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You are here: Home / Archives for Blog

Blog

Looking Out in May

7th May 2021 By Jo Leverett

May Day brings rain – at last. After an April frostier and drier than many, spring seems to be on hold. The swallows have arrived and the whitethroats sing their scratchy song from the still leafless hedges.  But we are waiting for house martins and finally the swifts. Hoping for some sign of the seasons changing I visit Redgrave Fen, the source of the Waveney. A cuckoo has arrived and suddenly summer seems possible. The north-easterly has dropped a little, allowing birds to battle through from Africa. Across the fen grasshopper warblers churr their long cricket like song and Cetti’s warblers startle from bramble bushes. When the wind direction changes to south, our summer migrants will arrive.

So instead of looking for birds, on this morning’s walk, I kept a tally of the flowers lining the field edges and lanes: primrose, stitchwort, red dead nettle, white dead nettle, ground ivy, red campion, cow parsley, celandine, violet, dandelion, chickweed, coltsfoot, speedwell, forget-me-not, buttercup, herb Robert, cleavers. The field edges and ditches are full of cowslips. Their Latin name, Primula veris, means ‘first rose of the spring’ and they were traditionally used to make May Day garlands and wine. Our family call them paigles. Their sweet apricot scent is welcome.

Not bad for an ‘ordinary’ piece of countryside. Most of the plants are several metres from the field edge, separated by a track or a hedge. Some years ago I was judging a farm conservation competition in Somerset. On one farm the family,  keen to improve wildlife, had made particular efforts to provide habitat for farmland birds. Walking along the hedge and track beside one of their arable fields, I asked why a short stretch was full of wild flowers. We were mystified by this sudden display of colour and diversity. We realised that on the other side of the grass track, a bank of earth had prevented any drifting from fertiliser and herbicide applications. Occasionally, out of curiosity, I measure the distance the spinner has sent out fertiliser pellets and it can be over three metres. That just encourages rapid growth of grasses and the high nutrient levels suppress the variety of wild flowers we might hope to see.

Somehow wild flowers have slipped from our countryside. They once covered our road verges, track sides, hay meadows and river banks. They have disappeared, lost to development and the plough, grassland and greens strimmed to within an inch by those who are tidy minded. There remain a few reserves managed for flowers and insects which depend on them. Wild flowers with names once part of our vocabulary, part of every medicine chest and larder.

You can search through a long list of plants on the Suffolk Wildlife Trust website:

The names might encourage some lines of poetry and the photos, or out in the field, subjects for artwork.

Perhaps May is mostly associated with the hawthorn frothing into flower.

Associated with maypoles and the green
man symbol it is a tree of great symbolism. The blossom should not be brought into the home which would lead to illness and death. Perhaps that comes from the rather pungent smell caused by the chemical trimethylamine found in the blossom, a chemical also found in the decaying bodies of animals!

It is time to get reacquainted with the smaller things in life and to enjoy the burst of green energy that May should bring. There is much to enjoy with our summer migrants arriving, plants growing as you watch them, frog spawn hatching and a feeling that perhaps summer is nearly here.  And remember to leave a few unmown corners to yield treasures that have been hiding, just waiting for the right moment.

Melinda Appleby

 

Filed Under: Blog, Main Feature

We’ll Meet again, part 3

7th May 2021 By Jo Leverett

DOGGERLAND

We don’t claim to have invented Doggerland, but certainly W&BA was an early explorer of its often mythic significance – and the exploration continues.

At the beginning of 2015 Jan Dungey (who
invented Waveney & Blyth Arts) suggested we take a multi-disciplinary look at the landmass that in Mesolithic times connected us with mainland Europe.  Nicky Stainton, Melinda Appleby and others took up the challenge and that April a number of what we like to call creatives gathered at Covehithe. Under the tutelage of a geomorphologist with specialist knowledge of Doggerland, various themes were discussed.
The idea was to assemble very broadly-based responses to the changes that resulted from the floods that depopulated what was a rich hunting, fowling and fishing ground. A film by Debra Hyatt gives an insight into those creative processes, watch here.

From that emerged a series of public workshops in the summer. The creatives had already been working on ideas inspired by Doggerland. They were then able to use the workshops to get the attendees producing performances, artworks etc. Poetry, song, photography, film, sculpture and painting were among the disciplines involved.

