Kimmerfields for Swindon’s new Cultural Quarter – or looks that way anyway.
Exciting plans to rejuvenate the arts in Swindon could get a huge boost next week. Why? It’s when members of Swindon Borough Council’s Cabinet decide on where to build a brand new cultural quarter.
The Watchers restored.
Among the doom and gloom of Covid and Brexit and town centre shop closures there’s some good local news in the restoration of The Watchers.
The Watchers form part of the West Swindon sculpture walk. These sculptures are a culturally significant part of the West Swindon landscape, installed in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Roger Ogle has done much to champion them – then much than him – later so have I. Despite the fact that they’ve been shamefully neglected by our town’s leaders for decades now, they remain things of enjoyment and an untapped resource I’m sure. If the powers that be did but know it.
Freshbrook gets performing arts class – so children in West Swindon who love singing, dancing and acting can try out a new class which starts in Freshbrook on Wednesday September 30.
One of the town’s leading performing arts groups, Revolution Performing Arts, is offering Covid-safe, socially distanced small group classes at Freshbrook Community Centre. The classes are every week, on Wednesday, from 5.30pm to 6.30pm.
Young people in Swindon who love singing, dancing and acting are getting back to the studio after many months of online classes.
One of the town’s leading voices in performing arts, Fi Da Silva Adams, worked hard with her team to return to socially-distanced performing arts classes last week.
“Our online classes were a life line for many young people during lockdown,” said Fi. Fi is the MD and founder of Revolution Performing Arts which, as a rule,supports around 350 young people on a weekly basis.
“Young people still had an outlet and an opportunity to experience our empowerment through the arts experience. So they got a thrill from seeing their friends, even if it in the virtual world.
“Now we are doing a phased, Covid-safe return to classes so that children can get back together in a mindful manner and it’s been wonderful.”
Heritage Open Days 2020: 11 to 20 September
Heritage open days 2020 is England’s largest festival of history and culture. It brings together over 2,000 local people and organisations and thousands of volunteers. Every year, in September, places across the country open their doors to celebrate their heritage, community and history.
This is your chance to see hidden places and try out new experiences. And – ta da – it’s all for free!!! Or rather it would be were it not for a little thing called Covid-19. Oops!
AS PARENTS prepare for their children to return to school parent, here’s some helpful back-to-school advice from Revolution Performing Arts owner, Fiona Da Silva Adams. She shares her top tips for getting back into a school routine.
Fiona (known as Fi) runs Revolution Performing Arts, which offers after school clubs and classes across Swindon offering drama, dance and singing for children of all abilities. The ethos of RPA is one of inclusion.
Hello Swindonians. It’s been a while since you’ve been able to access the shop and information desk in the central library on Regent Circus. That sad state of affairs is of course thanks to us being in the grip of a pandemic. But I bring you tidings of great joy. No – a son isn’t born unto us but we do now have a Covid compliant library shop.
A Swindon author who published her first book a mere two years ago, is launching a fourth – and it’s the one she’s always wanted to write.
Angela Atkinson, who pens the popular blog Born Again Swindonian, is passionate about the town. And her fourth book is a further tribute to her adoptive home. She’s holding an official launch on Saturday August 8, from the town’s Museum of Computing. The event is part online and part face-to-face, to allow for lockdown restrictions.
Last year, when writing Swindon in 50 Buildings, I simply had to include Thomas Turner’s villas on Drove Road.
Since the book came out I’ve had a mind to write a bit more on here about Thomas Turner Swindon brick-maker and his brick-making enterprise. But I never quite got round to it. Then not long back I saw a super blog by Swindon historian Frances Bevan so figured – why reinvent the wheel? I may as well feature that with some of my own photographs.
Big Hitters: Swindon Museum & Art Gallery.
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery has announced the launch of a virtual exhibition. You can view it through ArtUK, the online home of the nation’s public art collections.
Entitled ‘Big Hitters’, the works in the exhibition are the choices of the committee of the Friends of Swindon Museum and Art Gallery. They work to draw attention to some of the most important pieces in Swindon’s modern, British art collection.
This year, 2020, has another marker on it other than that created by Covid-19. For it’s also the 200thanniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. Thus, the WHO (the World Health Organisation) has designated 2020 as the first ever year of the nurse and the midwife. Cause enough for celebration on its own then. And it makes a good excuse to talk again about healthcare history and Swindon – it being a story not that well told. Still. And when it is told it tends not to be accurate.
There’s been a lot of book talk on Born Again Swindonian of late. Well – we’re a very literary lot here in Swindon don’t y’know.
