The past week has seen Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day. Recently I've been to three very different, but equally memorable and thought-provoking, performances reflecting on World War I.
Canny Theatre Group - young people aged 11 to 21 - created a musical to mark the 200th anniversary of the Exchange, Sunderland. Three of them, aged 17 and 18, wrote all the words and music, and the cast ranged from 11 to 85 years. During the war the building was used as a seaman's mission. Northumberland Theatre Company's John Telfer reflected on his great grandfather's experience at Gallipoli, and the experiences of present-day soldiers. November Club were at the Lit & Phil again for Cautionary Tales from the Trenches. What started as a light-hearted hunt around the library for books to send to soldiers at the Front, suddenly became more poignant as we were taken into a small space with photographs, and the names being read out, of men connected with the Lit & Phil who had been killed during the war.
Look to your left as you enter the National Glass Centre, and you will see some of the work young people made with glass artists, a project funded by the Gillian Dickinson Trust. Eight groups of young people, from schools and youth organisations, worked with four artists and their assistants to make glass art for their school or youth group building as well as lots of smaller pieces which they could take home to keep.
This is one of the pieces made by the group from Springwell Dene Academy. They spend one day a week at forest school in nearby woods, and the inspiration from this piece comes from things they found in the woods - animal footprints, bones, leaves. Note the cast glass spoons for cooking on the camp fire.
The project exhibition was formally launched along with NGC's autumn show, Magdalene Odundo's stunning Transition II [Link removed 12/12/23 as no longer available on the external website] and Metamorphosis & Transformation.
To the theatre in Hereford, to see Young Bloods' "The Canary Girls", about the munitions workers at the Rotherwas Munitions Factory in the first and second world wars. During World War I, 4000 women worked at the factory, packing explosives into shells. They had to do this by hand to reduce the likelihood of explosion, pressing the explosives into the shells with their thumbs, which caused painful skin damage. The picric acid made the workers' skin go yellow and caused liver disease.
Read more about it from the BBC here
These days, picric acid is used in fireworks because it makes a whistling noise as it burns in air.
o the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation in Essex, the waterway which took goods between Chelmsford and Heybridge Basin on the River Blackwater. If you look carefully behind the rushes on the photo on the left (, you will see some corrugated iron. This was brought back from the trenches in France after the end of the First World War, and was used to reinforce the sides of the waterway to prevent erosion. This is the last piece left on the waterway, between Paper Mill Lock and Little Baddow Mill.
- The Talented and Colossal Mademoiselle D'Jeck
- Visitor Studies in Split, Croatia
- On the border of Slovenia and Hungary
- Culture Matters
- Slovenia
- Repositories of technology
- A piece of Hungarian social history
- Museum + Heritage Show; Arts Professional
- Evaluation training in Slovenia and Croatia
- Iron Applause in Central Europe
- Escaped Circus Elephant!
- Gold from Afghanistan and Foundling fabrics
- The Old Herring Factory, Djúpavík
- Contemporary art from North Korea
- Nicola appointed to Board: Kuratórium
- Workshop in Hungary
- Evaluation Training in Hungary