Nick Hanks, having studied Archaeology at Bristol University and Drama at Warwick University, is ideally suited for scripting and leading heritage guided walks. He also gives a variety of training sessions on the Art of Tour Guiding.
Nick Hanks currently leads tours some solo tours but mostly leads tours and storytelling events as part of Time and Tide Taletellers with Dawn McHale. This all began in the mid 1990s with guided walks along the Thames Path and Ridgeway performing with ‘The Travelling Talesman’ (Cliff Eastabrook), as Longshanks and Talesman.
Time and Tide Taletellers provide imaginative engagement with the sense of place. Blending myth, legend, history and pure invention, as this is what turns an anonymous public space into a place with meaning. They do Time Walks (which town and country landscape and history explored, with some stories and folk lore), Story Walks (which focus on tales and legends with a bit of history) and site specific events for The National Trust.
Nick’s speciality is presenting the material in-situ, “where it happened”. Using the atmosphere of the setting, and putting it, rather than himself, centre stage. The presentation serves the site and the facts, and doesn’t ‘upstage’ or ‘make light’ of them. He likes to call it ‘Performance Archaeology’
- “Performance” – it is obviously modern people wearing hats, using props and explaining things.
- “Archaeology” – it is based on objects and places, that make a probable picture of the people of the past.
It is not historical re-enactment. It does not involve the illusion of ‘pretending to be’ historic figures, which is inaccurate and does not communicate effectively! That method can trivialise the past and turn the historic location into a mere backdrop.
