Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios 2012

NNOS 2012 will run from 26 May – 10 June 2012.

The application pack is now available on the Norfolk and Norwich Festivalwebsite as a Word document or pdf ready to download at www.nnfestival.org.uk. If you are unable to access the attachment or download from the website, let Sarah Witcomb at Norfolk and Norwich Festival know and she will post you the pack instead.  If you have any questions or need to talk about any aspect of NNOS, you can contact Sarah, contact information below.  Note that the deadline for receipt of completed application forms is 5.30pm Monday 12 December 2011.

Completed application forms (along with the other relevant information requested and correct fee) can be sent by email to
mailto://norfolkopenstudios@nnfestival.org.uk or posted to:

Sarah Witcomb, Participation & Engagement Administrator,
Norfolk & Norwich Open Studios 2012 Application
Norfolk & Norwich Festival
Augustine Steward House
14 Tombland
Norwich, NR3 1HF

Tel: 01603 878285

Community Cinema

Archive Film – Ghosts of East Anglia

10.30am Saturday, 5th November
Adults £3.00, Concessions £2.00 Tickets on the door
Great Yarmouth Library, Toll House Street, Great Yarmouth, NR30 2SH

East Anglia has always been rich in tales of the supernatural, but from the 1960s onwards, sightings of ghosts became the subject of news headlines and television investigations.

Now you can watch these true stories from the vaults of the East Anglian Film Archive. Told through documentary footage and interviews, explore the real ghost stories of our region, including: a haunted police station in Suffolk, the ghost of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, Old Shuck of Norfolk, Borley Rectory and the disturbed burial mound in Northamptonshire.

Promoted by: Great Yarmouth Community Library
Web: www.gyccinema.co.uk

Bridesmaids (cert 15)

7.30pm, Thursday 10th November

Adults £3.00, Concessions £2.50
Gorleston Library, Lowestoft Road, Gorleston, NR31 6SG
Tickets available from Gorleston Library or 01493 441585

Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Jessica St Clair.

Annie is a maid of honour whose life unravels as she leads her best friend, Lillian, and a group of colourful bridesmaids on a wild ride down the road to matrimony.

Annie’s life is a mess, but when she finds out her lifetime best friend is engaged, she simply must serve as Lillian’s maid of honour. Though lovelorn and broken, Annie bluffs her way through the expensive and bizarre rituals. With one chance to get it perfect, she’ll show Lillian and her bridesmaids just how far you’ll go for someone you love.

Promoted by: Gorleston Community Cinema Club

For more details: http://www.villagescreen.co.uk/filmdetails.asp?ID=1788

Broadlanders Art Club Autumn Exhibition

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‘The History of Us’

‘The History of Us’, published in 2009 by Legend Press and shortlisted for East Anglian Book of the Year, has for its setting the Gorleston-on-Sea of the early 1980s and mid 1990s. It is divided into three main sections, each written in the voice of one of the main characters. In the present day, James is a major TV actor best known for his portrayal of an omniscient and randy police inspector. Back in the early 1980s he is a dreamy poet, hopelessly in love with his childhood friend Alison. Their intensely close relationship forms the heart of the story. Alison is precocious; intellectually bright but also rebellious and full of secrets. Coming between these two lower-middle-class friends is working-class art student Wilson, opinionated, skilful, now a Royal Academician and shameless opportunist. Their entanglement culminates in a tragedy that will colour the rest of their lives.

Gorleston is closely described. The main characters live off the southern end of Marine Parade, hang out on the sea front, walk along the beach and pier and drink in the Links Hotel, a landmark modernist building on Marine Parade demolished at the turn of the century; they visit Lowestoft, Covehithe and Southwold.

