Member Activities

In September 2020, managing to slip in between lockdowns, Upshoot Theatre Company brought a special outdoor theatre offering to the local community with their mini tour ‘Garden Theatre.’ This production is in support of the Bungay Fisher Theatre, with the aim of reconnecting our community with the joys of live performance.

An evening of the best songs from famous stage shows,(sung or recited as required by government guidelines), and a short hilarious comedy to finish. You couldn’t wish for a more uplifting and sunny theatrical re-acquaintance presented by the much-loved resident UpShoot Theatre Company.

Performance Dates

SAT 12TH SEPT
18 BROAD ST, BUNGAY (PRIVATE)

SUN 13TH SEPT
THE BARN, 47 BECCLES ROAD, BUNGAY (PRIVATE)

FRI 18TH SEPT
ST. PETER’S BREWERY, ST.PETER’S HALL,BUNGAY

SAT 19TH SEPT
KALI’S WOOD, HOLTON, HALESWORTH

SUN 20TH SEPT
18 NETHERGATE STREET, BUNGAY

Inspired by Becker Art Society 2020 presents a free, fun August event.

Kasia Posen is offering free drawing classes via a wonderful email newsletter. Below is a preview of one of her newsletters. If you would like to sign up for these classes, email kasia.posen@gmai.com to get started.

19th May 2020

This week we will take a look at Pablo Picasso, in particular I would like you to notice his brilliant use of high contrast to create drama and the visual balance he promotes across the artwork as a whole. Picasso’s alternate use of black and white across his artworks give a sense of drama and movement to the viewer.

I have chosen 4 very different images, different in style, subject and material but consistent in the ability to create drama whilst maintaining balance.

Here’s what you can do :

1. Look at each of the drawings and decide out of the 4 which resonates with you most, understand why, is it the subject, the material used or something else?
1a) Make a study of your chosen image using only black and white. You can use any material as long as it is monochrome – black and white or graphite if you don’t have access to B&W.
1b) Create a scale of lights and darks on another sheet using the same material as you have in the task above. Make your dark as dark as possible and your light bright white, this may involve using an eraser to get a really bright white, especially if you are using something smudgy like charcoal.

2. Choose your own subject. This can be inspired by any of the images here.
Please draw from life, you may draw someone’s head, or a still life you can set up or something in the garden or out on a walk.
2a) Sketch out your composition with light and dark in mind.
2b) Now simplify your drawing, block in your areas of dark and leave your areas of white, light or mid-tone.
2c) Stop drawing and look at your drawing, consider the balance of light and dark. Think about the overall distribution of visual weight in your a composition.
Sometimes large empty spaces can balance an area of detail, for example in the image of the jug and skull the texture of the table cloth and pattern of the book pages are balanced out with the contrast of the wall behind which has much less detail. An area of light can be balanced by an equal area of dark as seen in all of the artworks here. Adjust your drawing to create better balance if you need to.

3. Repeat 1. making a study of another of the Picasso reference images. Repeat 2. with a new subject and move through the same steps.

I am offering these weekly online classes for free, but if you would like to donate please email me and I will let you know how.

From some of our creative members.

We’ve had some beautiful poetry sent to us at W&BA and we’d like to share them with you here. If you would like to send us a poem too, please email newsletter@waveneyandblytharts.com

Banner photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Midsummer’s Eve

Midsummer’s Eve 2016

The full moon rose as we left the heath
from the teasing chirrs of nightjars
to make our way to Dunwich beach,
drawn by lazy sounds of tired sea sighs
drowned by our trodden crunch of pebbles.

The shoreline lit by a glowing moon,
which beamed down on layered clouds
laying a silver path on rippled waves,
right to our feet, the whispering edge
of surf’s seductive susurration.

If we could walk that shimmering track
what attractions would delight beyond?
Moonlight on water illuminates longing
reflected light with no link to meaning

— yet it calls to our ancient memories.

Written by Ivor Murrell, 16th April 2020
www.versifier.co.uk

Laid to Earth

I want to be of this land, to be sinewed
by rock and root; to be fed by it in seed
and fruit; to borrow wool from the sheep,
weave cloth for my comfort. Hear music
of the wind’s play in poplars, laugh
with chuckle of water under the bridge.
I want to be nurtured by sun; cup apples
warm from the tree, heft them in my palm
or bite the pear, the lazy  juice sweetly running.

When I can no longer sing of the land
or hear its calling; see only blue mist coiling
round the farm, forget the blackbird
rousing the dawn, then I want to lie in the roots
of oak, in the fold of meadows, cradled
and crooked by river and wood; turn
to the earth for sleep, returning bone
to bone, unwinding sinews and sinking
back to this land from where I came sweetly running.

