Peace, tranquility, song and reflection in the East Anglian landscape…

We thought this was lovely.

”…in March 2020, the choirs fell silent. The Voice Project had planned to start rehearsing a new show, Arc of the Sky, inspired by the idea of a bird’s-eye view of Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh, known as the Cathedral of the Marshes, the landscape it sits in – the Blyth estuary – and the coastline.

Performances were planned there for July. Instead, we made this film with the singers recording and filming themselves. This is the result…”

Source: The Voice Project – Discover more here https://www.voiceproject.co.uk/about/

                                  See this wonderful creation on YouTube here

Beautiful filmic and voice creative work. Uplifting and contemplative also – but firmly anchored with their humanity.

Perfect for these difficult times.

We thought that these two U.S based projects were delightful examples of how, using remote technology, you can explore both art and place from your armchair.

They are not intended for the casual, under resourced visitor certainly, in terms of expected project outcome. However, they are wonderful case studies of how their subjects can be explored in depth from the laptop.

As well as successfully cultivating a world wide audience. See what you think…they might offer a new template for action in these difficult times?

See more details here…

Open House New York

October 17–18, 2020  See more at https://ohny.org/weekend

Yes, this citywide celebration of architecture is happening. (And, yes, things are a bit different this year.)

What will I be able to sign up for and see?

  • Self-Guided Tours: itineraries for outdoor exploration of an area by foot, by bike, or by boat.
  • On-Site Video Tours: video walkthroughs of a project with architects, historians, and other experts.
  • Open Studios: virtual presentations by architects and artists of a single project.
  • Podcasts: audio recordings about a single site.
  • Exhibitions: self-guided explorations of digital exhibitions.
  • Virtual Programs: panels, interactive tours, live Q&As, performances, and more

EDITIONS / ARTISTS’ BOOKS FAIR – New York

OCTOBER 14 – 28, 2020

See more here…

We are thrilled to announce E/AB Fair 2020, fully online, October 14 – 28 on this website.

A world class array of visual art book publishers in a virtual conference hall venue.

The fair will gather an international community of over 60 publishers and dealers, featuring emerging and mid-career contemporary artists. Each exhibitor will have their own viewing room and, as always, they will be accessible for artwork discussion and special insights.”

For a New York based initiative you can expect to find a vast array of visual art exhibitors from the East Coast of the USA. But there also, in the catalogue, a healthy assortment of non-East Coast based creative centres.

These include, for example the Glasgow Print Studio, Stoney Road Press from Dublin and the Flatbed Centre for Contemporary Printmaking in Austin, Texas’

Just visiting these web pages is inspirational. We wish all the contributors to the event good luck.


So if you are visiting OHNY this weekend, why not stay in New York for another week and take in the visual feast that is the E//AB Fair.

All without leaving your armchair!

The Edinburgh International Book Festival starts today. Events are free and you can visit the very impressive festival web pages here – https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/

Edinburgh books made tangible: Florencia Viadonna, Creative Commons, Unsplash

Taking place in your web browser from the 15th to the 31st August 2020.

  • Book attendance at over 140 events – see more.
  • Browse the very comprehensive Festival Bookshop – see more.
  • What’s happening with the Baillie Gifford Children’s Programme? – see more.

Some highlights for us…

The New York Times Series

‘For the second year running, The New York Times and Edinburgh International Book Festival are collaborating to bring a timely and thought-provoking celebration of writing and ideas to readers around the world’.

Sessions include Women in Politics, live NYT book reviews, Inside the NYT Crossword and Should Capitalism Survive Climate Change? In turbulent times this festival theme will help crystallise your take on the socio-political tensions that wrack the country in 2020. See more.

Outriders Africa

Having supported ten writers to explore and re-imagine the landscape in the US in 2017, the festival this year will send ten writers on journeys across Africa.

‘Outriders will again see ten writers explore a region of the world – this time in Africa. Each pair of writers will embark on an international journey through Africa, meeting writers and communities along their way and engaging in discussions around migration, colonial legacies, inequalities and the impact of globalisation and environmental change. Each of the ten Outriders will create a new work in response to their journey which will be presented at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2021’.