Then in November all this preparation and work came together for Discover Doggerland – a day at The Cut in Halesworth.  Two academic presentations kicked it off. Professor Vincent Gaffney, a landscape archaeologist from Bradford University, brought news of his research into Doggerland. Using seismics, he and his colleagues have mapped huge areas of the early Mesolithic landscape off our coast. The work continues, including digging out sedimentary DNA. He was able to enlighten the big, enthralled audience about the past, present and future of what has become a rich research site. Googling him now demonstrates this.

Nearer to home, Tim Holt-Wilson, a local geo-conservation activist, focused on the environmental story of Doggerland and the time dimension of coastal change. This extract from his blog (Mythic geography) gives a flavour of what he had to say:

No Mesolithic folk tales have survived about the drowning of Doggerland. Many people are likely to have been killed by the tsunami from the Storegga slide which swept over the land about 8,100 years ago. Over the generations, people would have watched their ancestral hunting grounds and sacred places being invaded by water; they would have become separated by widening tidal channels. Evidence for their camp sites, flint and bone tools now lies under the sea. Birds migrating to Britain would have found the task more challenging with each passing year. Driven by an enduring geographical instinct, we see them today clinging to the desks and masts of seagoing ships and offshore rigs, rather than to the twigs and branches of old Doggerland. 

These two introductory speakers were then joined in a panel by Bill Jenman of Touching the Tide, a conservation project which helped fund our Doggerland project.

The rest of the day was devoted to enjoying the fruits of the many weeks of creative work in the various disciplines. Each practitioner’s work was inspired in some way
by Doggerland.

Film-maker Debra Hyatt showed both the film referenced above here and one based on a story by Melinda Appleby, Dreaming Doggerland.

Choir leader and singer Sian Croose grew up on the Norfolk coast, so was readily inspired by the Doggerland coast. As a director of The Voice Project she commissions new work from contemporary composers and creates large-scale site specific works for massed voices

Jeremy Webb specialises in landscape and coastal photography, so his shots of the fringes of Doggerland were very telling. He recently completed a project to photograph the Norfolk coastline – a documentary series which culminated in an exhibition and book, Spindrift. He is also interested in techniques such as pinhole photography and camera obscura

Maggie Campbell’s is a maker, sculptor and workshop leader who has worked with outfits like Footsbarn Theatre as well as in school and community settings.  Her works frequently reference fossils and spiral shell-like shapes.

Paul Osborn’s ceramics reflect his interest in history and myth; he experiments with different techniques to produce unpredictable work.

Visual artist Jayne Ivimey gave a personal account of how she arrived at Doggerland and showed paintings which used materials collected locally to explore coastal erosion and landscape character.

Samia Malik’s songs are about language and belonging, and she is interested in themes of migration, change, recent and ancient history.

Writer Steven Watts focuses on place and time, language and memory:

Like flying without touch

Water moves underfoot

Footprints that are not mine

Beyond Doggerland

Among the audience for this event was celebrated local author, Julia Blackburn.  Inspired by the story, she started her own, unique investigation of Doggerland.  This led to in the publication in 2019 of Time Song: Searching for Doggerland. And she came back to the Cut to talk about the book. Like her books on subjects as diverse as Billie Holiday, Napoleon and the Norfolk fisherman turned artist Thomas Craske (Threads, 2015), Time Song is an inspiring mix of the factual and the personal. Julia Blackburn includes fragments from her own life with a series of 18 ‘songs’ and stories about the places and the people she meets in her quest to get closer to an understanding of Doggerland.

With her for this W&BA event was the renowned anthropologist, film maker and writer Hugh Brody.  They had collaborated on her book and now discussed Doggerland. He also presented a film about the Canadian Inuits, whose lives in the early 20th century relate to all hunter gatherers, from the Neanderthals to the Mesolithic people who inhabited Doggerland a mere 7,000 years ago.

Even more Doggerland

Later that same year a terrific, if terrifying novel appeared called simply Doggerland. It tells of a man and a boy more or less marooned on disintegrating North Sea oil platforms. Author Ben Smith references Vincent Gaffney at the end of his book, and soon after publication popped up on Radio 4’s Start the Week, in discussion with… Julia Blackburn. So, our circle was very roundly completed.

