There is a small selection of photographs by Andrew
Milne, Official Photographer, Gargrave Autoharp Festival, here...
Thursday 3 July 2014
Monday 26 May 2014
Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014- Arts Council success...
We heard last week that my bid to the Arts Council for funding for the Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014 was successful. So, success there for the second year in a row.
This is a vote of confidence in UK Autoharps, the Gargrave Village Hall, the Gargrave community and the autoharp community. And certainly gives us a bit of wriggle room.
There were more complications this year - the application process demanded that there be a lot more information and structure in place. So that the application had to go in much later in the planning process.
We are asked to use the Grant for the Arts logo, as last year...
I have put the revised versions of the Festival Poster - revised to include the Arts Council logo - on the web in two places, Dropbox and Google Drive. If anyone has problems using these, do contact me, and we will try to think of something else...
Our thanks to Andrew Milne, of Elemental Ideas, for so promptly revising the Poster...
Patrick O'Sullivan
Friday 16 May 2014
The Fable of the Autoharp
The Fable of the Autoharp
The Fable of the Autoharp in the North (what I wrote)
appeared in the recent issue of Autoharp Notes, edited by Judy Splinder.
The Fable has now also appeared in the latest issue, May
2014, of the Gargrave Village magazine, which has a new and pretty web site...
Click on the image on the right, Gargrave and Coniston
Cold Parish Magazine, and you get a pdf.
The Fable of the Autoharp is on pages 12 and 13.
The Fable was discussed at the Gargrave artists' group,
and is illustrated by two Gargrave artists, Jo Ball and Alan Poxon.
(Amongst Alan Poxon's other jobs - he makes kites...)
If you read the rest of the Gargrave and Coniston Cold
Parish Magazine you will see what I mean when I say that we are shoehorned into
a busy community centre. Good or bad,
depending on your point of view - but it certainly makes the autoharp visible...
Monday 28 April 2014
Patrick Couton will appear at the Gargrave Autoharp Festival
Patrick Couton will appear at the Gargrave Autoharp
Festival, 27, 28, 29 June 2014, Yorkshire, England...
Patrick Couton is the French jazz autoharper - it is a
quite different style and approach to the instrument. Patrick will perform at our Grand Concert on
Saturday June 28, will play at our pub music sessions - and will generally be a
genial musical presence.
The following weekend, the first weekend in July, the
Tour de France starts in Yorkshire - and it seemed sensible to exploit the
French connection and give the autoharp some international media attention with
this invitation to Patrick Couton. A
local Leeds & Liverpool Canal boat club is sponsoring Patrick Couton's
journey to Gargrave...
(Patrick Couton's other job is that he translates Terry
Pratchett into French.)
Our other star performers in Gargrave are Mike Fenton,
Heather Farrell-Roberts, Nadine White and Ian White, and Guy Padfield.
Patrick O'Sullivan
http://www.ukautoharps.org.uk/
Friday 25 April 2014
Emigrant Letters, Symposium and Exhibition, Coventry University May 19-21, 2014
You are invited to ‘Leaving, crossing,
arriving’ 19-21 May 2014, funded by the AHRC as part of our
‘Digitising experiences of migration’ project to connect migrant letter
collections around the world - see http://lettersofmigration.blogspot.fr.
Events include:
A half-day symposium at Coventry
University on Monday 19th May 2pm-5pm), to discuss the outcomes of the project,
the digitisation and mark up of historical correspondence, and the
importance/challenges/opportunities of interdisciplinary research in diaspora
studies (see: http://lettersofmigration.blogspot.fr/p/blog-page.html).
A project exhibition at the Herbert
Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry, including activities and lunchtime concerts
with Joe O’Donnell –
1.00-2.00 on
May 19th and 21st (see: http://lettersofmigration.blogspot.fr/p/symposium-and-exhibition.html).
‘News from Home: Themes and Functions
of Letters to Irish Emigrants in Colonial Australia’ on May 19th, 6.30pm -
7.30pm – a talk at Coventry University by David Fitzpatrick, Professor of
Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin and author of Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts
of Irish Migration to Australia.
To find book a place in the symposium
and/or at the evening talk, see http://www.coventry.ac.uk/leavingcrossingarriving.
---------------------
______________
Emma Moreton
Dept. English and Languages
Coventry University
Priory Street
Coventry CV1 5FB
s:
emma-l-moreton
Monday 7 April 2014
Gargrave Autoharp Festival - Accommodation 2014
Gargrave Autoharp Festival - Accommodation 2014
This year, 2014, the Gargrave Autoharp Festival, June
2014, is part of the Yorkshire Festival, the programme of cultural events
building up to the Grand Depart of the Tour de France, July 2014...
