THE Yeovil Community Arts Association (YCAA) has launched its 2021 international Literary Prize, an annual writing competition with cash prizes in four categories. All money raised supports talented, local youngsters training for careers in the performing and creative arts. Now in its 18th year, the Yeovil Literary Prize has become a highly regarded writing competition,…
THE Bath festivals’ team of 11, which runs the Bath Festival, Bath Children’s Literature Festival and year-round Creative Learning projects, has moved out of its headquarters in Bath Street into the Art Deco former cinema The Forum. The Grade II listed building makes a fantastic arts hub for the wider community to enjoy. Bath Festival audiences…
JOHN Payne is one of Frome’s best known residents – active in many organisations and a prolific writer on a wide range of subjects, from William Morris to Catalonia to the city of Bath. His latest book, which he hints may be his last (but writers rarely do retire, it’s a bug that keeps on…
SOMERSET-based author Jasbinder Bilan has followed up her Costa Children’s Book Award-winning debut novel with a delightful new story, which similarly draws on her family background in India close to the Himalayas. Jasbinder came with her family to the UK when she was still barely a toddler, but although they lived in a big city…
WINDROSE, the rural media charity, has set up an innovative project that combines live singing and old films, provided by internet technology for people in Wiltshire who are living with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Folk singer and song collector Amanda Boyd worked with Alzheimer’s Support Wiltshire to deliver interactive Zoom sessions, which included fascinating old footage…
THERE was a surprise for Bridport Literary Festival director Tanya Bruce-Lockhart when she took to the stage of the Electric Palace to thank speaker Sir Barney White-Spunner, after his talk about his book, Berlin – George Streatfeild, the High Sheriff of Dorset, in full formal regalia, came on to the platform to present her with…
EVENTS planned for Bridport Literary Festival continue through Wednesday 4th November, but director Tanya Bruce-Lockhart has had no option but to cancel the rest of the BridLit festival. Among the cancellations is James Rebanks, who was due at the Electric Palace on Saturday talking locally based poet James Crowden about his new book, English Pastoral…
RURAL media charity Windrose Trust has a new website – windroseruralmedia.org – where you can view old film, listen to audio and order DVDs. All Windrose’s projects were cancelled or postponed because of the pandemic, but a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has enabled the charity, which was set up in 1984 under…
RURAL touring arts charities, including Dorset’s Artsreach and Cornwall’s Carn to Cove, have got together to create a film that captures the images, words, music and sounds that make up our rural landscape from the south west to Northumberland At a time of isolation, with no possibility of live events in venues, rural touring schemes…
MEMORIES of working in Frome, recorded by the Home in Frome group, can now be viewed online. The latest project of the community group, which records the changing life of the town, has been the mammoth task of turning the Working Memories book into a website, https://workingmemoriesfrome.co.uk/ The new website goes live on Tuesday, 27th…