A modest proposal

Doug Sandle writes:

Leeds Rugby Arts Steering Group and Headingley LitFest 2009

Proposal for Creative Writing Competition as a partnership project between the Rugby Arts Steering Group (Leeds Rugby Foundation) and the Headingley LitFest.


As part of its future programme, the Rugby Arts Steering Group has earmarked a creative writing competition as a possible event to be organised in the 2009 season*. The intention was to promote a creative writing competition among the fans and general rugby constituency, which might feature children’s and adult categories and be open to submissions in poetry, short story , short film script, or a personal account / reminiscence on the theme of rugby.

While details have not been finalised the competition could concern both rugby codes and the two clubs, Leeds Rhinos and Leeds Carnegie. It was also envisaged that this proposal would facilitate some education / community work around creative writing, particularly given the facilities and experience of the Leeds Rugby Foundation’s educational work and also given that the Director of Leeds Arts Forms (Education Leeds) is a member of the Rugby Arts Steering Group.

Given the further development of the Headingley LitFest and its plans for a second event during the spring of 2009, there is an obvious opportunity for a cooperative partnership among the Rugby Arts Steering Group, the Leeds Rugby Foundation and the Headingley LitFest to incorporate the Rugby Creative Writing Competition into the festival, with mutual benefit.

Promoted as part of the Headingley LitFest, the work of the Rugby Arts Steering Group would have greater reach and contact with the local area and community, while the HLF would have the opportunity to reach the many thousands of people that are associated with Leeds Rugby and its activities. There is also potential opportunity for greater publicity and marketing for the festival through the involvement of the marketing and PR arm of Leeds Rugby. The close partnership association between Leeds Metropolitan University and Leeds Rugby would also potentially enable the project to reach out to many of the local Leeds student population. The possibility of using the stadium as a venue for some of the festival’s events is also seen as a potential benefit to both organisations.

It is proposed that initial discussion should take place involving Richard Wilcocks (Representative HLF), Doug Sandle (Chair LRASG) and Chris Rostron, (Manager of the Leeds Rugby Foundation), and then formal proposals discussed by the respective committees.

29.05.08

*Successful projects so far have been commissioning the composer Carl Davis to create a (7 minute) orchestral anthem to the Leeds Rhinos (Hold On), sponsored by Leeds Met, which has been recorded by the Orchestra of Opera North, a one year artist in residence project supported by the Arts Council of England, Yorkshire, and the ongoing commissioning and production of a contemporary dance to the music of Hold On.

Below, Doug Sandle (photo by James Heartfield) at a Leeds Met symposium:

Put it in your diary

Don't forget the meeting next Tuesday (20 May) from 7.30pm at the New Headingley Club in St Michael's Road. It will be an informal mingle rather than a meeting, beginning in the bar area.

Your suggestions, comments and involvement will be welcome. Use the email on the right as well, clearly marking your message LITFEST so that it is not deleted along with all those spammers who have secret bank accounts in Nigeria.

Best wishes from Richard Wilcocks

Raw Inquest

Blog readers are very likely to be interested in this event at Seven. Here is the flyer.

Michelle Scally Clarke proudly presents: Raw Inquest

A tribute to Daniel Nelson by Michelle Scally Clarke working alongside the Bassment Poets collective.

Special guests on the night:

Sula Jules

Music by George and the Champion Swimmers

Open mic spot

Venue: Seven Arts Space 31a Harrogate Road Chapel Allerton
Date: 8th May
Time: Doors open 7.30pm
Ticket prices: Entry £7 (£5 Concessions & Pre-booking)
For further information please contact:info@sevenleeds.co.uk

Daniel Nelson, my nephew, died in prison aged 18. He was on remand for allegedly dealing drugs: three weeks and six suicide attempts later, he was found dead in his cell.

My family learned of Daniel's death from Sky News on 20 September 2005. Daniel went into prison a confident young man. Three weeks later he was a shadow of his former self. Toxicology reports showed that he was clean - apart from the psychotic drugs fed to him in prison.