You can find this important work, challenging perceptions here.

Made in Scotland

If you needed evidence of the intellectual  powerhouse that is Scotland, find it in this festival theme here.

You can find the festival full programme here.

You can explore how to book here.

You can donate and support the festival here.


Taken between 1939 and 1940, this is a really impressive historical, location referenced photo-archive of NYC – marking the point of emergence for a new world in the coming decades, but shaded with modernism even then.

Explore a city, one dot at a time…

The Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of every building in the five boroughs of New York City. In 2018, the NYC Municipal Archives completed the digitisation and tagging of these photos. This website places them on a map.

You can discover the aims of the Works Progress Administration on Wikipedia. Part of the The New Deal, it represented an energy and drive to resuscitate the lives of millions of job seekers in a recession.

The image catalogue is resonant of today, in many layered ways.

 


For a really contemporary photographic take on NYC, you can explore…

Hearts in Isolation: Expanding the Walls 2020

Image: Daniel Koponyas, Creative Commons, Unsplash

 

‘Organised by Studio Museum Harlem, the online photography exhibition Hearts in Isolation: Expanding the Walls 2020 features work by the fifteen teenage artists in the 2020 cohort of the Museum’s annual program, Expanding the Walls: Making Connections Between Photography, History, and Community

Launching July 30th, the first online edition of the annual Expanding the Walls exhibition marks the program’s twentieth anniversary.’

Source: https://www.photoconsortium.net/hearts-in-isolation-expanding-the-walls-2020-online-photographic-exhibition/

For more detail of this contemporary work:

https://studiomuseum.org/expanding-walls

 

 

 


We are proud supporters of The St. Elizabeth Hospice.

Support St. Elizabeth Hospice with your creativity…

You can support the Hospice and get creative with your writing talent by entering the The Henry Buckmaster Short Story Competition. Tell your story and support those who work to help others! ( We are remembering Henry too…).

See https://www.stelizabethhospice.org.uk/the-henry-buckmaster-short-story-competition/

Details of the Competition

  • The competition is open to anyone over the age of 18
  • To enter please make a donation to St. Elizabeth Hospice of £10 or more per entry. You may enter more than once.
  • We ask that your short story is a maximum of 3,000 words long
  • We ask that your short story is based around the themes of family, community or compassion
  • The competition is now open and will close at midnight on Sunday 14 June.
  • The winner will be announced on National Writing Day, the 26 June.

How To Enter

Once you have made your donation of £10 (if you are able to give more it would be very much appreciated) on the Here Together JustGiving Page we will be in contact with you regarding sending in your short story. The deadline for entries is midnight on Sunday 14 June.

You can see details of the competition judges, and even how to enter with a story written on traditional paper by hand here – https://www.stelizabethhospice.org.uk/the-henry-buckmaster-short-story-competition/

Discover the great work of the St. Elizabeth Hospice team here – https://www.stelizabethhospice.org.uk/

Don’t forget to donate here http://www.justgiving.com/shortstorycompetitionstelizabethhospice

Good luck!


In the U.S. the Smithsonian Institution has created an Open Access resource of staggering diversity.

Update July 2020: If you are interested in furniture, specifically in growing your own furniture – check out this fabulous article on the BBC web pages – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32977012


Swiss/German side chair, late 17thC – early 18thC – Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

“Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo”.

Source: https://www.si.edu/openaccess

As always with Open Access resources, despite millions of electronic artifacts in the Public Domain on the Smithsonian web pages, some do have license/usage restrictions. Always check before use!

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966

For the inquisitive, there is a wealth of subject matter and themes to explore on the Smithsonian pages. Whether your interest is art, ceramics, photography, science or zoology…there will be a reservoir of interesting items to peruse.

A search of the archive for ‘film’ produces a delightful range of posters, lobby cards and images of garments worn in Hollywood movies.

See an example search here.

This is a creative archive in the public domain, bar none. It is easy, even in a short time, to find resources that can inspire your next creative project.

