlands workshops in Launceston & Liskeard to create fantastic headdresses, crowns, fascinators and 'heads', adorned with driftwood, daisies, tatters, ribbons, horns, hagstones, ivy and roses, and a lot of imagination!

Working with Wadebridge Museum and St Breock Primary School towards a more child-friendly Museum via the Child's Eye View project. The idea is simple: ask children what they find most interesting in their museum, their history & heritage, and then make it more accessible and inviting to them! With the children, we've been planning and designing a Treasure Trail, child-friendly exhibits, and four new murals at child's eye-level of interesting aspects of local life and history. Thanks to St Breock Community Fund & Wadebridge Rotary.

Arlodhes Kosow, or the Lady of the Woods, is new work in development: a haunting, striking 10ft tall giant processive figure, swathed in green with hooped skirts and antlers, ivy and lace. She's built on a backpack frame, will move her arms and turn her head, and be operated by a single person on foot inside the skirt. She's currently in the making stage and will be available to hire for appearances soon - ask if interested! contact@laurafrancesmartin.com

I was commissioned to create a new, giant Beast of Bodmin for Bodmin Jail in summer 2023, who was paraded through the streets during a special Beast Festival that August. 

Developing on from both The Hoss's Lament, created for Kneehigh in 2021, and a DYCP-supported writing project, this work explores our age-old and ever-changing relationship with the sea, appearing on the highest tides each month in a different village, town or city with maritime connections and, in doing so, flagging the impacts of climate change and rising tides. Both a processive, performative musical & vocal narrative touring work, and an accompanying published outcome, I'm now seeking partnerships to produce and tour the work across Cornwall, up the coast of Devon & North Somerset to Avon and London, in 2025-6.

A commission from Anna Maria Murphy & Kneehigh Theatre for their wonderful Random Acts of Art. Inspired by Anna's own story about a real ship, wrecked off Mevagissey in the 1800s, I recreated the ghost lantern barque 'Hoss' and 'sailed' her around the streets & quays of Mevagissey at dusk one evening in March 2021, visiting the ship's lost timbers on the King tide of the year. The Hoss was accompanied by a weathered old ship's figurehead (me), singing her lament to lost things, written by Carl Grose & Jim Carey, and co-sung on the night by drowned girl and able shipmate, Jenny Beare!

The Trebah Garden team invited Tony Crosby and me to be lead artists on Trebah Garden of Light in 2021. We co-curated a small team of artists to experiment with light and play with scale in the beautiful garden setting. The group produced an array of delightful new work to captivate visitors to the night garden over two magical winter weekends. I floated a giant swan on the lake, installed a tiny tallship on a pond in the Water Gardens, and hung huge seed pods and sycamore seeds twirling gently in tall trees.

A wild & wonderful Island Light festival was had this winter by the community of Scilly. We worked with hundreds of local people of all ages to create migratory, bird themed lanterns both large and small (I led on a giant Swift build with the students); we enjoyed new musical elements with our collaborators, Wilderness; and finally we held a grand celebration in the Church after three storms hit during our festival fortnight!

'LIFE LIGHTS' was a fantastic 2-week ARTiculate community arts residency on Scilly in Feb 2020, celebrating the Islands' unique heritage of saving lives at sea. We conceived and delivered a project which involved hundreds of Islanders in a full week of school activity and another of community workshops, creating exciting wearable & portable processive builds (including the Tallship & Scillonian III here, which I designed and led on) for our final magical parade - and an impressive celebratory cake-led finale! Full info & photos on the ARTiculate website  

I won a commission to build my Illuminated 3m tall Mayflower ship lantern design for the Illuminate Festival Plymouth’s first Mayflower 400 celebrations in Nov 2018; and was invited back again with a revamped and enhanced Mayflower for 'Voyager'at Illuminate 2019. 

I was approached by Wadebridge Chamber of Commerce to produce and manage the arts content for their first ever Wadebridge Christmas Wonderland Procession in 2019. This included designing and creating this giant Swan, leading schools carry-lantern workshops with 85 Year 4 and Year 5 children across two Wadebridge schools; and running a free, on-the-day community workshop, creating themed willow illuminations to carry; as well as managing all the final creations in the procession on December 14th!

