140+ of the most innovative and influential designer-makers in the UK – both established and emerging will be selected to showcase and sell their their work directly to the public and trade.

Exhibition stands from £360 ( 2mx1.5m); shared applications from two makers welcome.
Further information and application packs can be downloaded from http://www.greatnorthernevents.co.uk or can be obtained by emailing info@greatnorthernevents.co.uk detailing your name and contact details ( email and address) or by sending a large SAE to:
Great Northern Events, 23 Belfield Rd, Didsbury, Manchester M20 6BJ. The deadline for applications is the 1st of May 2010

The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair at Spinningfields is organised by Great Northern Events (NW) Ltd, a not for profit organisation, developed to champion contemporary craft in the North and promote designer-makers.

You are invited to
Arcade in collaboration with Eden Arts
an Exhibition #Town2Town
5th – 20th March 2010
A dual sited exhibition of arts in empty shops in both Carlisle & Penrith

Launching Fri 5th March at 8pm Lowther Arcade Carlisle
with Arts throughout, live music & Mini Food Fest from The Circle Cafe Bar.

Launching Sat 6th March at 12 noon in Devonshire Arcade, Penrith
with Arts in empty spaces and Poetry in association with World Book Week.

plus additional activities programmed throughout including workshops, performances, The Meanwhile Empty Shops Tour (see attachment) and more – see blog arcadeart.blogspot.com/ for updates or visit www.arcadeart.org.uk

Arcade express sincere thanks to Eden Arts, Carlise City Council Arts Development, Meanwhile Projects, Walton Goodland & Penrith Retail Ltd. in development of this project.

As well as the national literary figures, watch out for these locally-based events in the festival next week:

Monday 8 March
11am-5.30pm – Northwest Voices
Studio – Day Ticket £20
Readings and discussions from Northwest writers, celebrating the strength and diversity of the region’s wide-ranging literary output, covering poetry, short fiction and novel writing.
Events during the day:
• John Murray talks to Sue Allan – Comedy, Cumbria and Dialect
• POETRY SHOWCASE – Flapjack Press presents Jackie Hagan, Gerry Potter and Helen Thomas
• SHORT STORY SHOWCASE – Comma Press presents Zoe Lambert and Annie Clarkson
• NOVEL SHOWCASE – Literature Northwest presents Jenn Ashworth and Brigid Rose
• SURVIVING AS A WRITER – To round off the day, publishers Ra Page and Paul Neads lead a discussion on the pitfalls and practicalities of surviving as a writer, finding an audience for your work, and most important of all developing a voice. The days events are run in association with Slate.

7pm-9pm – The Need for Narrative: Amy Bloom and Jacob Polley and, after the interval, Matt Hilton
Main House – £8
Three consummate storytellers – two of them Cumbrian authors – introduce their books and discuss what stories offer to readers. From love to violence, a paper page can terrify, move and intrigue us. Why? (includes 20 minute interval)

Tuesday 9 March
9pm-10.30pm – Open Mic Cabaret with students from the University of Cumbria
Circle Gallery
Come to have a drink and hear new poems from new voices.

Thursday 11 March
10am-1.30am – Poetry Breakfast – Coffee, Croissants And Poetry
Circle Gallery £6
Bring a poem to read, one of your own or one you admire. (Advance booking essential)

Friday 12th March
12 noon – Sarah Hall, Chris Wadsworth and James Long – Can Creative Writing Be Taught?
Main House – £8
Whilst running an art gallery Chris Wadsworth has published two volumes of memoirs/short stories about her experiences. She was encouraged by James Long who was her writing tutor on a Ways With Words course in Italy. Sarah Hall, a successful, prize-winning novelist, who has been short-listed for the Booker prize, has both been taught and taught on university courses. So did the teaching make a difference?