 

 

Filed Under: Blog

Looking Out

7th April 2021 By Jo Leverett

Looking Out April 2021 by Melinda Appleby

The Fattening of the Buds

Gradually as spring nears the trees change. I call it the ‘fattening of the buds’ when flowers
and leaves begin to swell and break from the winter skeletons and there is less sky between
the branches. With the sudden warm weather at the end of March it seemed as though the
pulse of the land was quickening. Shirt-buttons and goose-grass sent up their spirals of leaves
through the drying mud. Now cow parsley inches up visibly in the lane. Everywhere life is
returning and with it hope.
Chiffchaffs arrived on 19 th March, tentatively tuning up in the buffeted trees. Blackcaps
followed with a short song on 29 March but now all is busy and the song is building from
wood, garden and hedge. April is a month of firsts. Our summer migrants gradually arrive –
swallows, house martin, willow warbler, whitethroat and cuckoo. The first Brimstones have
brought a splash of yellow – like daffodils in flight. Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell are
warming up and even the bats are busy in the dusk, click-clicking along the hedge and over
the pond.

The long cold winter kept toads in hibernation so our toad patrol is still out as. Just before
March ended I sat by the village pond watching stars rise and mallard paddling in pink rippled water. It was the night of the Wolf Moon. By 8pm toads were emerging purposefully
from their day-time rest. I have read that toads co-ordinate their emergence during the waxing and full moon so they arrive at their courtship sites together. Now warm days echo with their squeaky song and the deeper call of frogs. But they are in decline. Our toad patrol regularly collected 600 in a night but this year we have only found around 140 since collecting began.

April brings with it such a bounty of song. The dunnock is the first up warbling its little trill
from the top of the hedge, then blackbirds join in and a faraway thrush. Even the chaffinch
cascades its song down from the cherry whose blossom is beginning to break.

The National Trust is hoping to catch people’s imagination with an emphasis on blossom this
spring. Taking inspiration from the Japanese celebrations (Hanami), the Trust has launched a
website for people to record their first sight of blossom. And blossom circles are being
planted to create green spaces in towns and provide uplifting sights and smells. The Trust
quotes Professor Richardson from Derby University who said that ‘spending a few moments
looking at and enjoying blossom can have a surprising impact on feelings of wellbeing.’

Blossom provides a lifeline for bees and butterflies as they emerge and we have had queen
bumblebees of several different species already out foraging – early bumblebee, buff-tailed
bumble bee and red tailed bumblebee like little drones humming into sight over early flowers:

Look, look, a bee, big as my thumb
see her work the lavender flowers,
a buzz so deep it’s your teddy bear’s
growl. She’s striped black and yellow
with her buff bottom. And here small
black bears, bees with red bottoms…
From Looking at Bees by Melinda Appleby

April is a month to look forward, to see detail as it changes daily, to take hope and creativity
from the arrival of colour and song in our environment. Perhaps one of the most loved and
joyful April poems sums it up: – Home Thoughts from Abroad by Robert Browning

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!

Filed Under: Blog

We’ll Meet Again Part 2

6th April 2021 By Jo Leverett

Famous Five Birds – Eights years on

‘One of the most imaginative and innovative projects ever launched in East Anglia’

so said the East Anglian Daily Times describing  Waveney & Blyth Arts 2013 project – The Famous Five Birds.

Featuring five iconic birds from the region – barn owl, bittern, bearded tit, marsh harrier and nightingale – the project took birds into local schools and celebrated our association with them through poetry and song.

With our focus on a creative response to the environment, this project recognised the role of birds as an indicator of environmental health. To help young people become more aware we joined forces with the RSPB, Suffolk Wildlife Trust and Norfolk & Suffolk Biodiversity Partnerships, and took a team made up of bird experts Steve & Kathy Piotrowski, RSPB poet Matt Howard, and Nutmeg Puppet Company’s Meg Amsden into local schools. These sessions were the starting point for a fabulous children’s entertainment event.

Hosted by the eccentric Bernard the Birder (played by Greg Hanson) these feature:

  • Nutmeg Puppet Company’s beautiful shadow puppet show, with music by Nathan Williamson
  • fabulous film and theatrical bird impressions
  • chances to do a quirky quiz, make musical bird calls, and sing a special song about the fab five.

We all know that barn owls screech and nightingales sing – but what sound does a bittern make? What is so special about marsh harriers? And do bearded tits really have beards?

In addition to work with schools the project offered a walk along the river Blyth with Natural England staff,  a chance to spot one or more of the featured five and listen to poems dedicated to each bird by poet Matt Howard.