For the inaugural Words In Woods Festival organised by IntoBodmin & KEAP at Cardinham Woods, I created a processive character - The Early Bird - and her 'Word Worms' roving mini-poetry workshops, delivered out in the woods from a special set-up on the back of a bicycle. The Early Bird is a lovely advocate for our wild birds and their natural habitats, encouraging awareness and involvement in environmental issues through the arts, for all ages.

I loved making this beautiful Galleon 'PiñARTa' for Sally Crabtree at the Sea Salts & Sail Festival in Mousehole in 2018; I ran two days of  workshops in a tent on the beach, inspiring children & families to create mini artworks and poems to fill it with, before we bashed it and shared the art, poems and sweets out each evening! Commissioned by Sally Crabtree and Word Voyages, this was also part of 'Dark Skies: Bright Stars' from Mayes Creative.

The BikeLights team invited me to create a 'MiniBeast' build for the themed 2017 procession, and this idea for a Damselfly built around a bike frame was born, piloted by her Amelia Earhart-style Aviatrix. I also worked as an artist on the 'on-the-day' workshops for the first time, and helped coordinate materials for the festival workshops, before being invited to get involved in the producing side of things the following year.

My largest & most complex lantern build was this T Rex for City of Lights 2013, created in The White Building at Truro College where I was City of Lights artist-in-residence for that year, being very pregnant. The lantern had 13 separate moving parts and took 9 people to carry it and help work its head, tail & jaws. BBC Radio Cornwall were my brilliant chief lantern bearers on the night, which was really windy!

I created this giant Faerie Queen lantern commission also for Truro City of Lights in 2012 when she got to be the lantern who 'switched on' the city's Christmas lights during the event. This lantern had an extra lease of life as she was also chosen for year-long display in the lovely atrium space above The Lander Gallery in Lemon Street Market, Truro, from Nov 2012 - Nov 2013.

Time To Shine - the creators of the Wadebridge ‘El Dia de Los Muertos‘ 2017 event - approached me to create a giant Condor Piñata and to run family & community workshops to decorate the build, before hosting a grand 'bashing' of the bird, and of course a sweet-sharing, at the end of the afternoon! 

Variously inspired by His Master's Voice, The Spirit of Ecstasy and all things 1920's, this giant 'Glamophone', complete with dancing shadow 'flappers', and an accompanying, highly-lit Muse, was conceived, created and performed for the Wadebridge BikeLights festival for its 2016 theme, Marvellous Machines! 

'Circa Ursa Major' was an off-the-wall commission idea for BikeLights 2015, whose nicely vague theme was 'Circles and Cycles'... they went for it, and to my own great surprise I managed to make a life-sized circus bear who actually cycled, built on a Tag-along being cycled by her red-coated, top-hatted ring-mistress to keep her in check!

This Gryffon made for City of Lights 2010 was a big hit with all the kids, who thought he was Buckbeak the Hippogriff from Harry Potter! The lantern was lovely to make and was also chosen for a year-long display in the Lander Gallery atrium space in Truro from Nov 2010 - Nov 2011.

'When The Circus Came to Town' was my first build for City of Lights in 2009 - and my first ever large lantern build. I was thrilled when it was chosen for a year-long display in the atrium at the Lander Gallery, Truro from Nov 2009 - Nov 2010. It also enjoyed a new home for a time at the Port Eliot Estate, St Germans, whose emblem is, of course, an elephant! I also recently learned that it eventually ended its years as a special guest of Meva Feast.

This giant nest was created during Trebah Garden's Easter festivities for 2019. Using cut branches & greenery collected by the Trebah Gardening team, working with visiting familiies I crafted the nest during one lovely busy day. Another artist workshop ran the following day to decorate the nest with flowers & feathers from the Gardens; this is the beautiful collaborative result!

I was approached by DR2 and Simon Birch Company to create willow gull lanterns for use as props and on set during the Prideaux Angels site specific theatre performances at Prideaux Place in winter 2017. Working with a community group in Wadebridge and a school group from Calstock in South East Cornwall, we created around 30 beautiful illuminated gulls, which appeared throughout the show's run.