Launch event for Alison Hastie's book 'Green Shoes', with MED Theatre

Coming of age in the early 1980s, Alison Hastie always knew she was different from the conventional young people around her. One night a voice spoke to her in a dream, telling her to ‘make shoes’, and this is how she spent forty years of her working life. Her new book 'Green Shoes - Forty years of a radical womens' craft collective' documents this time in a fascinating and multi-faceted story, including her involvement with MED Theatre's early years as actor, committee member, costume designer and, at that time, Mark Beeson's wife.

In this event Alison will talk about her life and this book in conversation with her long-term friend Gillian Webster, one of the MED Theatre Co-Directors, who herself worked with Alison at Green Shoes for many years.

Living on Dartmoor, travelling between the countercultural town of Totnes and the surrounding villages, Alison made a home and a life for herself based on the principles of second-wave feminism, the idea that small is beautiful, and a deep immersive commitment to craft. Through personal tragedies, romantic relationships, motherhood, friendship, fire, flood and professional highs and lows, Alison describes her place in the long line of West Country radicals.

Her company, Green Shoes, was featured in the national and international press, and making shoes took her travelling as far as the north of Finland, but she remained rooted in her environment, family and the women’s collective which, like the Ship of Theseus, was consistent in its values despite many changes of personnel.

!! PLEASE NOTE TICKETS FOR THIS EVENT ARE FREE - BUT PLEASE BOOK TO SECURE A PLACE SINCE SPACES ARE LIMITED

Read more about Alison and  her book about Green Shoes here: https://theindigopress.com/product/green-shoes/