‘Local Voices’ in June


Three Friends of the Museum are involved in a project which will see a Salterton Playhouse production on Friday 13 June.

The project is sponsored by the Otter Valley Association with the aim of encouraging writing and the pleasure of reading — both poetry and prose fiction — inspired by our local Devon landscape and natural heritage.

Friends of Fairlynch Sue Chapman, Katherine McDermott-Darley and Nicola Daniels have been working in the ‘Local Voices’  group which includes Wendy Spicer and Maggie Giraud.   Their writing has been inspired  by the broad theme of the Phoenix Myth: regeneration, rebirth, hope and growth.  “It’s a very broad and surprising  spectrum of ideas,” says Sue.  A successful creative workshop collaboration with Clinton Devon Estates, and the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths Conservation Trust took place earlier this year around themes associated with the ‘Phoenix Cycle’ and local photographer Mo Bowman’s stunning images. A second Writers’ Workshop took place on Saturday 5 April.   Dovetailing into this creative programme for 2014, ‘Local Voices’ has reached out to individuals in the community who have contributed their writing for an event taking place at the Budleigh Salterton Playhouse on Friday 13 June,  from 7.00 to 9.00 pm.  Sue’s fellow-organiser Katherine  explained:
 
“This event will be an evening of readings, wine and socialising, featuring writing linked to the local environment across an open theme  —  ‘The local natural environment explored and celebrated.’ We’re hoping to encourage and present a variety of writing which explores and celebrates what we have around us, and in a way which opens up the imagination and is experimental with language and metaphor.” Tickets at £3 on the door include a glass of wine and canapés.

Writing is most definitely a craft, and several books by or devoted to local writers are on sale in Fairlynch Museum shop alongside works of art and products from the area. Maybe the shop bookshelves will be a bit fuller with poetry and prose inspired by the area and what ‘Local Voices’ is doing to promote it.

Pictured above: The Phoenix reborn, one of the mythological creatures featured in the  Kinderbuch by the German publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747-1822)

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