7pm-8.30pm – A Poetry Reading
Bob Fowler, Jeremy Over, Chris Pilling and Mary Robinson will read from their latest collections, while the late Tom Rawling’s poems will be read by Michael Baron
Studio – £7
• Bob Fowler introduces his diary of ‘Private Verses’.
• Jeremy Over’s work has been described as ‘a menthol lozenge on the confectionery stall of modern poetry’ Vic Allen, The North.
• Chris Pilling has published nine collections of poetry and is highly acclaimed as a translator of poetry from French.
• Mary Robinson’s first collection, The Art of Gardening,
• Tom Rawling (1916-1996) was born in Cumbria and wrote of farming and family life in Ennerdale.

Saturday 13th March
11.30am – Free, but ticketed
Words by the Water/Mirehouse Poetry Competition Event
“The bliss of solitude” – John Burnside, the competition judge, will introduce the winning poets and discuss the process of judging the competition. The winning poems will be read and John Burnside will give a short reading of his own poems.

SPECIAL 2 for 1 OFFER! G.P. Taylor & Claire Connor A Collaboration Friday 12th March, 5.30pm. Buy two tickets to this event for the price of one – just £9.
To take advantage of the offer please quote code COL241 when booking your tickets – either in person at Theatre by the Lake’s Box Office or by phone on 017687 71141.

Find the festival’s full programme details and download a copy of the brochure here

We also welcome on board 2 new area officers:
Paul Burns (Furness) and Richard Smith (South Lakeland/Kendal)

However, we are trying to organize the CFA so that each area of Cumbria/North Lancashire has an appointed officer, so we are seeking officers for the following areas: Copeland, Carlisle, Eden, Allerdale, Central lakes and North Lancs.

The CFA is a non-profit organization solely here to encourage working collaborations at all levels across the region for making film productions, so we are seeking individuals who want to get involved in some small way on a voluntary basis.

In general, we need people on board that want to also help push forward the meaning of what the CFA is striving to achieve, it’s not just about film production, but distributing, and one key element we want to work on is for Cumbria to have a Lake District Film Festival, not just to feature local films, but broaden this to a global scale, making it an international film festival, but to primarily showcase the extraordinary film making talent that this county has to offer.

Every other month, we’ll get together to discuss possible ways to move forward, the CFA is about helping create internal opportunities to make films instead of having external production companies coming into the county and using their own professionals and facilities, we have the talent here to do the job as good as anyone else, so we want to create these opportunities as well.

Obviously, it’s all voluntary, but hopefully there will be some satisfaction in knowing you are helping to create a great active film making community within Cumbria itself. Anyone interested in knowing more about becoming an officer/admin can get in touch on either of the following:
cumbriafilmalliance@live.co.uk
07954 084 054 ~ 01539 898 047

Arcade …in collaboration with Eden Arts

arcade is an artist-led initiative which aims to encourage the bringing together of artists and creative practitioners working in broad ranging art forms, and to organise openly accessible events in public ‘non-gallery’ spaces.

Projects to date have been organised specific to a Victorian built walkway Lowther Arcade in Carlisle city centre, Cumbria where the area is turned into an arts ‘hotspot’ using: the main walkway and architecture, several empty shop units or windows, plus adjoining businesses throughout.

May 2008 saw the very first initiative for Arcade with artists working together in consultation with commercial property agents to create a short programme of art interventions specific to the place; establishing new art/business links and importantly highlighting issues of regeneration in the forgotten public ’space’.

Our next Project proposes the same use of the Carlisle space but additionally Arcade are now collaborating with Eden Arts in order to incorporate further empty shop use within Devonshire Arcade, Penrith: thus creating a town to town link project in enquiry which will aim to stimulate interest from both artists practice and happening in survey.

Arcade has now gathered together an eclectic and stimulating collection of artists proposals for both the Penrith and Carlisle arcades – full programme details soon to be announced!

West Cumbria Tourism Partnership are looking for an artist who could supply a sketch / doodle / front cover image for a Cockermouth information leaflet.

The leaflet will be an information source for both residents and visitors about what is open in the town of Cockermouth and will be updated on a regular basis.