And our regular Arts & Eats lunch introduced ceramicist and printmaker Georgina Warne talking on: Art, Life and Birds. The lunch was held at the Raveningham Centre which hosted an exhibition of two and three-dimensional work featuring British birds. The exhibition, curated by Sarah Cannell, celebrates the beauty, diversity and appeal of our feathered friends.

In support of the project I created a ‘fact file’ on each species and wrote some short descriptive passages about discovering the birds in the two river valleys.

Here is an extract of that work:

“I am in the Waveney valley, a thin thread of a river that winds from its source at Redgrave Fen down through marsh, meadow and woodland via Carlton Marshes and Breydon Water and out to the North Sea. In winter, the trees are thin, withdrawn, shaking out the moss-lined cups and twiggy platforms of last summer’s nests. Spent seed heads of valerian and meadowsweet hang over the river wall; only the reeds remain standing.

Now, looking out across this January fen, I see a marsh harrier, quartering the embankment, turning and skimming low. A female, her cream head marking her out, alert, hunting. I watch her lift higher and return along the river. I remember harriers from my childhood. They returned year after year to the coastal marsh, using some salt weary trees as lookouts. Their population has since increased and they breed in river valleys and on the coast in eastern England. She has found her prey and drops out of sight. The wind ruffles through the reeds again, plays with a scatter of leaves, like a ghost passing through. And like ghosts, my memories of those childhood marshes, recall other birds.

Where now is the bittern – the reedbed dweller, that barred and streaked secretive bird that is more often heard than seen.  Its call, described as booming, penetrates through the reed stalks like a novice learning to play a difficult bassoon. I thought it more like the noise we made blowing across the top of milk bottles. They are difficult to spot as they sneak in and out of marsh pools hunting fish and eels, their plumage a tapestry of broken, reed stems and dark shadows. Sadly bitterns have disappeared from so many places where they used to breed. They are ghosts from my childhood.”

This early project set the tone for Waveney & Blyth Arts’ innovative approach to arts and the environment and showed how we could draw in partners, experts and volunteers to create something magical, informative and appealing. Other projects were to follow in the years after.

Melinda Appleby

A summary of the project and highlights from the performances can be seen here:

and the Nutmeg Puppet Theatre film is here:

Famous Five Birds

Sample of Famous Five Facts

Marsh Harrier – Circus aeruginosus

Sometimes called bald buzzard, bog glebe, dunpickle, harpy.

Population and distribution

A reedbed specialist, the marsh harrier’s population has fluctuated particularly in response to persecution by game keepers. A few hung on in Norfolk but their recovery as a breeding bird was set back again by the 1970s use of organo-chlorine pesticides.  The creation of reedbeds in Suffolk, after wartime flooding, helped provide a suitable habitat to aid their recovery.

Habits/food

Harriers fly low across the ground, with steady flappy wing beats between glides; when they stop beating their wings they hold them in a characteristic V shape. They can be seen pursuit flying across marshes in April when they are selecting nest sites. They may perch on a prominent tall dead branch.

Occasionally their spectacular aerial food passes can be seen. The female rises from the nest before the male is above it; she turns over, upside down and catches food as he drops it.

Bittern Botaurus stellaris

Local names:  gladden, boomer, bull o’ the bog, butter bump, buttle, (Norfolk) night raven, bog drum.

News snippet

In the 1963 severe winter, bitterns were starving and weak birds were picked up and brought to Minsmere to recover.  One of the birds was found, bemused with hunger and fatigue, as it stood by a queue of people at a bus stop in a London suburb.

Population and distribution

Rare and declining except where protected in nature reserves, as many as 85% of those breeding may be on nature reserves. By about 1886 the bittern was extinct as a breeding bird but recolonisation took place in Norfolk in the early 1900s.

Bearded Reedling

After the severe winter of 1947, there were thought to be only a few pairs surviving. Their recovery began in the 1960s believed to be triggered by populations moving across from the Netherlands.

Some 5-600 pairs breed in the UK. They are particularly associated with the Norfolk Broads where they are known by the local name, reed-pheasant. They can also be seen along the lower reaches of the Waveney Valley where there are good stand of reeds such a Carlton Marshes, a Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve.

