And so it is.
A year or so after announcing to about 5 people on Facebook that Swindon is the Poetry Capital of the World, Google – no less – has now got with the programme. So if you Google search for Poetry Capital of the World, Swindon is what comes up. I kid you not. Try it for yourself. Continue reading
With 16,000 people watching 30 acts over two days, the Devizes International Street Festival was bigger than ever before.
From a spectator’s view, the crowds were mercifully thinner this year than in 2011, thanks to the Street Festival being held over two days: Sunday, as well as its traditional bank holiday Monday spot.
I wonder whether rain, or at least the threat of it, may have also kept the audience size manageable on the Monday, when the Festival Chroniclers made their third consecutive pilgrimage to the event – despite some stiff competition it’s become a ‘must-do’ in our calendar. Continue reading
Bristol’s Nelson Street is, without a doubt, the arse-end of the city’s historic centre. The once-elegant Georgian thoroughfare, named after Admiral Lord Nelson (Bristol has a great seafaring heritage), was destroyed by German bombs during the Bristol Blitz and, like much of the city centre, was rebuilt in concrete in the 1950s and 60s.
But unlike its neighbouring districts – the redeveloped harbourside, the mercantile Old City, the modern cathedral to retail therapy that is Cabot’s Circus – Nelson Street has yet to benefit from the merciful release of the wrecker’s ball.
Of all the architectural forms to be found in Bristol, the brutalist municipal buildings and car parks of the postwar Age of Austerity are the most reviled. Just the spot for an international arts festival, then. Continue reading
In the week that publishing house DC Thomson announced it was to end the printed edition of The Dandy – home of Desperate Dan and chums – after 75 years, a tiny contemporary art studio in Andover was celebrating the thriving culture of small-scale publishing.
Chapel Arts Studios – based in a converted chapel in the graveyard of Andover’s St Mary’s Church – is a cultural oasis in the centre of the town’s otherwise uninspiring centre: sadly more Basingstoke that Winchester.
Home to several artists’ studios and a small gallery space, Chapel Arts is like a mini version of Bristol’s Spike Island, and a real hive of creativity.
And over the weekend of August 11 to 13, We Are Collective gave members of the public the chance to see – and have a go at creating – small press comics, limited edition ‘zines, video and sound art and print-makers.
Apparently the place was heaving on the Sunday, so we’re glad we took the opportunity to visit on rainy Monday, giving us the chance to meet artists in a relaxed atmosphere.
And so we met people like art student Andy Reaney, who was helping visitors to make lino printing blocks with craft knives.
These were then used to create prints on his home-made bottle jack press, all of the parts for which – with the exception of the compressed air jack itself – were found in a skip.
We also met freelance illustrator Murray Somerville, the publisher of the ‘zine Macro Shrub.
Last year one of Murray’s designs was chosen to illustrate eight million bottles of Becks beer, as part of the Art Crawl initiative.
If he’d been given a quid for every bottle (or even 10p, come to think of it) he’d be a rich man but, I suspect, still pouring his heart and soul into Macro Shrub, printed in mega-limited editions and sold for £4 each. The covers are quality prints of works of art in themselves.
Meanwhile event curator Tom Mortimer – who was spending his 25th birthday entertaining visitors, such was his dedication – helped six-year-old junior chronicler Milo to create his own comic, using cut-out pen and ink photocopies and a packet of felt tips.
Needless to say Is the Lost Land Real? Is a work of genius. And Chronicler Milo’s verdict of We Are Collective? “That was brilliant!”
There you go then. For more information about Chapel Arts, and forthcoming events, log on to www.chapelartsstudios.co.uk
What Larmer Tree Festival lacks in big names (and firm ground) its makes up for in smiles, as Chronicler Pete discovered.
I’ve been going to music festivals for twenty two years – exactly as long as Larmer Tree Festival has been in existence.
Yet until this year I’d never been to the five-day boutique festival, which is held practically on my doorstep in the grounds of a Victorian pleasure garden near Salisbury. Continue reading
Saturday (day three of the Larmer Tree Festival near Salisbury /Shaftesbury) was the ‘All at Sea’ themed fancy dress day. So: tons of mud, sea theme and an aquarian outfit which keeps a body warm and one which can be hosed down at the end of the day. I saw one clever parent who’d thought of this which made me slap my hand on my forehead, accompanied by ‘oweeeee.’
I’d been at the festival since Thursday and my son turned up Friday afternoon. And immediately jumped up and down in the muddy gunk before scooping it up in his fingers. Sigh.
On the whole the kids loved the mud. Usually accompanied by resigned looking parents, desperately trying to keep the mud on their wellies and nowhere else.
Okay, I realise I’ve nearly got to the end and haven’t mentioned music, comedy, art or even toilets. But the mud is all pervasive. It splats and slops and it’s really hard work to walk through. Whine, whine, whine.
That’s it, enough about mud. It won’t pollute the other posts.
No other word for it.
Except maybe: amazing. Incredible. A one off. Fantastic.
I’m talking about Fire Garden at Stonehenge last night.
Not only was a huge amount of people old and young allowed to walk in amongst the stones – a rare experience in itself – but the Fire Garden was breathtaking. Continue reading
Winchester Hat Fair is, in fact, the UK’s longest running festival of street theatre, comedy and music. It’s called the Hat Fair because, essentially, it’s a busking festival – all of the acts are paid by the crowd, who (hopefully) throw money into their hats at the end of a performance. This is called ‘hatting’.
So, there are hundreds of free events (well, free if you have no conscience) alongside a handful of ticketed spectaculars, one of which French company Generik Vapeurs’ very exciting sounding new Waterlitz show, including an explosive display of pyrotechnics (ooh!), breath-taking aerial stunts (gasp!) and a 30m high giant made of shipping containers (aah!), was… cancelled due to the bad weather.
Still, plenty more going on – the town centre was taken over by dozens of acts on Friday and Saturday, while on Sunday the fun moved to Oram’s Arbour, a lovely park at the top of town, which is where Festival Chronicle (still feeling a bit tired and soggy from Avebury Rocks the night before) spent a few delightful hours. Continue reading
Belting out their Number 51 sort-of-hit single One Way (“There’s only one way of life and that’s yer own, yer own, yer own …”), that night in Cardiff the band inspired a venue full of university students to smash the system.
So we did, and by the time the band’s poppy Beautiful Day had charted at the the dizzy heights of Number 13 in August 1997 we’d thrown out the Conservatives and elected Tony Blair and his New Labour party. Go us. Continue reading
Festival Chronicle 