
It will be no surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly that here at Tat, we are fans of community-based projects. If it's bringing people together, creating excitement and helping small businesses - well, Tat is 100% behind it, so much so it has unwittingly become the theme of this week's newsletter. Many of the events happening in the next two months are London-centric, so it was with great pleasure that we could draw your attention south to The Fayre, which is set in Sennen, Cornwall. This will be Fayre's first Winter edition, and to tell us more about it, we have spoken with Harriet Baylis, who, with Ben & Polly Weller, founded Fayre in 2022.
03.11.2023

Sennen, a village at the very edge of the land, is a place of many a tale, a land rich with pagan history. Magic and wonderment weaves through the landscape, whispering stories of folklore, song, festivities, and tradition.
It is here that on December 8th and 9th, The Fayre will host its first winter edition.
Organised and founded by Ben & Polly Weller and Harriet Baylis, the team will once again gather the local community and talent from further afield to showcase and celebrate art, music and food.
Bringing together careers and experience, Ben is a fashion and documentary photographer, Polly a designer working in interiors and fashion Harriet, a producer and stylist in music and the arts, founder of Marazul, a forward-thinking uniform and clothing label.
The Winter Fayre is set to be a smaller, distilled evolution of the successful Sennen Summer Fayre.
The Summer Fayre, going into its third year, sees the walls of Faraway House transformed into an open house art exhibition, with dinners in the garden, banquets in the village hall, music in the church, workshops in the stable, a cafe in the summer house and dancing to the sounds of Amateurism radio and Nathan Ball while the sun dips into the sea.
Ben, curator of the art show, combines household names with younger, local talent to invite a cross section of styles, people and visions, the shows have included artists such as Peter Doyle, Jack Whitefield, Gabby Laurent, Emma Rose Kennedy, Tyrone Lebon, Maisie Marshall, Jack Davidson, and Selena Scott.
The food offering, curated by Tim and Louise Rodkjaer Spedding, played host to cooks and chefs including William Gleave of P. Franco fame, Jolene’s – Jeremie Cometto and David Gingell, who hosted dinner in the village hall with film noir projected onto the walls. Eatethio’s guests celebrated an intimate experience exploring traditional Ethiopian food, hand-selected vinyls and finished with a coffee and incense ceremony.
Harriet and Polly design, decorate and curate programmes of performances, talks, craft, music and people. They work together closely with their community to build, borrow, gather, sew and make everything they use, from the tables to the flags, dying antique linen for tablecloths and napkins to foraging for floral displays.

The first Winter Fayre edition will follow a similar pattern, celebrating the darker evenings with music by candlelight in the local 12th-century church, exploring electronic, folk and shanty music with artist Bat For Lashes performing alongside local all female shanty group, Femmes De La Mer.
A feast will follow in the nearby Village Hall, cooked for by Tim and Louise’s restaurant Flora (@flora_newyard) who will embrace one and all for a three course shareable feast, celebrating local, seasonal and foraged foods.
The solo exhibition at Faraway House, ‘The Twelve Selves’ by Alice Ellis Bray, a talented local contemporary Cornish artist (@alicellisbray), explores identity in the form of 12 self-portraits representing part of the Major Arcana.
Wares of The Fayre are the work of selected craftspeople like Mud Club (@mud_club), local potters who dig their own clay, and make earthy ceramics glazed in the colours of the Cornish landscape. Gina Portman (@ginaportman) will bring her handmade hive-shaped candles made from beeswax, coloured with rich, dark pigments, all ready for those winter nights. Her candles will later light up the church for the performances. Also exhibiting is Joseph Huggett, a local craftsman and a green woodworker who uses green wood to make handsome bowls and spoons using a pedal lathe as well as Ritual Studio (this_is_ritual_studio) a jeweller who makes beautiful raw talismans from wax casts.
The art show and Fayre, is open to all at Faraway House,
From 11am - 4pm on Saturday 9th December. Private view 8th December please R.S.V.P via @the_fayre.
Music in the church will start at 5pm on the 9th December.
Dinner and music will start at 6pm, in the Village Hall.
Tickets will be available for these via The Fayre’s Instagram page.
There is free parking close to all the venues, all are within easy walking distance and plenty of local places to stay.
More information:
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