David's
story
David is an author, theatre maker, musician and installation artist. His work is fiercely biographical, weird and wonderful, sublime and speculative, from his (award nominated) children’s book and musical ‘The Nose That Nobody Picked’ to ‘David Parkin’s Delusions of Grandeur’, an installation looking at the four months he spent under section, suffering from a bipolar manic episode.
He was core director of arts organisation metro-boulot-dodo for fifteen years. The company spanned multidisciplinary art forms and toured and won awards internationally.
David is moved to create by an idea or feeling which often dictates the medium. So, he’s a substance over style kind of chap who’s never quite sure what’s coming next. Whatever it is, his work is always thoughtful, moving and funny.
PROFESSIONAL HISTORY
A BORN SHOW OFF
GOING SOLO
METRO-BOULOT-DODO
David has dipped his toes in pretty much every art form. A child actor who had a speaking part in 'Hope And Glory' and a munching part in cake adverts, he showed off in everything from school plays to National Youth Theatre shows, to skits he wrote.
David studied English Lit and Theatre Studies at Lancaster University where he met the other members of Metro-Boulot-Dodo, an arts organisation that he was a Core Director of for 15 years. Originally an experimental theatre company, MBD soon received international
festival awards, including Total Theatre Best Newcomer award in Edinburgh. They soon became multidisciplinary and did pretty much everything from theatre shows, educational shows, installations, historical events, festival treasure hunts, short films and longer films
and headphone tours.
In 2012 David left MBD to concentrate on his music and writing.
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“Good Friday” – a ‘clinical depression concept album show ™’ that toured England and Canada, finishing with a sell out show at Battersea Arts Centre.
“Tea Bags, Soap, Be Normal” – An Arts Council funded personal account of recovering from a brain injury. “Tea bags…” is a memoir about brain injury, depression and the joy of discovering music.
“The Nose That Nobody Picked” – The Arts Council funded children’s book and musical that David wrote as a young man. Self published to coincide with the successful 2016 autumn tour of the piece, it went on to be nominated for the ‘James Reckitt Hull Children’s Book Award’.
“David Parkin’s Delusions of Grandeur” -‘David Parkin’s Delusions of Grandeur’ is a fully immersive installation that tells you everything you didn't want to know about being sectioned. In 2015 David suffered his first bipolar manic episode. Listen to songs he wrote and recorded while in the Bradgate Unit, read about moments in the ward (such as escaping to the Champagne Bar, falling madly and obsessively in love, and being punched by a fellow inmate), also check out his alternative vision of seclusion.
Funny, irreverent, heartbreaking, honest and fearless, 'David Parkin's Delusions of Grandeur' lives up to its name in all respects.
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'Delusions' spent 4 months installed at Bethlem Museum of the Mind in 2022, and was originally created for Attenborough Arts DeStress Festival, 2018.