Swindon Polish Day in Queen’s Park on Sunday 9th June. The event runs from 12: – 18:00. ADMISSION IS FREE.
Join us for a day of music, culture, and community as we celebrate Polish Day in Swindon. Experience the lively performances of Kapela Drewutnia and enjoy the rich cultural tapestry that the Polish community brings to our town.
Polish Community in Swindon
The Polish community has been an integral part of Swindon since the 1940s. Following World War II, many Polish families settled in Swindon. They’ve made a significant contribution to the town’s cultural and economic landscape.
Over the decades, the Polish population in Swindon has grown, now forming one of the largest Polish communities in England.
Polish culture is woven into the fabric of Swindon’s community life. There are Polish shops, restaurants, Saturday schools and cultural events adding to the town’s diversity.
The annual Polish Day celebration is a highlight. It brings together people of all backgrounds to enjoy Polish cuisine, music, dance, and traditions.
Celebrating Polish Day
Polish Day in Swindon is a celebration of the enduring Polish spirit and its contributions to the local community. The event, hosted in the picturesque Queen’s Park, will feature a variety of activities. It includes traditional Polish food stalls, Polish local businesses, and family-friendly activities.
It’s an opportunity for residents and visitors to immerse themselves in Polish culture and celebrate the long-standing Polish presence in Swindon.
The day’s events
Performing at the event is Kapela Drewutnia – a renowned folk music band from Poland, dedicated to preserving and promoting the rich traditions of Poland’s diverse folklore. The band is set to enchant audiences in Swindon’s Queen’s Park as part of the vibrant Polish Day celebrations. With a repertoire that spans centuries of Poland’s musical heritage, the band offers an authentic and engaging experience. One that connects audiences to the cultural roots of various ethnic groups living in Poland.
The band was established 25 years ago by four childhood friends who attended a residential school for children with visual impairments. All members of the band, whether blind, visually impaired, or sighted, have different occupations, such as lawyer, physiotherapist, and lecturer. Yet they meet on a regular basis to play and give concerts. This is the only well-known inclusive music band in Poland.
A musical journey with Kapela Drewutnia
Known for their authentic and soulful renditions of Polish folk music, Kapela Drewutnia brings a unique blend of traditional and contemporary sounds. Their music resonates with the essence of Polish as well as Ukrainian and other eastern European folklore traditions. It’s a testament to the band’s dedication to preserving and promoting Poland’s diverse musical heritage. Their performance in Queen’s Park will feature a variety of traditional songs. All promising a captivating experience for all attendees.
So a week or so ago I watched a super talk, via the ubiquitous Zoom, arranged by the Friends of Museum and Art Swindon* The speaker was a sculptor by the name of Joseph Ingleby. His name might not mean anything to you but a piece of his work will. For Joseph is the creator of the Turtle Storm sculpture that resides in Queen’s Park.
This post though focuses on Turtle Storm – the sculpture.
About the Turtle StormSculpture
Joe created Turtle Storm back in the 1980s for his degree show. Indeed, June 1986 saw Turtle Storm exhibited for the first time in Farnham. The sculpture is a response to the effects on a turtle colony from nuclear testing in the Pacific in the 1980s. It’s composed of irregular natural forms including turtle shells, making an abstract work.
Below are two of Joes’s sketches of the sculpture that he drew in November 1985.
The sculpture has an interesting back story. Here it is in bullets:
1986-88 – After Joe’s degree show the West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham, exhibited Turtle Storm outside the entrance to the college.
1988 – 89 – The sculpture enjoyed a tenure outside Waverley Borough Council in Godalming, Surrey
1989 – 94 – A.R Dufty, the former head of the Armouries at the Tower of London bought the piece, in his capacity as curator at Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire. So for five years, Turtle Storm lived in the grounds of the home of William Morris. NB: NOT the Swindon Advertiser William Morris. That’s a common misconception.
1994 – Upon A.R. Dufty’s death, the curatorship of Kelmscott Manor passed to the William Morris Trust in Walthamstow. They decided not to exhibit anything there made outside of Morris’s lifetime (1834-96). As a result the Dufty family gave the sculpture to then Thamesdown Council in Swindon. They stored it while a new base of the council’s design was built for it in Queen’s Park.
1995 – present – The sculpture is sited in Queen’s Park in September 1995 with some collaboration and guidance from the artist.
The mayor of the time unveiled the work in a small ceremony. There was a small plaque installed at the time but that disappeared. But, in 2021 South Swindon Parish Council installed a new plaque. Joseph visited and some of the Friends of Museum and Art Swindon attended the unveiling.
Neil Hopkins, Linda Kasmaty, Joseph Ingleby and Chris Watts with Turtle Storm Sculpture SwindonThe new plaque on the Turtle Storm sculpture in Queen’s Park, Swindon – installed by South Swindon Parish Council.
