Behind The Scenery

Star of the show was Edinburgh based Bernard Ross, Director of =mc consulting, a leading training and consultancy organization working to transform the performance of value-driven organizations worldwide. He knows a thing or two about fundraising too.

So for this special edition of Behind the Scenery, Tom Speight asked delegates to help him pull together the main themes emerging at the conference, to see how they might go about answering that thorny question about fundraising.

The Butterfly Collector by Peter MacQueen and Nancy’s Orange by Grace Kirkby are both being directed by the other person, so to speak. The two Cumbrian writers and actors have come together to create two pieces of theatre which have real resonance for the county and for the wider world.

For this month’s Behind the Scenery, Tom Speight went along to meet them as final rehearsals were taking place – to see what it’s like when it’s just you and a bare stage against the world…..and to hear one of the best moth jokes around….

Sue Gill and John Fox founded Welfare State International in 1968. It was a loose association of freelance artists bought together by shared values and philosophy. A way of life. A way to approach art differently.

John and Sue have just published a new book called "Eighty-Something – a lifetime of conversation". And they invited Tom Speight to their home on the coast near Ulverston to listen in to that decades old conversation, as well as to reflect on the impact of Welfare State from their travels across the world.

Darren Henley is the boss of Arts Council England. A pretty influential sort of chap.

He’s been visiting Cumbria recently. And Tom Speight got the chance to sit down with him to find out what he thought about the arts landscape in the county today. And to chat about where and how his organisation is looking to influence and support.

Season two begins with a look at and listen to the brilliant young Cumbrian singer songwriter and multi instrumentalist, Maebh Brayne.

Now in London but still very much with a base near Cockermouth, Maebh is slowly developing a name and a brand.

Tom Salmon has been to meet her at her family home.

Artists Chris and Jennie Dennett from Ulverston, aka Artfly, were commissioned by Barrow’s Signal Film and Media to dream up the future. What might life actually be like in a few decades time ?

Relax into 2050 is their answer. A fun, colourful, interactive exhibition in Signal’s great space on Abbey Road. Involving airships, whale poo, a giant canvas dome, a beautiful soundscape and loads and loads of imagination.

It's open until the end of January - Tom Speight went along on the opening night.

Helping Hands - as it’s called - was set up 18 months ago with Arts Council England funding. It’s being run by the Cumbrian Museums Consortium.

We’ll visit the Victoria Hall in Grange to find out how the Cumbria Opera Group has benefitted from joining up with young people who had never thought of volunteering before.

But first, Tom Speight dropped into a very special museum in Ambleside, The Armitt, to find out how it too was making use of the project.

Tom Speight explores how powering performance in Cumbria can be done sustainably with Tom Salmon from Oh My Days.

We discover why it’s not too late to publish your first collection of poetry well into your 90s with Michael Baron.

And we hear a beautiful new song composed this year incorporating Cumbrian dialect as well as the sounds of the county, by singer celloist Sarah Smout.

West House Pottery is a not-for-profit social enterprise. It supports local artists and ceramicists whilst helping young people and adults with learning disabilities gain creative skills and knowledge. The quality of the work is beautiful.

Everything they produce can be bought – as Tom Speight found out for Behind the Scenery.

⁠Every Brilliant Thing at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick⁠ is a one man play about mental health and suicide bereavement – and so much more. The production coincides with ⁠World Suicide Prevention Day⁠. It’s hoped that it will encourage further conversations about suicide awareness and prevention across Cumbria, where the suicide rate is 50% higher than the national average.

⁠Tom Speight⁠ caught up with the play’s director, the play's sole performer and spoke to someone from ⁠Every Life Matters⁠, one of the Cumbrian charities supporting the production.

But he began his journey in the nerve centre of the theatre…

Back in April, we headed to Barrow Town Hall to catch up with rapper JD and producer Swerve, from Horizon Studios. They were fresh off the stage after presenting a musical showcase as part of Barrow's Festival of Colours.

We met them in the Town Hall's drawing room, where Swerve was taking in his surroundings.....

A fascinating new exhibition has recently opened at Abbot Hall in Kendal to mark the gallery’s recent refurbishment and reopening.

Run by Lakeland Arts, Abbot Hall has been shut since early 2020.  Since then over half a million pounds worth of work has gone on to modernise the building as well as offering time to its curators to pause and rethink its direction of travel and purpose.

The result is a much brighter, fresher gallery space as well as enhanced facilities and infrastructure. And an exhibition by internationally renowned British artist Julie Brook called What Is It That Will Last ?