The author, Philip Leslie, knows this part of the world very well, having spent the first 19 years of his life here. He drank in the Links and was a student at the Great Yarmouth College of Art and Design Wilson attends. (Wryly, in an afterword, he comments that Wilson would have been a contemporary of his on the Foundation Course and that he wouldn’t have liked him.) These days he lives a handful of miles across the Norfolk border in Cambridgeshire. In addition to ‘The History of Us’ he has had short stories and poems published. Writing as Philip Hansell, he won a consolation prize in the 2001 Bridport Competition for his story ‘Brought to You by the Makers of Norriss Toothbrushes, the Unseen Power behind Britain’s Smile’. The following year this was adapted by the Peter Quince Theatre Company for thirteen performances at the Edinburgh Festival, Camden and Yeovil. Also writing as Philip Hansell, he composes music, mainly for amateur performers, and has around forty pieces in print, the majority with Phylloscopus Publications (Spartan Press). He has had music performed at the Bath Festival and at the London New Wind Festival.

More at Waveney and Blyth Arts Event

Composer, clarinettist and thoroughly good egg, Karen Wimhurst is coming to Waveney & Blyth Arts event which is on from 10.30 to 3.30 on Saturday 12th November at The Cut, Halesworth!

Karen will be telling people at the event more about the new Waveney & Blyth musical work she is working on with singer and choir leader Sian Croose to be performed by a Waveney & Blyth wonder choir as part of the 2012 September “Celebrate the Waveney & Blyth” festivities.

“Astonishing new voice” poet Joanna Guthrie – the wordsmith for Waveney & Blyth Arts new musical commission – will be coming too! – and hopefully reading a couple of poems from her “extraordinary first collection” “Billack’s Bones”.

To discover more about Karen’s work – that has been performed across the UK, Europe, America and Mexico and on Radio 3, 4 and ITV – take a look at www.karenwimhurst.co.uk – and to find a bit more about Joanna take a look at a recent issue of the Rialto Poetry Magazine at www.therialto.co.uk/pages/poets/joanna-guthrie/

 Don’t miss them – or the other fantastic speakers and workshop leaders at the event – BOOK NOW – by emailing your name, address inc post code, phone number and email address to mailto://jan@ollandstreet.co.uk

For more information about Success in Tough Times event, click here

Great Yarmouth Choral Society concert

MUSIC FOR A ROYAL OCCASION

7.30pm, Saturday 12th November 2011 at Christchurch, Gt.Yarmouth

Handel  CORONATION ANTHEMS
Parry  I WAS GLAD.  BLEST PAIR OF SIRENS
and other works for choir and piano

Piano : Christopher Whiting
Conductor : John Stephens

Tickets: £8.00 (concessions £7.00) under 16yrs free, from:
Allen’s Music Centre. Gt Yarmouth Tel: 01493 850172
Aldred’s Estate Agents  High St. Gorleston. Tel: 01493 664600
and at the door from 6.45pm.

www.gychoral.org.uk

Singing News

The Raveningham Centre is pleased to announce the new monthly Singing Workshop dates which will be led by the excellent Bridget Cousins.

The workshops are £10 per session (including tea/coffee) and take place in the Ravenous Cafe at The Raveningham Centre, (NR14 6NU).

To book your place please email Liz Cannell – cinnamongallery@gmail.com or phone 01508 548406.

Monday 31st October  7.30 – 9.30pm

Monday 28th November  7.30 – 9.30pm

From January they will be on the last Monday of the month.

About Bridget Cousins

Bridget has been leading community choirs since 1994. An experienced musician and performer in her own right, she  founded Halesworth Community choir and the Gipping Valley Community choir and co-teaches the YoxVox singing group  in Yoxford, Suffolk. She has worked extensively in Suffolk schools with the Sing Up programme and often works for  Suffolk Artlink, taking musical activities to people who would not otherwise have the opportunity to enjoy them.  She teaches an eclectic harmony repertoire which includes African, Balkan, Maori, French, British and German folk songs,  Gospel and her own compositions.

We look forward to welcoming you to Raveningham.

