November 2009

08/12/09

November has been another busy month.

We kicked off with a fantastic networking evening for the Bloomsbury Festival, kindly hosted by the Wellcome Trust in their beautiful Library. Over 100 people from all walks of Bloomsbury life speed networked to Dafydd Williams's fantastic jazz. The evening produced some great ideas for the Festival which we've been working up since.

Also on the Bloomsbury Festival front, the very end of November saw our first group meeting of the area's community organisations, whose involvement is key to the Festival really delivering a programme for the local community. Between them they already offer a fantastic range of activities for local people, and the plan is to augment these through new relationships with the cultural organisations in the area. Watch this space for film and animation projects, dance and art programmes - the community organisations are currently consulting their users on what they'd like to see at the Festival - if you have any ideas of your own, please do let us know.

1A Arts etc., one of the organisations at the group meeting, held a screening of their fantastic film about the evacuation of London children during the war during November. The film was written, filmed, produced and acted by (very) young people from the area, in conjunction with PAN Intercultural Arts (who are also based in the area) and the London Transport Museum - congratulations to all involved - we saw several people with tears in their eyes.

We also attended a stage performance by PAN in November - Panopticism was a play written and performed by young Londoners who have been involved in gun and knife violence - and was supported by the MET. We went in sceptical, and came out invigorated. Not only was the audience the antithesis of the usual white, middle-aged, middle-class theatre going one, but the play had all the energy of inner city life, excellent performers who held their own against the audience's heckling (how often do you get that in a 'traditional' theatre these days), and the nerve to reference Shakespeare at the end, and then kill him off in favour of a Chinese take-away. You'd have to see it to understand, but we'd say that the play did its work in more ways than one.

In other news: Seasider is coming on in leaps and bounds - some very exciting London collaborations lined up, and an early consultation session being planned for Seaside Towns in the New Year.

The Hidden Cities Charitable Trust application has been submitted, and we have some exciting new Trustees coming on board.

And returning to the Bloomsbury Festival, we now have a draft programme - after three long hard days locked in a room with a couple of computers. It's only an outline, and exact events have all to be filled in, but it's exciting to have a shape for the Festival emerging from the amazing tangle of ideas that has been coming our way. Please do keep them coming!