Tom Speight has been to meet the people behind the refurb for this month’s Behind the Scenery, as well as recording a chat with Julie Brook at Holker Hall, the location of her huge brand new outdoor sculpture connected to the exhibition called Out of the Ground, A Thread of Air…

We’re just coming to the end of another Spring season of what’s called Rural Touring across Cumbria.

That’s the name given to getting professional performance art – be it music, theatre, magic, even dance – into rural areas, usually village halls but also schools, pubs and even libraries. There are about 25 organisations that do it across the UK. Here in Cumbria, it’s run by Cockermouth based Arts Out West for west Cumbria, and Penrith based Highlights Rural Touring for most of the rest of the county. About 50 venues altogether are on the schemes.

Behind the Scenery this month gets under the bonnet of how it all works. Tom Speight spent an evening at a typical rural touring show in Shap Memorial Hall near Penrith to watch a piece of theatre called Ladies That Dig. As the final touches were being put to the set design and the last chairs were being set out, he first got talking to the volunteer promoter, the person who pulls it all together….

Behind the Scenery this month gets a look in at an astonishing Cumbrian arts project that’s been taking shape near Lowther Castle for the past 6 months or so. Ten Thousand Daffodils is the brainchild of Helen Ratcliffe. She’s brought together communities, creative practitioners and businesses to raise funds for charity while producing a significant piece of art – thousands upon thousands of bright yellow ceramic daffodils, soon to go on display in the castle grounds.

Tom Speight has been along to see how it’s all come together….

This month, Behind the Scenery goes Around the World in 80 Days.

Jules Verne’s epic novel is getting Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake’s Spring treatment as their first big show of the year. With the single minded Detective Fix of Scotland Yard in hot pursuit, will Phileas Fogg and company manage to avoid arrest and make it home before their time is up ?

Involving music, puppetry and circus, it promises to be fun for all the family and be a little bit different in the mix.

But how you get a production like this off the ground? For Episode 10 of Behind the Scenery, Tom Speight was invited to join rehearsals and met director Hal Chambers and Cumbrian born designer Louie Whitemore as plans began to get put into practice.

Tom Speight gets the chance to chat with poet John Hegley who was in the county recently to promote his new collection inspired by and touching on the life, love letters and laughter of John Keats. It’s called A Scarcity of Biscuit, published by Carlisle’s very own Caldew Press.

And the other Tom, Tom Salmon, introduces us to singer songwriter and musician Annemarie Quinn who hails from Keswick but who now lives in Malawi and whose music transcends the continents….

Two tunes, lots of words, and lots of laughter - spring is definitely in the air....

Tom Speight visits Number 14, St Georges Terrace, Millom, the birthplace and lifelong home of Cumbrian poet Norman Nicholson, who was born in January 1914. It’s a small terraced house built in 1880.

There he meets Charlie Lambert, Chair of the Norman Nicholson Society, at the open day of the house which the society are in the middle of trying to buy, to turn it into an active and lively memorial building.

If you want to help with the Society to raise money towards buying Norman Nicholson's old house to help turn it into a community space and more, the GoFundMe Appeal which has a goal of raising £20,000, has now reached almost £15,000. All support can be offered here: https://gofund.me/7db319f2

Listen to people who knew Norman and hear Norman's voice here.

Sound creator and creative Dan Fox is Director of Ulverston based Sound Intervention. He says there are five ways of making sound - hit, pluck, blow, bow and sing. He was commissioned to create an 18 minute soundscape for the Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership . Dan talks about where his interest in sound came from, and how he went about recording sound for the commission.

For the occasional series of the sound of Cumbrian creatives at work, Julie Jackson got in touch from Kirkby in Furness. She describes herself as an embroiderer who also spins and weaves. She's also a teacher. She shared the sound of her working with her spinning wheel. Listen and enjoy !

And Tom Salmon talks to Holly Brooke, a young Cumbrian singer songwriter and producer who started pursuing a career in music earlier in 2022. Holly plays her debut single for us and talks about how she sees opportunities for basing a career in Cumbria.

Tom Speight bases himself at The Swan Inn in Cockermouth this month, one of his favourite thinking places. He’s joined by the Chair of Cumbria Arts and Culture Network, Kate Parry to reflect on the Cumbria Arts and Culture Network’s year, a year of substantial growth and consolidation, as well as to look to the future.

Behind the Scenery, the podcast from Cumbria Arts and Culture Network, find out more at www.cacn.co.uk

But it’s not just any old farm – it’s photographer Amy Bateman’s 900 acre farm Croft Foot at Docker just outside Kendal, a mixed farm which she runs with her husband Colin. It forms the basis for a book she has written, alongside publisher Dave Felton, called Forty Farms, profiling agriculture and farming across Cumbria in 2022. Tom Speight has been to interview her to find out how her project came about.

