Arts Fest Round Up Part 3: Everything Else

A short one today, and the last one of the Arts Festival Round Up 2012. Alongside the Oddfellows photography and the Alrewas Radio, I also had a very busy week bobbing about here and there. For radio purposes, I tried to pop into as many workshops as I could, but unfortunately I didn't even scratch the surface.

On the Saturday had a quick look at the street market, after helping to set up an Art exhibition from the Alrewas Show, and it all looked really fantastic. The whole village was out in force! I have to say though, the most striking thing about Saturday was the knitting which had suddenly sprouted across the village. I noticed on my paper round, and believe me, at that time in the morning it is slightly disconcerting when you are great with a multicoloured array of knitted penguins, bow ties, bunting and poppies, before you have even got past the front of the shops!

Another thing I also really enjoyed was the unveiling of the 101 oddfellows on the front of the village hall. Once again the village was out in force to celebrate this, and it was great to see the end result of the project I had been working on!

On the monday I was playing with fellow members of a county run jazz orchestra called BYJO (Burton Youth Jazz Orchestra) which was a great experience and I enjoyed very much I also enjoyed listening to everybody else who was performing on that occasion, especially Adam Wright Jazz, Sam Garrett and the Barbershop Quartet who once again put out an absolutely pitch perfect performance (did you see what I did there?)

As well as that commitment musically I did a couple of lunch time concerts in the Methodist Church which were great. A fantastic showcase of some of the classical talent within the village, right from people of the young age of 8. It was really inspiring to see how much musical talent there really is in the village. 

The final thing which I was involved with is the Graffiti Art Project, ran by the village's very one Jeff Jacks, as well as Fiona Reeve, Sue Williams and Paula Stanley, to name but a few of the faces I saw about over the workshops. The idea was to refresh an area of the bridge by the canal that was previously covered in dirt to something to last as a legacy to do with the Olympics of 2012. This was a great project to get involved with, not least because we ended up painting ourselves more than the walls, as well as the various people who came to admire whilst walking their dogs, and the vast range of artistic styles which you can see of all the different young people from the village who gt involved.

I couldn't talk about the arts festival without summing up the Party In The Park.It really was fantastic. I think it finished to night on exactly the right note and left people feeling truly inspired by the talent and abilities of the people of the village (not the Village People you must understand). With outstanding performances from local bands and artists such as Toxic Crocodiles, The Signs and Sam Garrett, as well as Twisted Cigarette, The Ample Band, Shy Heights and the 20 years standing The Hoovers, it was a great night of fantastic entertainment and there was a really pleasant atmosphere which overtook the playing fields that evening. 

I am very much looking forward to the next Alrewas Arts Festival, with so much more to come alongside the fantastic things which we have seen this year. I am also very excited as to what might be happening in the future in terms of the radio and also the Oddfellows Photography group and also a mini Arts Festival in the autumn next year. I am not sure of any details about that, all I know is Jim seems to have some big and amazing plans up his sleeve, and as usual they are going to be spectacular. So I will try and keep you updated with Arts Fest News, as well as the website which is www.alrewas-artsfest.co.uk which is definitey the place to go to check out what is coming up and what is happening with stuff in the future.

once again, thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next. I've been Tom Peach

@peachy146

Arts Fest Round Up Part 2: Alrewas Radio

So, as well as the 101 Oddfellows photography project, I was also involved with another new project to this year's Arts Rest, known as Alrewas Radio. This was an internet radio station which we ran for the whole week, getting over 800 unique listeners over the days which we broadcasting for and we covered all the exciting Arts Fest action including workshops, performances, concerts, and we even spoke first hand to: Pete Ralley, doing the videos and website for the festival and also the coordinator of the Lottery Funded Alrewas Archives project; Jeff Jacks, a resident artist and organiser of the Graffiti Art project, as well as running several workshops on wibbly wobbly crafts; Paula Dumulo, who is the main organiser of the whole event, working tirelessly for the many weeks before and throughout the festival week itself to make sure everything run smoothly for the Arts Festival; and finally Jim Ralley, the man behind the legend, the father of Alrewas Radio. 

So Jim first came up with this idea after attending the Manchester Arts Festival where there was an internet radio station which covered the festival. Now this was a trigger for him to put an idea to the committee, and before long, Mr Richardson, friend and fellow blogger, came to me with an email containing all the details for what was to be a truly fantastic, exhausting and all consuming project for the Arts Festival Week.

So that was basically how it came about. We would be lying if we said we knew what we were doing, or even how it would work, but we were both excited and apprehensive as to the potential f this project. We spent many a Maths lesson chatting about how it would work, how it would be run, who would be presenting, wha we would be talking about. There were lengthily discussions on the group page on Facebook, between us, other people who wanted to get involved and between Jim who we were talking with about the technical side of things.

About a week before the radio was due to begin, a brand new Arts Council grant-funded Macbook and a fantastic radio mic arrived at my house. The next thing  I did was to march  round to James' with all this gear and we spent an excited day unwrapping and setting up, installing software and transferring music. James was ecstatic about the whole thing. I have to say though, I was a little more nervous about how it would all work.

This was at the point which Joe Ralley, Jim's brother was brought on board. The day before the whole ting kicked off I was round at their house, setting up this kit to actually broadcast stuff. Now I have to say I can work my way round a PC like I can the back of my hand, but a Macbook to me is like an Alien. The differences between the 2 are't all that great, but they are enough to confuse a lowly little Windows guy like me! I learnt more about Apple in that 1 afternoon than I have ever done in my whole life, and I still don't understand how it all works.