 

Filed Under: Blog

Looking Out, March 2021

8th March 2021 By Genevieve Rudd

Three Hares Running

Morning walks cheer us

Hares run unhindered in fields

We are one with nature now

 

Pink sun on silver frost. I see the hares. Out of the oilseed rape, across the ditch, onto the plough. Three hares running, running not crouching in the tramlines or jinking erratically for cover. It lifts the spirits this early morning race. Tugged by sap rising, March hares put life into empty fields. Today they own the landscape. They remind me of the symbol of three hares, the mystical motifs found in Devon churches. Three hares each with two ears but only three ears between them.**

This year I saw them in February and some mornings I would catch them in a dance of eight or nine running and circling. They have woven their magic after a full moon night. Give them space to run and a place to shelter. Three hares running.

It is March at last and after a long winter of flood, snow, frost and lockdown we search for signs of spring. There is warmth in the sun when it appears and the longer days mean that birds are on the move. Winter has stripped the countryside bare. The trees are shrivelled by cold winds and frost, branches snapped, last leaves tossed to the fields. Gales felled hedgerow trees tumbled in a sprawl of ivy. Dried tufts of grasses are flattened by the wind, shrink wrapped against field edges.

This is the ‘Hungry Gap’ – the end of winter when last year’s food reserves are at their lowest but there is still little growth to provide new seeds and insects have yet to emerge.  The Hungry Gap was named by gardeners for this time of year, when all that was left on the allotment were a few cabbages, potatoes and carrots. The winter diet was uninspiring and yet the new crops were only just being set and a long way from providing food.

The yellowhammers have been here most mornings, their cheery song bursting from the hawthorn bushes, a splash of citron caught in first light. There are usually eight foraging on aniseed coated seed that spills from the bird feeders. No reed buntings or tree sparrows now – just two species that have been rubbed out of our landscape.

But we look for signs of hope and March brings one of the first of the spring migrations. On warm moist nights the toads are moving. I organise the toad rota in the village and each night someone goes out to rescue toads who are setting off across the road for their amorous tryst in the village pond.

Toads use the lunar cycle to co-ordinate their gatherings, ensuring that enough males and females come together at the same time. They arrive at the breeding sites, mate and spawn around the full Moon. This maximises their breeding success and reduces the odds of being eaten. But they also need night-time temperatures to be above 5 or 6 degrees.

There is a magic about toad collecting. We drag ourselves away from the fire, take buckets and torches and walk up to the green. A Little Owl calls its mournful whoooo. Pigeons clatter, disturbed from their roost. Dusk falls. The air is quiet. Then a squeaking call from the ditch. Toads emerge, tentative, a face peering from grass verge, venturing onto the road, heading for water.  For an hour we follow a route round the pond and down the side roads from where toads are emerging in ones and twos. Some are already paired up. ‘The bucket dating agency’ one of my patrollers says.

We count males and females, frogs, newts. Some nights we collect hundreds and remove those we didn’t manage to save from passing cars. Gently they are released into the rippled depths of the pond. The torch spotlights them. Some make off, strong kicking back legs, needing to make up for lost time. Some hang there, floating, back legs splayed, remembering the feel of water after a winter in earth and wood.

There is much to enjoy about the coming of spring, the feeling of release as the cold and the dark lose their grip on the countryside. Armed with camera, notebook and pen I try to capture the sights and sounds, smells and tastes of March.

**The story of the search for the three hares motif is told in a book published in 2016 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2082809-the-three-hares-motif-is-an-ancient-mystery-for-our-times/

Figure 1 European Hare: Piet Munsterman

Filed Under: Blog

SPRINGING BACK

8th March 2021 By Genevieve Rudd

New readers start here…

The story so far  Our ‘new generation team’ – chair Genevieve Rudd, secretary Jo Butcher, marketing Hatty Leith – are introduced to acclaim at the 2019 agm. They are a hugely successful injection of youth, but sadly have to resign in the face of the personal economic pressures that covid brought. And W&BA’s finances are hit hard by the cancellation of most of its 2020 events – critically, the sculpture trail. The 2020 agm brings back two of the old guard – Nicky Stainton as treasurer, Brian Guthrie as secretary – and a relatively new face as chair, Halesworth representative Ann Follows.

Now read on  The management committee, and its Recovery sub-committee, have worked hard, over many Zoom meetings, to plan for 2021. And there is good news.

Thanks to our reserves, and some judicious fund-raising, we are planning three main events over the spring and summer. All are helped by the government’s new roadmap for easing lockdown (as well as subject to disruption if things go badly after all).