Written By Melinda Appleby, May 2020
Featured in our blog 

Is it really first time

I have never written a poem
Maybe a haiku, or a senryu or a tanka
Will be good
In the virus affected 2020 installation
The paradox is,  we cannot uninstall,
and do a “cold start”
But we can use it to learn and improve
As in a storm

We have learnt new terminology:
“Social distancing” !
Which is a code name for physical distancing!
that does not mean that socially
we have to disconnect from our loved ones
As always people have shown the correct meaning
By doing what’s natural
Staying connected
Never felt wider, deeper

Now people are under the same storm
But not in the same boat
people have more empathy towards others and
now, more people have more chance
to understand
the weather, nature has different forms
that includes us
Not always sunshine
While we are enjoying every bit of it

Not to look at the small matters
Focus on main issues with our good points
Maybe climate change needs a code name too
On the way to social justice:
“Nihility change”?!

We will go back
Yes we will
But surely not to the old normal days
Old wasn’t exactly normal
So we will go back
To better than normal days
More than yesterday

Here let’s finish this Maiku
With brilliant words
From Mr Brilliant
Not kumbaya but,
A global solution to global problem.

Written by Meryem Siemmond, May 2020
Larry Brilliant Ted Talk: A global pandemic calls for global solutions

Prunus Tai Haku Cherry

It’s only for Twelve Weeks

Listen, it’s the silence of my childhood —
imposed by the virus from a distant bat,
as I am shielded in my seventies from its touch.

Blackbirds sing louder, sound travels further,
they can now hear distant males reply,
whilst we have sunshine to mock our lockdown.

Everything firmly struck from my diary
by line after line, for day after day.
Adrift from society for a year’s quarter.

The eager Spring fears no constraint
on the village green the giant white cherry
daily creeps towards its ‘white –out’.

Ladybirds gem stalks in quickening growth.
Paired ducks explore the flower beds as
we watch from the windows, and wait.

Written by Ivor Murrell, March 2020
www.versifier.co.uk

Listen

the birds sing to me from somewhere I cannot see,
sourced rhythm and rhyme from tiny beating hearts,
set free to chime by warming spring rays of light,
wisdom only they can know woven by descendant right.

wanting to warn of times past dutifully witnessed perhaps,
handed down from ancestral journeys of foretelling flights,
where humankind has caused havoc and nature to bleed,
pleading for us not to follow down the same harmful creed.

choirs of evangelical voices preach with everlasting hope,
verses taking veritable flight on winds of melodic wings,
soaring thermals high and low to achieve their inevitable fate,
to stop the turning of the calamity key before it is way too late.

forced to wear solemn silence due to the murmarations of mankind,
the birdsongs can be heard clearly piercing the quietness of the sky,
listen to these purest advocates of nature and life passion to be,
until we can embrace one other as love intended and once again be free.

Written by Sean O’Loughlin

Percy waiting

Enviable Sang-Froid

Tell me what your secret is, how do you do it?
Involuntarily isolated for over fifteen years
yet each new year, for several months,
you dress to impress.

Everyone here knows you, but you walk apart.
Slowly and with a theatre of dignity you pass
in silence, for most months of every year —
but you can scream.

Sometimes you do not visit us for days
then appear, at our glazed front door,
staring in with your arrogant frustration
at the lack of service.

Who else feeds you? I hear, I admit allegedly,
of sausage rolls and pork pies, and rum soaked raisins
that were meant to subdue then trap you,
but you looked for more.

Now I am caged, to avoid a threatening virus,
self-isolating is the term, twelve weeks the period.
Teach me that self-containment you possess
Percy, ancient village Peacock.

Written by Ivor Murrell, April 2020
www.versifier.co.uk

The Last Haul: Recollections of the Days before English Fishing Died

Poppyland Publishing is pleased to announce that its latest publication, The Last Haul: Recollections of the Days before English Fishing Died (£14.95 + £3.55 p&p) is now available from our website (you can order it from Amazon as well).

Many have been waiting for this book by David Butcher being the last in a series of five oral histories, covering the story of the Lowestoft fishing industry between 1910 and 1960. Based on tape-recordings of local people made from 1976-83, it follows on from The Driftermen (1979), The Trawlermen (1980), Living From the Sea (1982) and Following the Fishing (1987), looking at aspects of life at sea and on shore not covered in the earlier works. It should have been published c. 1990 or thereabouts, but for various reasons did not come into print.

The subjects dealt with are varied and fascinating: seine-netting for haddock on the Dogger Bank (1920s); longlining for cod in the North Sea during the same era; longlining for conger eels and other species out of Milford Haven (1930s); illegally fishing in Irish waters (1930s); longshore fishing at Lowestoft and Pakefield (1920s-1960s); life at sea on a sailing smack (1920s); the role of the RNMDSF smacks (1920s and 1930s); working on a drifter-trawler, both locally and in the Atlantic and Irish Sea (1920s and 30s); working on a Ministry of Fisheries research vessel (1940s, 50s & 60s); general fishing experience on local drifters round the British coasts (1920s & 30s); working on railway maintenance (1930s) and policing Lowestoft railway station and docks (1950s & 60s); manning Trinity House lightships in the North Sea (1930s-60s); sailing on the converted diesel drifter Veracity to hunt for buried treasure in the Pacific, on Cocos Island (1935).
The mix of material vividly portrays a “lost world”, so different from that of today, but even though it is dealing with past events and life-styles it is still able to make valid statements (in all kinds of ways) concerning the human condition and the way people behave and inter-react as they go about their everyday routines.