Rather than the leaflet be disposable and recycled the Tourism Partnership want to make it into a limited edition keepsake, hence the desire for an artist input.

For more information, please contact Katie Read, Tourism Director, West Coast Tourism Partnership, kread@cumbriatourism.org

One of Britain’s biggest and most innovative seasons of outdoor arts events will take place across Cumbria again this spring and summer, set against the county’s beautiful and varied landscape and heritage.

This year’s Lakes Alive programme of events will run from 29 April to 5 September. It is Cumbria’s unique contribution to the Legacy Trust UK programme, which was set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

The mainly free shows will include modern circus, dramatic outdoor theatre, contemporary dance and exciting, fiery processions.

Lakes Alive is created and directed by Kendal Arts International with Manchester International Arts. Julie Tait, the director of Kendal Arts International, says: “Lakes Alive is an ambitious four–year Cumbria–wide programme. Last year we set ourselves the objective of making the county a centre of excellence for street arts and we are already well on the way to making that a reality.

“Over 75,000 attended the events in our first year and by 2012 we will have brought at least £4 million of new arts spending into the county. We’re very excited by this year’s programme. As well as the top UK acts, Lakes Alive in 2010 will feature work by outdoor arts companies from across the world including Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Austria, India and Australia.”

There will be a chance to get a taste of Lakes Alive ahead of the full season at the Welcoming the Light event in Carlisle on Saturday 13 March, as part of Illuminating Hadrian’s Wall. A fiery parade will be accompanied by street artists and musicians and led by the incredible Heliosphere balloon with a performer suspended beneath it performing aerial acrobatics.

The Lakes Alive season will formally open in the atmospheric ruins of Furness Abbey near Barrow from 29 April to 2 May, with evening performances of a new show created by critically-acclaimed South Asian Dance Company, Akademi. The show has been specially commissioned by Lakes Alive.

A series of events across the May half term holidays will start with a thrilling outdoor animation festival in Whitehaven showcasing the town’s historic harbour on 29 and 30 May, including a dramatic procession with fire, light and giant illuminated fish by Spanish artists Sarruga.

From 3 to 5 June We Built This City will give people a chance to take part in a public construction extravaganza in the centre of Carlisle. Using thousands of big cardboard boxes and the energy and ingenuity of kids and families, Polyglot Theatre from Australia will help build a magnificent city.

Accompanied by live music buildings will go up, be pulled down, be redesigned, extended, walked through and jumped on, and reconstructed. At the end of the day, everybody can have fun knocking down and squashing the whole city into a recyclable heap of cardboard rubble.

In the south of the county Barrow will welcome some of the best and most exciting modern circus acts from Britain and overseas from 4 to 6 June. Zircus Plus, a unique International Circus Festival, will put on an amazing show at several locations across the town.

On 23 and 24 July German group Theater Titanick, one of Europe’s leading outdoor performance companies, will stage a stunning, large-scale show involving illusion, fire, water, music and dance at Carlisle Castle.

From 28-30 July a number of Cumbrian woodlands will play host to an afternoon of shows that have been specially created for woods or with a woodland theme. Into the Woods at Grizedale, Whinlatter and Talkin Tarn will provide an afternoon of outdoor family adventure with a difference.

Also during the summer holidays (dates TBC), The Cabaret of Dr Caligari, a show created especially for Lakes Alive in 2009, will tour towns in West Cumbria providing an afternoon of cabaret with music, dancing, comedy and spectacle for a family audience. The chaotic Dr Caligari conjures oddities, eccentrics and acrobats out of thin air to entertain the audience, but once out of the box they refuse to disappear!

On Sunday 1 August in Penrith there will be a new international street festival featuring puppetry, strolling characters, comic creations and more from across the globe.

On 30 August highly respected French artists Commandos Percu will stage a dazzling extravaganza of sound, fire, light and colour at Maryport.

