Tom Hirons and Rima Staines on Hedgespoken, ‘a Vehicle for the Imagination’

Rima Staines is an artist, musician and illustrator, puppet-maker, stop-frame animator, clock-maker, theatre designer and one half of Hedgespoken with her partner Tom Hirons.  Tom is a writer of poetry and prose and teller of traditional folk tales.  Together they created ‘Hedgespoken’, a travelling off-grid storytelling theatre run from a 1966 Bedford RL lorry, converted to be a home and a go-anywhere stage.  On one bumper it says ‘Vehicle for the Imagination’ and on the other ‘Imagination, Liberation’.  They travel, present stories, share artworks, having raised the money to convert the vehicle through a crowdfunder. We met one morning at a local café with, as you'll hear, their energetic young son, and over the space of a couple of cups of tea we talked imagination, storytelling, the visual arts and much more.  I started by asking them to tell me more about Hedgespoken, and how, for them, it acts as a focal point for their work around imagination.