World Land Trust (WLT) is an international conservation charity that protects the world’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats acre by acre. Through a network of partner organisations around the world, WLT funds the creation of reserves and provides permanent protection for habitats and wildlife. Partnerships are developed with established and highly respected local organisations who engage support and commitment among the local community.
Waveney Heritage CIO
We support learning and the acquisition of useful skills and encourage social participation by people of different ages and backgrounds by inviting them to talks and exhibitions. We welcome volunteers, encouraging them to make use of their talents to enhance both our joint experience and their own.
We are based at the Old School, Grove Road, Brockdish and are grateful to the Diocese of Norwich, the owners, who have allowed us to continue the tradition of learning and self-advancement envisaged by the founders of the school in 1845.
Waveney Heritage CIO is a registered charity
Our trustees and helpers are all volunteers
Looking Out, a new column from nature writer Melinda Appleby
I watch snow fall
so small it is no
more than dust
and when it touches
is barely felt
scattering
on blades of grass
it melts and disappears
The beginning of February marks the ‘turning of the light’, the point in the calendar when warmth begins to return to the earth. The land is still sleeping, seeds of new life buried under a barren landscape. We are at the half way point between winter solstice and spring equinox, a date celebrated in the Celtic calendar as Imbolc and in the Christian calendar as Candlemas. It is a day when we celebrate new life waiting to return.
I take advantage of a still frosty day and walk up to the wood. A mauve smoke of blackthorn curves along the ditch and the treelines are bones against the sky. I have been thinking about sound and our experience of it. In winter, wildlife sounds carry through the cold air. The woodland acts as an amplifier, seeming to bounce and echo noise within. Bird calls are crisp and bright, matching the weather. Sound recordist, Geoff Sample, in a talk to Waveney & Blyth Arts, told us that after the winter solstice the increasing light triggers bird song and that the great tit is often the first bird to sing.
The garden may be bleak, the grass crossed by frost blackened paths, the earth puddled down and lifeless, last year’s plants lying like brown shadows across the borders, but there are beacons of hope. By the front door yellow globes of aconites shine with snowdrops, Candlemas Bells.
small points of white light
shine beneath the hornbeam
like stars at night-time
In these dark days we might look to the skies for hope. Pin pricks of light shine in the night-time sky. The stars hold stories that go back to the earliest days of man. The Seven Sisters, the cluster of stars known as The Pleiades, feature in prehistoric cave paintings. Without the glare of human lights, which can be seen from space illuminating the globe, the night sky must have offered a deeply mystical and fascinating spectacle. Even now, if we can find a horizon away from artificial light we gaze in awe at the worlds spinning light years away from us.
How much we can see is calculated every year by the Countryside Charity, CPRE, whose star count maps record the stars seen within the constellation of Orion. Between 6 and 14 February 2021 look south into the night sky, find the Orion constellation with its four corners and ‘belt’ of three bright stars, then count the number of stars you can see within the rectangle formed by the four corner stars.
More info and sign up here
The stars offer our creative minds an opportunity for poetry, song, photography and artwork. And that feeling of awe when we gaze at the night sky can help with our happiness and well-being.
Susan Debnam
I am a Suffolk based artist inspired by low roofed black barns, peeling boats, mud and reed beds.
I paint primarily in acrylic and watercolour and take an an abstract approach to landscape and still life.
A career in organisational change taught me a lot about balancing chaos with order. Now enjoying how that plays out on the canvas.
Mill Street Etching Studio
A bespoke etching studio in a farm setting in Middleton for one to one tuition or sole use of the etching press.
Membership available for open access to printmaking facilities.
Mill Street Etching Studio
Rose Farm Barn, Mill Street, Middleton
Saxmundham
Suffolk
IP17 3NG
Margaret Parsons
I’m a potter & artist.
I work with porcelain & sculpture crank clay, hand build & using my love of painting, I create bugs ( insects) hares, owls, wildlife in nature, adding my own interpretation & with my love of the countryside, coastal & garden where I live, in Lowestoft, which gives me my inspiration.
If you wish to commission a piece of work please contact via my Facebook or Instagram.
I’m also a member of Anglian Potters & Lowestoft Arts Centre where I also exhibit my work. I hope to be able to open my studio to visitors when we can safely do so, corvid restrictions are lifted.
Alison Peet
I make stoneware and porcelain pottery to use, touch, hold and look at.
Raku, smoke firing and oxidised electric.
Simon Turner
Simon produces work using a wide range of materials sourced in Suffolk.
These include panels of local timber on which he paints , 3D work which often include numerous hand cut birds and watercolours inspired by the Suffolk coast, woods and reedbeds.
He has also ventured into the realms of jewellery and sculpture and continues to make furniture.
He is also a full time Design teacher.
The Cut Arts Centre
The Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth offers a range of arts, music, theatre, dance, workshops and art exhibitions.
A large dance studio with sprung floor offers an ideal space for a variety of regular classes.
The Cut
8 New Cut
Halesworth
Box office: 0300 3033 211
www.newcut.org
Fisher Theatre
The Fisher Theatre in Bungay was first opened on 28th February 1828 with a performance of ‘The Belle’s Stratagem’. The theatre was one of thirteen designed and built across East Anglia by David Fisher, serving the circuit of Fisher’s company, ‘The Norfolk and Suffolk Company of Comedians’
They are a venue for music, theatre, dance and classes. It has an art gallery and a cafe.
The Fisher Theatre, 10 Broad Street, Bungay, Suffolk, NR35 1E
Box Office: 01986 897130