Raw Inquest is my family's story. It describes the failings of the justice system and uncovers the scab of negligence that affects children and whole families who have been placed in the care system. This is our inquest, the forgotten story.

Any suggestions?

The small committee which got the wheels rolling for the first LitFest met recently. It was agreed that all went well and that there should be a second LitFest at about the same time of year in 2009 - no exact dates yet.

We are now 'looking at possibilities' - noting what other festivals do and finding out who might be available and affordable. A novelist? More for children? What do you think?

Please get in touch with your suggestions, for example through the email address on the right. Put LITFEST in the subject line so it is easily distinguishable from the spam. You don't even have to be a Headingley resident to give us advice.

There will be an open meeting at the New Headingley Club in St Michael's Road on Tuesday 20 May at 7.30pm.

Dave is Duncan

David Robertson has moved on from Captain Speedy (see below) to become King Duncan with Opera North. Full story is here.

Alamayou and Arthur

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Its rare - and perhaps unwise - to try and stage a piece that's written for radio. But the style, scope and subject matter of Peter's play made us risk the attempt.
That's a quote from the programme for I was a stranger by Peter Spafford, the first of the double bill from Theatre of the Dales which was performed on Saturday and Sunday evenings in the studio at the Yorkshire College of Music and Drama in Shire Oak Road. The studio was full to overflowing on both occasions. The programme continues:

We hope you'll enjoy this curious hybrid, where actors carry scripts as in a broadcast, at the same time as telling the story visually.

We did enjoy it. We loved it. During the post-performance discussion yesterday (Sunday) the director, David Robertson, who also played Captain Speedy, seemed a little uneasy, wondering whether the show had really worked, because actors wandering about with scripts was unusual, like a rehearsal.

If he was fishing for compliments, he caught fat trout, glistening and beautiful. The play is the story of Prince Alamayou of Abyssinia, captured at the age of seven as a kind of afterthought after the British had defeated his father, King Tewedros, and indulged in extensive looting of ancient treasures. The play traces his journey from Africa to India to Rugby School to Sandhurst to Headingley, where he lived with Cyril Ransome, father of Arthur.

The play has plenty of local references, of course. Alamayou, in search of his lost identity and breathing industrial air, walks about in Headingley in the middle of the night, which is not really advisable even today unless you are with friends and dressed as a bumblebee. He visits the menagerie in the zoological gardens, the very solid wall of which can still be seen in Chapel Lane, and he is holed up in Hollin Lane, which is very much still there, just a little changed since the time when a prince was dying of pneumonia, bombarded by telegrams from Queen Victoria, deeply concerned about the impending death of one of her little pets, a pretty black boy with a winning smile.

Jamal Rahman was a superb Alamayou. He's in the foreground of the photo below watched by - not in this order - Danny and Jessica Neale, Arif Javid, David Robertson, Jane Oakshott, Maggie Mash, Richard Rastall and Stuart Fortey.

Stuart Fortey was in his own short play, Duffers, which followed, playing Cyril Ransome, as he had in the previous one. It illustrated this 1930 quote on Swallows and Amazons from Arthur Ransome:

The children in it have no firm dividing line between make-believe and reality, but slip in and out again and again, exactly as I had done when I was a child and I fancy we all of us do in grown-up life.....In a way we were making the best of both worlds.
Stuart was playing dead when he was on stage looming behind David Robertson's entirely convincing Arthur on the banks of a Cumbrian river, a black-tied spectre with a sour voice. Jessica Neale playing Ransome's rather neglected daughter Tabitha is, incredibly, still at school - Notre Dame Sixth Form College - where she is doing Theatre Studies. She was terrific. We'll be hearing more about her in the future.

The Arthur Ransome Society was represented by Margaret and Joe Ratcliffe (that's them down below) who came with relevant books and who contributed to the discussion afterwards.

So, an excellent last evening of the LitFest. We've not really finished though.

                                                 Photo by Richard Wilcocks

                                               Photo by Richard Wilcocks