The season of events will culminate in Mintfest, one of the country’s largest street arts festivals, which takes place in Kendal at the gateway to the Lakes. Running from 2 to 5 September the festival will include a host of the very best street artists from across the world, including new work commissioned by the UK street arts consortium Without Walls.

Further details about all the shows will be available at www.lakesalive.org.

Lakes Alive is one of three annual programmes commissioned for WE PLAY, the Northwest cultural legacy programme for the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. WE PLAY is funded by Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the 2012 Olympic Games. The project is led by the Arts Council England Northwest on behalf of a new regional partnership. Lakes Alive is sponsored by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and has also received funding from Arts Council England and the Northern Rock Foundation.

Moira Swinbank, the Chief Executive of Legacy Trust UK, says: “Legacy Trust UK is delighted to be funding Lakes Alive, which has already made a considerable impact on Cumbria’s cultural landscape and will continue to build a lasting cultural legacy for the area with the fantastic line-up for the 2010 programme.

Peter Mearns, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications at the NWDA said: “Lakes Alive has fast become a much anticipated programme of world-class events, attracting visitors to Cumbria from far and wide. It’s a fantastic opportunity to showcase the region to a wide audience and adds a whole new dimension to the visitor experience. 2010 promises to deliver another unique collection of events which will no doubt provide a great boost to the region’s visitor economy.”

The Lakes Alive season is also supported by a wide range of other organisations including every council in Cumbria, the Lake District National Park, Cumbria Tourism, Carlisle Renaissance, Carlisle Tourism Partnership, Barrow Regeneration, the Forestry Commission and companies including K Village.

Achieving great art for everyone sets out the Arts Council’s understanding of the current arts landscape and pinpoints the areas that the Council believes need development. This is the first time the Arts Council has brought together all artforms and development areas into one set of long term priorities.

Their consultation process builds on their previous work to define how they will work with artists and arts organisations to create positive change for the arts over the next 10 years.

This consultation is not aimed at the organisations the Arts Council already funds – it is open to anyone interested in the arts and culture, so if you have got something to say or contribute do make sure that you make your voice heard.

You can access the documentation and participate online here http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/consultation/

Directing Actors for the Screen

Dates: Sat 27th/ Sun 28th Feb
Sat 6th / Sun 7th March

***The course costs are fully subsidised-applicants must be aged 16 or over and living in Cumbria. ***

Signal Films has 12 places available for people aged 16yrs + to take part in a free directing course led by an award winning filmmaker.
Deadline for application: Friday 19th February

Brian Gilbert, Golden Globe nominee and director of 2002’s awarding winning feature The Gathering starring Christina Ricci, will provide an in-depth insight into the process of directing actors for the screen at a 4-day course taking place in Barrow-in Furness

This is a great opportunity for aspiring directors to gain knowledge and expertise from an industry expert, working with professional actors, learning the best ways to communicate within a film set.

About the course:
The course will cover in detail the roles, methods and approaches of the director when composing scenes with actors. Through a combination of hands on exercises, screenings and demonstrations, participants will learn the fundamental skills needed to effectively direct performances to create a succinct and moving film.

This course will examine several different elements including
• Director and the script
• Directing actors
• Directing Different Genres
• Technical aspects- camera, lighting & crossing the line

About the tutor:
Course leader Brian Gilbert delivers the directing Actors course at the National Film and Television School, described as the world leader in high-end media training. He also directed the 1997 feature Wilde starring Stephen Fry and Jude Law and the classic 80’s body swap movie Vice Versa with Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage.

For a place on the course:
For an application form and more information contact Signal Films on signalfilms@gmail.com or 01229839983

Also: FILM INSIDERS TALENT FESTIVAL 2010!

In this, its second year, the festival is welcoming emerging filmmakers and enthusiasts of all ages to attend another packed programme of completely free events running from Friday 5th – Sunday 7th March in Barrow.

There will be an exciting mix of free filmmaking classes, animation workshops, screenings and advice sessions from industry talent from across the UK.

www.signalfilms.co.uk
www.filminsiders.co.uk