What was 2023 all about, and what will 2024 bring!

This last week has continued a madness of the whirlwind that we have been living in! We joined up with our amazing team in Treowen for a week for two runs of The Locksmith’s Dream.

So here comes my big name drop. For our weekday run, we had Neil Patrick Harris and Emily Jillette join us for the experience! They had a great time and described it as “Stunning” and “Like stepping into a novel”. I’m so delighted that they, like everyone else, had a great time.

For anyone out there who suffers with their mental health — we see you, and we get you.

The Locksmith’s Dream and all of our team, pride ourselves on offering an amazing experience that (within the confines of the grade 2 listed Jacobean building…) anyone can experience. You can chase all the clues flitting through the house, you can systematically follow a story, you can interact with people, or you can sit with a cup of tea and do jigsaws and all of these are right.

One thing we can say is that what ever comes next, we will always have the many and varied needs of our wonderful community in our thoughts.

One of the very exciting things about the last two events was that we were graced with the presence of reviewers — three of them! I’m sure you all know, but we’ve found it very hard to say exactly what The Locksmith’s Dream is. we settled on the term ‘genre-defying’ and it seems that many of these reviewers agreed!

It’s been a busy month at LD HQ! As the planets have been aligning in the skies above us, things have been nicely slotting into place here too.

We ran a competition, released a new batch of dates and have been working on new content.

This last week saw the launch of the Curator’s Cabinet. These wonderful curios that are now available have been popular so far. From the beautiful hard-enamelled badges to the stunning hand-bound symmurgist journals there is something for everyone to enjoy.

Well what a year 2022 has been! Last January, when we first began developing the Locksmith’s Dream, none of us had any idea how this year would go. We looked on it as an experiment. Would it work? Could we work together? Would people be interested? As it turns out the answer to all of these is a resounding YES!

Everything is finally starting to come together; The Journals are with Nathan the bookbinder, who’s hard at work hand-stitching and doing all the mysterious things that bookbinders do. Letters, Notes and other documents are flying off the printers at speed, the soundscapes have been put together, and the last of various props are arriving daily by post (much to the consternation of an indignant Grom, who feels he should be guarding the front door from such intrusions).

It’s been a hectic month or so, with Locksmith’s dream production really ramping up over the last few weeks. Lots and lots of exciting packages are arriving (and causing considerable agitation for my dog, Grom). Puzzles are being written, and the Grand Birdsong (more on those in a later post) journeys are developing nicely.

I thought I’d give you all a bit of a look at three of the things that we’re particularly excited about at the moment.

Our recent newsletter survey showed us that we should totally share more detail about what you actually do in this upcoming Cultist-adjacent real-world weekend break full of puzzles, lore and cocktails.

Each year the Avian Hours — that’s the Beach-Crow, the Witch-and-Sister, the Elegiast, the Vagabond and the little-known Name of the Moth, Ferezeref — meet to discuss the topics of the gods. Afterwards, mortals attend the Roostinghall to pick through abandoned tidbits of secret knowledge. This is what we’re calling the Locksmith’s Dream, and invite you to pick through the snippets of the gods this October and December with us.

You can purchase tickets for our beta event in October AND/OR the full events in December. We have a bunch of gorgeous photos of the rooms, house and grounds, as well as further details on food, timings and how it all works. Tickets will launch at 6PM BST / 10AM PDT on Monday 6th June 2022.

Designing the Locksmith’s Dream is like playing chess with an invisible opponent. Each move opens up new possibilities, which may themselves be traps. Each time I’m sure of a great play, the opponent of practicality puts new obstacles in the way.

The excitement of fleshing out the world of the Secret Histories in a way that can be represented physically leads to rabbit holes which turn out to be sprawling warrens. Developing real objects which can be interacted with — and that offer insights or clues — is no easy feat but a delightful challenge filled with moments of joy when an idea works.

We’ve talked about the Locksmith’s Dream as ‘a series of live, invitation-only overnight events’, but what do you actually do during your esoteric weekend in Wales? The experience triangulates somewhere between a high-end murder mystery (but nobody dies and you don’t have to act), D&D in a Castle (but we’re not LARP) and occult Downton Abbey (without, sadly, Maggie Smith). It’s a cross between a luxury weekend holiday and a scavenger hunt.

Explore an untouched corner of the invisible world in this Suppression-Bureau-sponsored foray into the Bounds of the Mansus. Assume an identity of the House. Seek snippets of the Secret Histories. Trade Birdsong with the Curator, relax before an open fire in the Flint & Wheel Pub, and decide whether or not to believe everything the Inspector says…

Think occult Downton Abbey. Or a weekend invitation to your long-lost aristocratic aunt’s stately home, when your aunt is also a witch. Or the sort of stop-over the Vagabond might book on her way to the Fourth History, Atlas of Dreams and a bottle of sherry in tow.