passion

a warm sultry monday, waiting for the thunderstorm to break.  the beginning of the week that leads us into the jubilee weekend, derbyshire open arts and the belper open homes events.  in cultural terms, there is no recession.


as well as all those events this weekend, there's also a short play festival in belper this weekend.  


belper river gardens on sunday will be a hive of activity, including a royal visit at 11am.  queen victoria will be visiting the town.  it's 180 years since she was here.  i know there will activities and fun things to do as well as historical ephemera from the belper library to look at and consider.  the north mill will be represented there too.


i feel that belper is being able to show both itself and the surrounding population just what a wonderful set of people live and do things in belper.  i wish every success to the organisers and participants in the open homes event.  it's so fantastic that belper at the moment has such a broad interest in visual art and culture.


i also wish every success to those i know who are participating in the derbyshire open arts events across the county and derby.




i looked through some documents today in the belper library.  i saw some stuff from the 1930's when the library opened.  it reminded me just how far we've evolved and become democratised.  in the 30's the cars were bentleys and the like and owned by a very small percentage of the population.  now, car ownership is widespread and we're able to do activities we want to.  culture itself is democratised.  we can do and see what we want to, and i feel that makes it all the more interesting for all.

Strata at The Farmers Market

I spent last Saturday in the company of Julie Clare, Sculptor, at the Belper Farmers Market.  Her idea for the art trail involved making a fossil of today, taking the newspaper of that day and inviting visitors to the market to sign a sheet of paper.  We then wrapped the paper into a large ball.  Julie will take this away and work some magic on it.  She will transform this piece of participation into a work of art . We had a really enjoyable morning and came home with scotch eggs and mushrooms.

#Belperarttrail and Belper Well Dressings

by chance the belper well dressings happen at the same time as the belper art trail.


by chance i was at a meeting at which i learnt about the well dressings.


by chance there was a peer to peer meeting before the well dressing application deadline (may19th) at which we discussed the opportunity to take part in making a well dressing.


and so we have a plan...


we're going to apply to the well dressing committee to participate in the activity.  once we're accepted the opportunity to be involved in making the well dressing becomes available in the evenings in he first week of the belper art trail.


i've been given some tips about what makes a good design, and we're thinking that we can select one of the murmation submissions for our design.


i feel excited by this !


i've spoken with the chairman of the well dressing committee this morning and the unexpected detail i gained was that this activity is very much one based in those experienced helping those that are new to it.


we'll keep you posted on how our application gets on.

the murmation project: 2012 deadline

the murmation project has been on a rolling deadline....up until today.


today we've set the final deadline for submissions to this year's version as 6th june.




we're working on how to display all the submitted drawings in the 2012 #Belperarttrail.

#Belperarttrail who would you approach to recommend it?

so i've asked martin creed who he knows who might recommend the #Belperarttrail.


and it leads me to throw the idea out there a bit further.  if you could invite someone of cultural significance to put their recommendation upon the belper art trail, both for their benefit and that of the trail, who would it be?

as my old gran used to say

i've tweeted to martin creed asking if he can suggest anyone to recommend the #Belperarttrail.


i feel quite excited and can't wait to find out if he answers.


oh...


and my old gran used to say: 

if you don't ask you don't get 

#Belperarttrail where do we find our recommenders?

recently i have become aware of the #sbs thing.  for a small business it appears to be a very good thing to be recommended.


i wonder how we might get our own cultural version of it.


in my personal blog i have made some reflections about it.


i will take my own advice and send the tweet as quoted in the post and see where it gets me.