Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model: Bryony Kimmings

In an audacious, provocative protest against the world’s flagrant attempts to sexualise and commodify childhood for profit, award-winning performance artist Bryony Kimmings and her 9 year-old niece Taylor decided to take on the global tween machine at its own game.

Invited by Bryony to invent a new a role model as an alternative to those currently available to her, Taylor came up with museum-working, imagination-championing, bike-riding, tuna-pasta-eating pop star Catherine Bennett.

Knowing that the best language to speak to young people was pop, Bryony duly promised to embody Catherine Bennett, enlisting former Girls Aloud make-up artists, ID magazine stylists, X Factor wig experts, prolific pop producers and a pack of publicists.

She vowed to follow Taylor’s brief and make CB famous… like WORLD FAMOUS. Bryony wanted to prove to Taylor that an alternative role model in mainstream popular media was possible… as a gift from her Aunty.

Bryony and Taylor were inspired by the increasing evidence of damage caused by the sexualisation of kids, the endless objectification of the female body in the media, large growths in youth narcissistic personality disorders, increasingly violent video games and the concerns of parents all over the world.

This 2-year long project is made up of the Catherine Bennett fame experiment, a theatre show, a documentary and an education project. It does not seek to censor but to inspire debate and personal action amongst kids and adults.