Three new blue plaques

On Monday 24th October 2011 three blue plaques were unveiled:

The Body-snatchers by St Nicholas Church main gate – unveiled by Revd. James Stewart

The Guildhall by St Nicholas Church main gate – unveiled by Richard Packham, Chief Executive , GYBC

Replacement of Suspension Bridge Disaster at the Swan Public House, North Quay – unveiled by Revd. James Stewart

The Great Yarmouth Local History and Archeological Society organise the installation of blue plaques in the Borough.  For more information on the society click here.  Dr. Paul Davies gave a brief talk prior to each unveiling, providing context for each of the plaques.

The bodysnatcher Keith Vaughan was employed by the renowned surgeon Sir Astley Cooper to supply corpses for anatomical research.  Sir Astley Cooper’s father was vicar at Great Yarmouth, though the surgeon was practicing in London at that time and taught anatomy at Guy’s Hospital. Keith Vaughan hid the corpses in old houses on Row Six where he lived before crating them up for despatch to London. He was paid 10-12 guineas per body but this activity eventually got him arrested, being jailed for 6 mths on the first occasion and transported to Australia on the second.  The surgeons were given the bodies of hanged criminals for anatomical research but such a supply was inadequate for the industrious Astley Cooper and his like.  The Rev. James Stewart spoke in memory of those whose bodies had been stolen from graves at St. Nicholas. 

It was not possible to list all those who drowned in the Suspension Bridge disaster, as there were so many – too many of them being young children from the poorer families who lived in the area nearby. What should have been a happy occasion with the excitement of the event of a clown in a tub being towed up the Bure by four swans, turned out to be a disaster such as would have made national if not international news these days – the bridge collapsed thanks to a faulty weld in a chain link, and the crowd on the bridge was flung into the river.  Particularly moving was the record of a dead mother being hauled up out of the water, still clutching her baby and holding  her little girl by the hand with such a tight grasp that it was only with great difficulty that the bodies were separated.

Alf Hedges records in “Yarmouth is an antient Town” (1959, revised and expanded 2001 by Michael Boon and Frank Meers, printed by Blackwell John Buckle, ISBN 0-9541153-1-7) that the Guildhall ” stood on the left-hand side of the Gate of St. Nicholas and was built on arches so that people could walk to church underneath it.”  It was first used by the Guild of the Blessed Trinity, a merchant guild  formed as a result of privilages granted by King John in his Charter of 1209 but suppressed in the Reformation.  The Guildhall was then taken over by the Corporation.  The Guildhall became redundant and was pulled down when a new Town Hall was built by the river (on the site where the present Town Hall stands).  A new building was erected on the Guildhall site in 1723 to provide an Assembly Room and a  private chamber for the Council but this  building was demolished too in 1850.

St. Nicholas to be upgraded as a Minster

  St. Nicholas Minster, east end, December 2011

From December St. Nicholas  Church will be a minster rather than a parish church.  It will be consecrated as such on the 9th December 2011 at the Mayor and the Sherrif of Norfolk’s Carol Service which will be held at 7.30 pm.

The new status has been agreed by the Queen, the Bishop of Norfolk and the Town Council in recognition of the church’s important architectural heritage.

Title: Carol Service
Location: Description: Mayor and Sherrif of Norfolk’s Carol Service
Start Time: 19:30
Date: 2011-12-09

Greyfriars Health Centre completed

Greyfriars, October 2011, photograph by B.Heriz

This building which used to look very sad indeed has now been restored for NHS use.  Work was also done on the church earlier this year, and the two buildings, along with the refurbished Ship Public House, next door, also for NHS, now present an attractve street facade.  The same can be said for the back of the buildings, and particularly the old fire-damaged Congregational Hall on Howard Street which had lost its roof and was completely derelict  prior to this restoration and the addition of a further storey.

Greyfriars NHS Centre, Howard Street, from the car park

Entrance to the Congregational Hall in 2010

The Congregational Hall, October 2011