So we had it all working, there was great excitement in the house as there was a shout from the dining room to say: "We can here you on the radio!" So it was all set to go. I left with confidence and the next day, turned up at the hall for 9 'o' clock, thinking an hour would be plenty of time to set up and be ready to go at 10. As everyone knows, tech never works when you want it to, and that morning, it definitely didn't want to. It took us the best part of 2 hours, along with 2 different broadcasting programs to get it to work, and eventually we were on. James had missed the whole of the opening show, and we were having issues with popping on the mic, the music being too loud while the voice was too quiet, and the mic cutting out. But we were live! And how good did it feel? Incredible! We had finally done it. All the hard work appeared to have payed off.

So throughout the week we played over 400 different tunes, broadcasting for 56 hours and racking up, as I said earlier, over 800 unique listeners. It was a great week, with about 15 different young people involved with the presenting and producing in the end, we got an overwhelming positive response from the people of the village and the wider community in which we sit in. I am still getting great feedback now, and nagging off people to continue with it.

Which leads me to a nice way to conclude this one. After discussions with Pete, Paula, Jim, Joe and James, we have decided as a group that we are going to do the radio every 2 weeks, on a Sunday. There is still a lot to decide on, and yes time is short, but we will have it up and running as a regular schedule in not very long at all, with all the hosting and presenting done by village people for the people of the village. So please stay up to date with all thing Radio from this blog, the twitter which is: @AlrewasRadio, the hashtag #AlrewasRadio and on the facebook page: www.facebook.com/alrewasradio.

Thanks for reading. To find out more about the festival ad my involvement within it, the please check out my last installment of the Arts Fest Round Up.

I've been Tom Peach.

@peachy146

Alrewas Arts Fest Round Up: 101 Oddfellows

So here we are, over a week on from the Alrewas Arts Fest. When you walked around the village in the couple of days that proceeeded it, you felt this sense of shell-shock, almost eery peace and tranquility throughout the village. The positivity that was left by it, the sense of unity and community spirit was incredibly noticeable.

So right from the build up to the festival there was a great energy that embraced village. This was even evident on the internet with various emails and excited tweets from Paula and the team. The festival was set to be the best and most exciting yet, embracing more of the village than ever before.

One thing I did learn from the festival was about it's origins. This being the 4th Festival, held every 2 years (I am told for the reason that it is unbelievably hard work to put together bi-annually, let alone annually, which I can very much believe and sympathise with) it was spawned out of an arts committee idea in 2006 and has grown and grown every year to become what it is now.

I have fond memories of the event on past occasions. I remember doing a film workshop with Pete Ralley with my Grandad, whereby we drove around in his Ford Mondeo (coincidently held together with masking tape at the time) filming the village, before returning back to the village hall to add effects like blowing people up and creating fireworks in the church. I can also remember past Party In The Parks, where we took our camping chairs, ate burgers and enjoyed some of the fantastic music produced by the wonderful local musicians that really are an asset to the village.

However I feel this festival has been the most involving for me, not least because it has been the most recent, but because I feel like I have played more of a role in  the activities, workshops and projects which have gone on. I suppose this all started back in March some time when I bumped into Paula outside the shops. I was asked if I would like to take some pictures of some oddfellows, and in my usual way, agreed without really knowing what I was letting myself in for. It turns out, after attending are really interesting training day with Paula, Jim and a lady called Alison who is a photographer for Kerrang, where we ate lots of chips, drank lots of tea and most importantly learned how to take a decent portrait photograph, that we would be attempting to photograph 101 people of different ages from the village of Alrewas.

Well to say 101 is an understatement. In the end we took 214 different people's photographs, each sent on their way with a very fetching badge stating "I Gave My Face To 101 Oddfellows" on it, as well as the promise of their face being projected big style onto the side of the church. I have to say at this point, while we had completely exhausted ourselves over the 2 days we took the photos, we still didn't really know exactly what would be happening to them.

No more than 2 months later, cycling back from my paper round one day, there was the front of the village hall (named Oddfellows Hall, just so you can make that link) covered from top to bottom with the faces of the village. I have to say it did give a little bit of a fright, not least because it was still only 7 in the morning and my eyes were still a little blurry. 

So that was it until the Saturday of the festival, when the protective tarporline was ripped off, and the project was revealed to the whole of the village which seemed to have gathered itself outside of the hall, blocking the road, footpaths, and anything else which tried to spoil the fun of that opening day of the festival. Jim, however, in his usual way, didn't think this was quite enough. And also, Jim, being Jim, decided he wanted to get out his prized Macbook and iPad and show off his fancy tech. So on the Tuesday night, it was to the church, where we were treated to a fantastic display of lights, eerie music from Maya Whatton, and Jim's fancy projection mapping thingy-ma-bob which I still don't fully understand! I have to say it was absolutely brilliant!

Getting involved with this project was great fun. It gave us an opportunity to learn new skills (when I say us, I should probably mention Katie Greensmith at this point who probably has more to claim than I do for the actually photos themselves) and put them into practice to be part of an incredibly awe-inspiring project which we have a lot to thank Paula, Jim and everybody else who helped with that. 

Thanks for reading!

To find out what else happened in this years festival, please read on to the next few posts!

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146!