We recommend a visit to the Smithsonian.

 


Update: 5th Feb: Not long now! Check ticket availability here

Another fabulous series of literary treats available again this year. An imaginative, stirring and diverse programme of author and book occasions. 28th February to 31st March.

See more here…

We are looking forward to rounding out the Festival with the Golden Age of Crime Weekend, for example…Saturday 28th & 29th March, hosted by the Radisson Park Inn Palace Hotel in Southend on  Sea.

Discover more here:

Or, if crime fiction is your thing, you can even begin the calendar of events in the company of Val McDermid at the launch event: How the Dead Speak. On February 28th in the evening at Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford.

Young Essex has not been forgotten either – with a full range activities for the young reader. We particularly like the Manifesto for Essex launch, where young people can give voice to their thinking about Climate Change.

Also for Young Essex is a great idea, the pop-up storytelling armchair. Springing into events across a range of different locations in Chelmsford, Basildon and Harlow.

 ‘A super comfy treat for book lovers young and old to enjoy their favourite stories out loud! Free and open to all – come along and hear a story…’

Whatever your age, check out the Festival full events list here.

Find out how to book here.


A featured article from our current archive:

Writing in The Guardian in late 2014 the author Rupert Wallis was minded to tell us that ‘…more and more not-so- young adults are reading YA fiction’ –  which he declared was no bad thing. He went on…

‘The power of YA fiction to generate an emotional resonance around death should not be underestimated in UK society, where young adults spend a lot of time immersed in the artificial realities of cyberspace and gaming’.

Source: The Guardian, 18th August 2014.

Ellen Lives On - cover image and web link
Buy this book here, with free delivery…

Lynda Haddock, in her first novel, has wonderfully underscored the sentiment with her first novel Ellen Lives On. The book features the journey, the exploration of a new life and the acquisition of a new set of values, by the teenager Ellen.

For Ellen the journey is mapped from the suicide of her mother, an emergent rally to the cause of education and her exodus to the Metropolis in search new friends, political engagement and the forming of a new identity for herself.

‘One way of tackling the difficult questions raised by death is to feel connected to one another in addressing them, to feel human together…’ writes Wallis in his article. Indeed, the sensitively written, clear narrative from Lynda Haddock stirs up the emotions and will clearly illuminate a shared experience for teenagers suffering loss.

Buy this book, with free shipping here…

The new novel was enjoyed by the Books go Walkabout team in our office. Sue Martin, writing for our new season book list opined…

”A desperately moving novel about a young girl whose life changes forever when she returns home to find that her mother has committed suicide.

Ellen, a scholarship girl at a local grammar school in the 1970’s, finds that life is uncomfortable and fraught as soon as you are no longer the ‘norm’ pupil, let alone the trauma of discovering that she is alone in the world. Alone, that is, apart from her Grandfather, who is elderly and lives a long way from Ellen.

Taken in by her aunt and uncle, Ellen finds the welcome is short lived and that she is a burden to the family, simply used as the girl in the house to do all the chores. Her uncle tells her the sooner she finishes school and starts a job the sooner she can pay for her living.

After a series of heart-wrenching problems with friends, teachers and those who were meant to be supporting her, Ellen goes on the run. She finds friendship with people in a squat, her grandfather is taken into hospital and she abandons any hope of a career with prospects.

Eventually Social Services find Ellen and her life starts to rebuild, but never back to where it was and with very little hope of the future that had been planned.

A moving and poignant story for Young Adults and a thought provoking debut novel for Lynda Haddock.”

It is also, in its way, a primer for adults, the ‘not so young’ in Wallis’s narrative, to recognise the strains and pains of a teenager going through this crisis, such is the insight afforded the reader of any age by Lynda Haddock’s writing.

Lynda Haddock’s work joins a solid tradition of novels that seek to offer reflection and a way forward in the face of death and loss. From The Fault in Our Stars by John Green to Jacqueline Wilson’s Vicky Angel – the Haddock narrative deals with death, yes, but also in the exploration of self, equality and values – all of which are significant markers for young adults as they march forward into the 21st Century.