The sculpture trail ­– Sculpture in the Valley, at Potton Hall, near Westleton – is on.  After some difficult date juggling, we’ve settled on Friday 28 May to Sunday 27 June. Most of the sculptors lined uo for last year are still there, with some others.  The yurt café will be open and we’re hoping to feature a short film and some music. ‘Looking forward to it’ is a bit of an understatement.

Spell Songs in the Green is an exciting project invented by Janet Koralambe, who some of you will know as an inspiring choir leader round here. She has recruited a choir (rehearsing on Zoom is a challenge of course) to sing a suite of songs based on the Lost Words book by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. The Millennium Green in Halesworth was to be the venue for performances involving the 50-strong choir, local schoolchildren, adult dancers and various community groups. Covid restrictions scuppered that, so instead we are commissioning a film of the whole thing. That is in turn an exciting project, and well supported financially by the town and others.

The Two Rivers Book Festival will be early in September and will incorporate some of the events we had to abandon last year, as well as new stuff. Dates and details to come. We had one date, 2 July, when we were planning an event at the Southwold Arts Festival. But, stop press: sadly, the organisers have taken the agonising decision to cancel the festival for this year because of the uncertainty about covid. They will regroup and so will we.

As there have been for the last 11 years, there will be Walks, starting in July and so far including Great Yarmouth, Westleton, Lowestoft, Earsham, Bungay, Halesworth and the climate-threatened coastline.

And that’s not all  We have just begun planning an ambitious project linking the arts and the climate emergency. We will keep you informed of course, but meanwhile those of you who remember our successful Arts in an Age of Austerity conference in 2018 will have a clue.

Springing forward

As part of our new strategy we have hired Jo Leverett to work part time on marketing and project coordination. Jo is very experienced in this field, and has done similar work for among others the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and The Cut.

Just in the last month we have also recruited three new area representatives as part of the management committee –  Lisa Henshall in Harleston, Clare Johnson in Lowestoft and Chris Reeve in Bungay  – with more to come we hope.

Brian Guthrie

March 2021

 

Filed Under: Blog

Beach of Dreams

8th March 2021 By Genevieve Rudd

Beach of Dreams is an epic journey to discover the hidden gems of the East Coast of England, inviting collaboration from communities and artists along the way in Suffolk, Essex, Southend, and Thurrock.

Kinetika’s Artistic Director, Ali Pretty, and Guardian journalist Kevin Rushby are walking the entire route, joined by artists, writers, scientists, and local residents.  Together, guided by strong environmental themes and the challenges of our current time, they will consider the question “How can we creatively reimagine our future?”

Get involved, share a location, and share your dream! Everyone is invited to choose a mile to walk, submit an image of the landscape, a drawing and a few words about your connection to it and your dream for its future. Visit www.kinetika.co.uk and visit the Beach of Dreams page for more details.

Filed Under: Blog, Member Activities

We’ll Meet Again Part 1

4th March 2021 By Genevieve Rudd

Recollections of some of Waveney & Blyth Arts’ projects in the last ten years

Yes there will be a time when we can run events, open galleries and studios, join walks and workshops. Until then – let’s remind ourselves of some of the amazing activities that W&BA has created over the last ten years.

What better way to start than Finding Paradise. Devised by Simon Raven this trail of artworks, each portraying a letter from the word Paradise, was laid out along the two river valleys in 2015. It celebrated the landscape of the Waveney and Blyth valleys and the creative work of some of our members.

Let’s reprieve the Paradise Pilgrim who set out that summer to find the letters hosted by arts venues. Here are some extracts from the slightly tongue-in-cheek diary:

One August day I set off in pursuit of capital A. This required Paradise Pilgrim to leave the gentle headwaters of the Waveney and, like an otter in search of new territory, head cross country through villages such as Metfield and Linstead. In less than an hour I arrived in Halesworth to start my search. The Cut, Halesworth’s arts centre and theatre, is welcoming all sorts of boffins on the day I arrive. Part of its science café season, the foyer is full of displays about antibiotics, soil, compost and the value of eating broccoli. Having tried broccoli soup, explored renewable energy options and tasted tea and carrot cake, I finally tracked down capital A and was told that I was not the first person to come looking. You could say that by now ‘I was hooked’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1 Capital A at The Cut

After successfully tracking down the E, I could no longer be chasing the tail of paradise but set off in search of dragons. As dragons begin with D and so does Diss, it was a simple decision to find Designer Makers in the Heritage Triangle, as this part of Diss has become known. Stepping across the threshold, there were old friends from Diss Corn Hall and, as in all good quests, a guide came to our aid – print maker Annette Rolston. Annette showed us round the tardis like interior. There were necklaces, knitted goods, stained glass, mosaics, prints, finely crafted clothes and willow baskets. It was a true emporium of artistic talent. The whole concept of Designer Makers is that not only do people work together, making unique and beautiful objects, but the public can come and buy direct from the makers and see how the pieces are made.