Order it at Poppyland Publishing.

The Big 100: A Stunning Online Exhibition

Undeterred by the need to postpone this year’s glamorous art exhibition in the grounds and rooms of the magnificent, Elizabethan Glemham Hall in East Suffolk Art for Cure will host a stunning exhibition online: ‘The Big 100’. Fleet of foot and creative, Belinda Gray and her team of volunteers at Art for Cure have developed one of the most exciting online galleries in the UK. 

Opening at 6pm on 7 May 2020 the show will go on!

Over 100 artists have created over 1000 original paintings, sculptures, ceramics, photographs and items of jewellery for sale to raise funds for breast cancer support services and research. The Big 100 online exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to see a far greater number and range of artworks than would normally be possible.

Including the work of W&BA member and SitV artist, Elizabeth Cooke

The gallery will include work from the whole artistic community: young established artists and eminent national artists ; internationally recognised names and newly discovered names; work from East Anglian artists and from across the UK; artists depicting the rural lanes of Suffolk, the byways of India and the highways of California; artists and designers offering work in copper, cloth, paint, porcelain, silver and steel. 

There will be paintings, prints, pastels, portraits and pots. There will be humour and beauty. There will be landscapes, portraits, rings, figurines, vases, cushions, wall hangings, statues, drawings. There will be works that are monumental and works that are miniature. 

Visit www.artforcure.org.uk for more details.

Fall of Yarmouth Suspension Bridge book has been reissued to coincide with 175th anniversary

It was a cold Friday 175 years ago when people gathered on the banks of the River Bure in Great Yarmouth to witness the sight of Nelson the Clown perform his much-vaunted stunt of being pulled in a washing tub by four geese. Three years before, in Perth, he had drawn a larger crowd that Queen Victoria’s visit to the town a couple of months before. It had rained heavily in the morning and many of the mothers, with their children, had brought their umbrellas in case there might be a swift downpour that afternoon. The day was to become infamous in the history of Great Yarmouth when 78 of those poor souls were to lose their lives in the freezing water.

Gareth H.H. Davies’s book, The Fall of Yarmouth Suspension Bridge: A Norfolk Disaster is reprised on the 175th anniversary of the disaster. Acknowledged as the definitive account of this terrible event, it explores the social, economic and political context of 1845 and considers the legacy and memory of the disaster up to the present day.

Priced at £10.95 + £2.95 p&p it is available online from www.poppyland.co.uk while local bookshops are closed.

Easterly Artists is staging a 3D virtual online exhibition throughout May, delivering its own “art antidote” to the ravages of Coviod-19 and the isolation it brings.

Easterly Artists are responding to the current coronavirus lock-down with a free online exhibition, featuring A4-sized artworks by members available to view and download at no charge. Titled “In Isolation”, 26 members are presenting their work, all based on their interpretation of what it means to live through, deal with and create in a period of prolonged physical and social isolation.

Hugh Davies, Easterly Artists webmaster and the instigator of the exhibition, sums it up: “This is our way to give something back to the community. Many people are trapped at home – the plan is to bring the work to them, and perhaps create some hope at a time when hope can sometimes appear to be in short supply.”

Apart from the work itself, there are two key elements to the show. First, the artists are donating their work, so all the pieces are available to download completely free. And everything is in A4 format, making it easy for you to print them from a home computer.

Second, and rather than showing the work in a conventional web page, the exhibition uses the latest technology to display the works “hung” in a unique 3D virtual space created especially for the event. The results are extraordinary: it’s a truly immersive experience, giving a life-like impression of walking through an actual gallery!

“In Isolation” opens 6.30pm Friday 8 May and runs for three weeks till 6.30pm Sunday 31 May: to visit, simply go to http://easterly.org.uk/inisolation. And the good thing about being online is that there are no opening hours: you can return as often as you like whenever you choose, and download as many pieces as you want.

So there you have it: a high quality art exhibition brought to your own home, a chance to download as much artwork at no cost as your printer can handle and a 3D virtual reality experience that has to be seen to be believed – what’s not to like!?

Last thing: don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the latest news and images – just click on the links or the buttons at the foot of this email.

Look forward to seeing you online!

This May, Creativity and Wellbeing Week 2020 will go ahead as an online celebration.

Creativity and Wellbeing Week Reimagined will take place from 18th – 24th May and is providing space for two things: If you would like to hold an online event – either adapting something you were already planning or doing something new – you can upload that to the site. But if you just want to share information about what you or your organisation do in relation to arts, health and wellbeing, or if you want to describe work you are doing now to provide analogue, offline creative or cultural activities, there is space for that too.

From 18-24th May we want to bring you all together. We have kept the theme of the week as Positive Futures which is needed more than ever right now. We are also hoping to host a number of events with the main aim of bringing us all together and offering a space for reflection and mutual support.

Take a look around our website to see how you can get involved. We will be sharing lots of resources to support you but we also want to learn from you.

To get involved please visit the Creativity and Wellbeing Website and if you are a W&BA member, don’t forget to tag us in your social media posts so we can share how you’re getting involved.  #NCWW20ReImagined.