*If you’ve any interest at all – even one as passing as mine ( I don’t profess to be ‘heavily’ into art) then the Friends of Museum and Art Swindon are worth joining. Since the onset of the pandemic they’ve been offering talks via Zoom. These are free but they welcome donations. There’s a link in the top paragraph to their website.
“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” So said Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of children’s classic, The Secret Garden.
Well, be that as it may we can easily say that the whole of Swindon is a garden. Or a park or green space at any rate – given that here in Swindon we’re astonishingly well-blessed with leafy and open spaces. It’s quite astonishing when you stop to think about it. You can read about some more of them here:https://swindonian.me/category/parks-and-open-spaces/ But this post focuses on Queen’s Park in Swindon.
Queens Park sign
Queen’s Park Swindon
But this post is concerned with Queen’s Park Swindon and its secret garden. Swindon’s Queen’s Park is not a place I get to much. I live one the west side of town and have the magnificent Lydiard Park not much more than a spit from my house so I go there – obvs.
Which is not to say that Queen’s Park isn’t lovely because it is. It’a a fabulous oasis in the middle of an urban conurbation. And it has some public art in too. So what’s not to like?
Plus the secret garden of course. And it was the secret garden summer BBQ that took me there last night.
The Secret Garden volunteers organized the BBQ ,among them the Incredible Edible Swindon people and councillor Paul Dixon, and was a very pleasant evening. After a few days of not great weather the sun switched itself back on and produced a fabulous evening.
NB: the Secret garden once was operated by the group of keen volunteers aforementioned but that no longer applies. They’ve handed it over to South Swindon Parish now.
Below are a load of photos I took but before that some general information about the park.
Wikipededia says:
Dull but factual from Wikepedia:Queen’s Park is a public park, located near the Regent Circus area of Swindon town centre.
It is about 12 acres (49,000 m2) in size, with a lake of around 2 acres (8,100 m2), and contains a diverse range of ornamental trees and shrubs.
The park has a Garden of Remembrance, officially opened by Princess Elizabeth on 15 November 1950 and commemorates those who died in World War II.
‘It is difficult to believe that this town centre parkland oasis was once a brown field site. Queen’s Park is a twelve acre beauty spot with a Victorian industrial past, the site of builder Thomas Turner’s brick works – examples of his artistry stand close to the Drove Road entrance.
Today the former derelict claypit, once popular with zoologist Desmond Morris and his girlfriend Diana Dors, is an award winning park and garden.’ And: ‘In 2001 English Heritage awarded the garden a Grade II listing on the Register of Parks & Gardens. And it’s easy to see why.’
The photo of the gorilla is way better than mine for a start!
On the subject of the gorilla – also from Swindon History blogspot:
‘The long time resident gorilla took up his present position in 1994. The Borough bought the welded steel sculpture by Tom Gleeson following an exhibition in the Theatre Square in the mid-1980s. Today he looked particularly fetching with a flower tucked behind his ear by an admirer.’
Sculpture – Queen’s Park in Swindon
The sculpture is ‘Turtle Storm’ (1986) by Joseph Ingleby and is made of forged steel. Donated to Thamesdown Council as a gift from the Dufty family in 1995 and sited in Queens Park, Swindon, Wiltshire.
The work was originally purchased for Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, the country home of William Morris, in 1989. In 1995 the decision was taken to limit artefacts at the house and grounds to those created in Morris’s lifetime (1834-96).
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.” Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret garden.
Public art of the bovine variety: The GWH Cow Sculpture
Cow sculpture at Great Western Hospital
Whenever I see the GWH cow sculpture it makes me smile and think of one of my favourite Ogden Nash poems:
‘Two cows, mildly mooing: No bull; nothing doing’
Which, if you think about it, is a masterclass in understatement. As is:
‘The cow is of the bovine ilk; One end is moo, the other milk’
‘Cow’
Date of Installation : 1987 Material : Welded Steel
Anyway, I just like that it’s there. Though why a cow exactly? Any particular reason for that, do we know? What I DO know is that it was created in 1987 by Tom Gleeson – the same hand that welded the gorilla that now lives in Queen’s Park.
From Swindon History blogspot: ‘The long time resident gorilla took up his present position in 1994. The welded steel sculpture by Tom Gleeson was purchased by the Borough following an exhibition in the Theatre Square in the mid 1980s.
19/07/2013: UPDATE:
Okay. We might not know why a cow rather than any other animal. But we do now know, thanks to a comment on the blog that it used to be at PMH. In an internal courtyard/garden as I remember. It got moved from there when the GWH opened. I don’t remember exactly how long it had been there. Only that it appeared some time between 1983 and 1990 (dates I worked at PMH).
