About Us - Vision Mechanics

We lead

in encouraging communities to cooperate in the creation of original high quality arts projects. Events are staged all over the country in both conventional and site-specific environments with a strong emphasis on cross-artform collaborations.

Kim Bergsagel and Symon Macintyre are the creative partners behind Vision Mechanics. They met in London in 1978 working for the Little Angel Marionette Theatre. They are artists whose work is predominantly based around the stories of objects. The objects can be figurative as in traditional puppets or landscapes as in the naming of hills and woods. The process often decides what style of puppet/object would be best to communicate the story, i.e. in forests they created giant wicker heads that hung on trees called, “Giants in the Forest”. On a beach they made a shipwrecked series of installations scattered across the dunes called, “Drift”.

SYMON MACINTYRE

Artistic Director

Symon has a background in civil engineering, subsequently training in puppetry at Little Angel Theatre, London. For the past 35 years he has worked as a director, producer, performer and puppeteer, continually pushing the boundaries of conventional theatre and incorporating new technologies, to create bold, distinctive theatre events. He has created work for performance in living rooms, on city streets, on beaches, in back gardens, in forests and even in theatres.

KIM BERGSAGEL

Creative Director

Kim trained at Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design and at the Little Angel Theatre and is a performer, designer and maker. Kim’s unique and beautiful puppet designs have led to commissions from across the globe for theatre, film and television. Kim’s work for Vision Mechanics has ranged from designing and carving STORM, a 10 metre high sea goddess puppet, to creating exquisitely detailed micro marionettes for the Company’s previous production, The Fantastic Life of Minnie Rubinski.

Studio

In June 2017 and we relocated our workshop and production base to The Big Shed, Drummohr, near Prestonpans. The Big Shed, formerly riding stables, was a derelict building that Vision Mechanics spent many months converting into a fully accessible arts space, offering 12 individual artists studios as well as storage spaces, for rent.

With the support of Tyne Esk Leader Rural Development Fund and Creative Scotland National Lottery, new flooring, curtaining and lighting enabled us to turn the basic courtyard area in the centre of the Shed, into a flexible space for rehearsal, training and occasional performance space for theatre, dance and aerial.

At the Shed Vision Mechanics will continue to provide new opportunities for local people to get involved in artistic and creative activity, as well as attracting visitors to the area. The Company’s activities include a regular large-scale autumn production, workshop programmes and one-off special events.

The Shed offers accessible rehearsal, build and performance space at flexible rates, to theatre, dance and aerial artists/companies. It is situated in 25 acres of parkland on which outdoor work can be developed.

Supporters

We love our supporters and partners! We have been lucky enough over the years to make lasting and meaningful relationships with them. We believe that putting your trust in us to execute on our shared vision is a huge deal and we take it very seriously. Building and maintaining that trust is our number one focus.