In this edition he also talks to Harriet and Rob Fraser, two environmental artists who have been working at Bolton Moss Fell, a huge former industrial peat bog near Longtown which is in the process of being restored. They’ve brought an artistic eye to how the story of the bog can be told, ahead of it opening up to the public next year.

And Tom also visits ceramicist Paul Scott as his studio in Blencogo outside Wigton. Paul’s exhibition Cumbrian Blue(s) has recently opened at Blackwell, full of pieces of reworked industrially printed ceramics showing things are not always what they seem to be.

Behind the Scenery, the podcast from Cumbria Arts and Culture Network, find out more at www.cacn.co.uk

Liz Stevenson has been Artistic Director at Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake for 3 years. Just months after she arrived the covid pandemic led to the theatre having to completely shut – leading to huge challenges for its staff and its leaders. It’s now back at full throttle, but as with all venues, is having to work hard to bring back audiences and build confidence.

Tom Speight went to meet her as final rehearsals for The Beauty Queen of Leenane – which Liz is directing – got underway. But they began outside the theatre on a crisp autumn morning….

Behind the Scenery, the podcast from Cumbria Arts & Culture Network, find out more at: www.cacn.co.uk

Tom Speight bases himself at The Beacon Museum overseeing Whitehaven harbour, where seagulls join him in chatting to Aldo Rinaldi, the chief curator of Deep Time, the ambitious multi million pound public art project backed by Copeland borough council. He also chats to Eric Barker from the council, to find out where the project came from and how it fits in to wider attempts to revitalise the Copeland coast.

Then we hear from the Kendal born writer and performer of Theatre by the Lake’s Can I Touch Your Hair, Lekhani Chirwa. It’s a piece all about what cultural appropriation means – and growing up in Cumbria as a mixed race young woman.

To St Bees next, to hear from writer Ken Powell whose new novel, the Pukur, is based in Bangladesh, a country close to his heart. What’s the connection between there and St Bees ? 

And finally to the beautiful Langdale valley, where the Merz Barn project continues to develop and evolve particularly during this, the 75th anniversary year of German artist Kurt Schwitters work there. A huge underground bunker has been built to connect with the war in Ukraine – Tom goes inside it with Ian Hunter.

Behind the Scenery, the podcast from Cumbria Arts & Culture Network, find out more at: cacn.co.uk

Two podcasts for the price of one in August ! Based at the recently renovated art deco Old Cumberland Pencil Factory in Keswick, Tom Speight finds out how August seems to be a particularly busy time for exhibitions all across Cumbria. First it's a visit to the always busy EVAN, or the Eden Valley Artistic Network, whose appropriately named FACTORY festival of creative arts has recently been exhibiting there. He meets EVAN's organisers and some of the artists involved. Then to Carlisle and the Historic Quarter Arts Festival, now in its second year. Run by Intro PR, it's managed to occupy 19 locations around the historic quarter near the cathedral, and has launched a competition for visual artists. Then to Lanercost in NE Cumbria and the 44th Craftsmen at the Priory exhibition, being held in the beautiful Dacre Hall. And finally a trip to Ulverston and The Coro for its fantastic Incredible Journeys exhibition, squid tentacles and everything. And a chance to hear some beautiful music inspired by swift migration. 

Based this month at Wordsworth Grasmere, Tom Speight discovers how the museum and attractions there have been recently developed to really bring William and Dorothy’s story alive – and discovers the joys of finding poetry in coffee cups.

Curators Jeff Cowton and Melissa Mitchell take Tom on a tour of Dove Cottage, the newly developed museum and café, and finish up with a section of Wordsworth’s “To A Butterfly” poem in the garden.

There’s also a chance to get behind the scenes at Eskfest, one of Cumbria’s micro-festivals, and Tom hears what gets Ulverston creative Chris Dennett’s artistic juices flowing.

There’s also a visit to High on Hope, the new exhibition at Cross Lane Projects in Kendal – and news of some targeted training coming up for Cumbria’s freelance community.

Behind the Scenery, the podcast from Cumbria Arts & Culture Network, find out more at: cacn.co.uk

Based this month at Rosehill Theatre in Whitehaven, hear how Soundwave in Workington is making young musical dreams come true, how the writer of The Climbers at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, Carmen Nasr, was inspired by a trip by her brother to Kilimanjaro, listen to an award winning poem from the Kendal Poetry Festival - and find out why David Bowie appeared on stage in west Cumbria as a mime artist....

Behind the Scenery, the podcast from Cumbria Arts & Culture Network, find out more at: cacn.co.uk