For Wallis ‘…the true significance of death in YA is that authors are reflecting back what they see everyday; namely, that death is ominously prevalent these days, whether in fiction or a national news broadcast or the obituary columns‘.

This is certainly true of the author Lynda Haddock, whose professional life before her novel encompassed education and the specialist support of children experiencing difficulty in their lives. The storytelling resonates with it.

The experience tellingly shows in the novel Ellen Lives On, and we hope it might become a staple of your library of resources – tendering a way into loss and bereavement that will be recognised by any teenager, whatever their culture, age or background.


Editor’s Note:

We would commend Lynda Haddock’s publisher to note that the YA Book Prize for 2019 is now open for nominations.

You can discover the latest updates to the YA Book Prize here.

Publishers can find the YA Book Prize terms and conditions and how to apply details here.

We loved this book, buy a copy and explore challenging and stirring landscapes of the teenage mind.

The conversationsEAST team.

Our team also deliver international author and illustrator visits and exchanges through our Books go Walkabout project. Find out more here…

You can also discover reviews and features for younger readers on Book Monitor, our BgW review pages. See more here...

Enlightenment in the East of England

Happy Seasonal Holiday from all the consEAST team!

Could you do it?

Supporting St. Elizabeth Hospice in Ipswich, Suffolk, UK this season

Are you ready for your dip with St. Elizabeth Hospice?
This year will be the 16th annual Christmas Day dip for St. Elizabeth Hospice. Brave souls can see more about this fabulously refreshing event here.
Christmas Day Dip 2019  – 25th December, 8.30 – 11.00am
…on Felixstowe Seafront.

You can sign up and get your tickets on this Eventbrite page here.

What the hospice strives for, with your help.
”St Elizabeth Hospice aims to improve life for people living with progressive and terminal illnesses by:
  • Providing multi-disciplinary holistic specialist and dedicated palliative care services to patients, their families and carers
  • Working alongside other statutory and voluntary agencies to provide specialist and dedicated palliative care, in a timely manner, where the patient wishes to be
  • Acting as a resource to the local community regarding general and specialist palliative care to increase confidence and competence in improving life for people living with a progressive illness
  • Providing care that respects the choices made by patients and their families so that patients are treated in their preferred place and die in their place of choice where possible
  • Working towards equitable provision of all services, leading to increased use of services by people with non-malignant progressive disease, and those from seldom-heard communities”

(Source: https://www.stelizabethhospice.org.uk)  See more and give more on their informative and compassionate web pages.

 

Winter dip image: Delphine Ducaruge - Unsplash, Creative Commons

Here at ConsEast Towers we are already planning the new season voluntary and fund-raising support.

HandsUp banner image and web link
Discover thirty years of help here…

This year we are supporting St. Elizabeth Hospice in Ipswich. If you are within reach of the hospice, and have time and skills to help the team deliver this great, supportive work, then the web link below is for you.

Register as a potential volunteer with St Elizabeth Hospice here.

”We started thanks to the foresight and commitment of the local community and medical experts who laid the groundwork to open the hospice.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the then East Suffolk District Health Authority and other groups began discussions about establishing a hospice in east Suffolk. The Health Authority was unfortunately unable to fund the project so an appeal committee was formed.

In 1983, a public fundraising appeal was launched with the aim of raising £1 million”. Source: St Elizabeth web pages.

The rest, as they say is history. But you still have a chance to take part in this important service, and work with great people at St. Elizabeth Hospice as a volunteer.

Donate button and web link.
Give today. Thank you.

Help make the next thirty years count, just as much, by visiting the Hospice team here.

Click the donate button here, and give money today.

 


The conversationsEAST team, and SmithMartin LLP are proud to support the energy, effort and compassion of St. Elizabeth Hospice.

Write to the Hospice team here – St Elizabeth Hospice, 565 Foxhall Road, Ipswich, IP3 8LX

Image credit:

News Desk image by Markus Winkler, Creative Commons, Unsplash...

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