But what about the dragon? It truly epitomises the spirit of Designer Makers; several of the artists contributed to its design and construction and there it was, coiled, sleeping, suspended on a wall.

Figure 2 D at Designer Makers

I am nearing the halfway mark on the Paradise Trail which takes me away from our market towns to a village easily bypassed on the A143 – Brockdish. I am killing two birds with one stone for not only is Brockdish playing host to Paradise ‘I’, it is the venue for August’s Arts and Eats. The Old Kings Head, a fourteenth century pub at the centre of the village, was bought last year by brother and sister, Jonathan Townley and Louise Lees. After complete refurbishment it now offers not only the traditional bar and restaurant but a café serving cakes and cappuccino – always a hit with Paradise Pilgrim, who has been known to navigate the county on the basis of the best coffee shops. Joined by Jonathan’s wife Vicky, an art teacher, the pub now offers an art gallery and a venue for some creative activities.

It was not difficult to locate I, startling, vivid, well-padded and set amongst paintings, not too far from the cakes!

Figure 3 I in The Kings Head, Brockdish

I found an opportunity to track down P in Bungay. It was the Doggerland workshop – Words on the Edge – that lured me this far along the Waveney. Venturing further down this valley into the little market town, home of the Fisher Theatre, I indeed felt like a fisherman. I was hoping to catch P hooked up in the Gallery upstairs or hanging above the coffee machine. Imagine Pilgrim’s own slough of despond on discovering that the theatre is closed on Sundays. The P went unstamped.

And now comes the sad conclusion – I can see no way down the Waveney and Blyth rivers before the trail ends on 30th September (2015). Paradise Pilgrim has therefore drawn the search to a close and admits to only collecting an IDEA of PARADISE.

Figure 4 Only an Idea of Paradise

But for all pilgrims there remains one opportunity to see all the letters in a row. They are on display in the bar of the Swan Hotel, Harleston.

Figure 5  The Paradise letters assembled

CREDITS

Trail devised by Simon Raven

Artists:

P          Malcolm Cudmore on behalf of Black Dog Arts, Bungay

a          Paul Osbone of Papershaker, Great Yarmouth

R          Caroline Reeder and members of Lowestoft Arts Group

A          Members of Inspired by Becker Art Society, Wenhaston

D          Dragonmakers@21, members of Designer Makers @ 21, Diss

I           Lin Patterson on behalf of Harleston & Waveney Art Trail

S          Ron Fuller on behalf of Craftco, Southwold

e          Members of Eye Arts Guild

Paradise Pilgrim text and photographs – Melinda Appleby

Filed Under: Blog

New area reps, Lisa Henshall and Chris Reeve

4th March 2021 By Genevieve Rudd

Lisa Henshall is area rep for Harleston along with Nicky Stainton.

I’m an artist and a teacher and I run a pop-up gallery in Harleston.  As a massive fan of WBA,  I’m really excited to help promote and explore the opportunities in and around my local area.

My background is a traditional art school background, I studied Fine Art at Loughborough University and then Art Education at Cambridge University and I’ve painted and taught art since the late 90s in a variety of settings.

Sharing and promoting creativity is fundamental to my life and I see representing and supporting W&BA as an extension of this.  Thank you for this fantastic opportunity.

Chris Reeve is area rep for Bungay along with Ann Woolston.

I’m delighted to be asked to join the committee of W&BA, having been involved with the Guided Walks in the summer months for a number of years, and thoroughly enjoyed organising them.

My career has been as a Museum Curator, and for twelve years I was Keeper of Art  for St. Edmundsbury Borough Council. I took early retirement in 2000, and settled in Bungay taking a part-time role as Community Project Officer with Waveney District Council and then the Lowestoft Community Forum. This got me involved with many local groups assisting them with grant funding applications, and getting intergrated  into the welcoming, and vibrant ethos of our warm-hearted town.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, W&BA Activities

Looking Out, a new column from nature writer Melinda Appleby

8th February 2021 By Genevieve Rudd

 

 

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.

Filed Under: Blog, Main Feature

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