Gargrave Autoharp Festival
Weekend of Friday June 27, Saturday June 28 , Sunday June
29 , 2014
Gargrave is a pretty
village, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, not far from the market
town Skipton. The main road through the
village is the A65. The Pennine Way,
long distance footpath, comes down to the village, before climbing to
Malham. The Leeds & Liverpool Canal,
one of the 3 trans-Pennine canals, goes through the village.
Gargrave has its own railway station, on the
Leeds-Morecambe line - which also connects with the Settle-Carlisle line. But do note that Gargrave Station is a little
halt, no facilities, no taxis, and a bit of a trudge to the centre of the
village.
The local large and busy station is Skipton, with many
taxis, ten minutes drive away from Gargrave.
Remember that the Gargrave Village Hall is the main venue...
See the simple map on
Accommodation
A: Gargrave
1.
River Cottage B&B
Kath and Keith Bradley, very helpful and supportive.
Contact Information
Tel: 01756 749541
Email: keithbradley1953@yahoo.co.uk
Rooms available for our weekend...
2.
The Old Swan Inn - pub and B&B
Old coaching inn, in the centre of Gargrave, now run by
Kevan Lawson and Amy Dalgleish. Refurbished
and open for business.
Phone 01756 749232
There isn't a web site, but they do now have a Facebook
page.
Rooms available for our weekend...
3.
Masons Arms - pub and B&B
http://www.masonsarmsgargrave.co.uk/Masons_Arms_Gargrave/Welcome.html
John Baker, the landlord, is very helpful and supportive.
Tel: 01756 749 304
info@masonsarmsgargrave.co.uk
However rooms at the Masons seems to be fully booked on
Friday June 27. Saturday and Sunday some
availability.
4.
Premier Inn
The Premier Inn is on the western edge of Gargrave, where
the A65 crosses the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. It shares a site with the Anchor Inn, a
Brewers Fayre pub restaurant. There is a
safe walk to the centre of the village, along the towpath.
Do remember that with hotel chains like Premier it really
pays to book ahead through the web site...
B: Camp and
Caravan
Generally caravan and camper van people have their own
contacts and lists. But, briefly, Eshton
Road Caravan Park is quite small, on the eastern edge of Gargrave, next to the
Leeds & Liverpool Canal. There is an
easy walk into the village, along the canal towpath.
Eshton Road Caravan Park
Eshton Road
Gargrave
Skipton
North Yorkshire
BD23 3PN
Contact Details
Tel: 01756 749229
Fax: 01756 748060
A possible alternative, but ONLY for members of the
Camping & Caravanning club, is the club's gathering for our weekend on the
Gargrave football pitch. Details are in
the club members part of the web site and in the club's magazine.
http://www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/
Own sanitation essential - there are no toilet or shower
facilities. Arrive on the Thursday, any
time after 4, and check in with the steward.
There are many other Camp and Caravan sites nearby, in
Skipton and in the Yorkshire Dales generally.
C: Further Afield
Skipton is nearby, and has very many hotels and B&Bs,
of every standard... See
...and many other web sites.
Gargrave is about 10 minutes drive from the centre of
Skipton. There is a Travelodge on the
Gargrave edge of Skipton, on the Skipton by-pass - so 5 minutes drive. Again, with hotel chains like Travelodge, it
pays to book ahead through the web site.
If you do book accommodation in Skipton make sure that
the parking problem is solved. The more
established hotels, like Herriots Hotel and the Rendezvous, have their own car
parks. Otherwise, parking in Skipton is
annoying and/or expensive.
Near to Gargrave, but NOT walking distance, are other possibilities
- depending on budgets. For example
The Coniston Hotel
Newton Grange
All of the villages and towns around Gargrave, especially
within the Yorkshire Dales, have hotels, B&Bs, camp and caravan sites. There are also many holiday cottages, but
they are usually let through agencies/web sites, and usually by the week. Weekends are sometimes available.
For those in an extravagant or adventurous mood it is
possible to hire a canal boat in Skipton, or nearby, bring the boat up the
locks and moor in Gargrave. But canal
boat hire is not cheap.
For those who want to experience the most beautiful
stretch of canal in England... I will be
bringing my boat down from Barnoldswick (pronounced Barlick) to Gargrave a few
days before the Gargrave Autoharp Festival, and we can take about 8 passengers. The journey takes a whole day by boat, 20
minutes by car.
Patrick O'Sullivan
April 2014
Sunday 9 March 2014
Ceiliúradh (Celebration), Royal Albert Hall, Thursday 10 April 2014
Just received an invitation from Uachtarán na hÉireann, the President of the Republic of Ireland, to attend this event.
https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/ceiliuradh/default.aspx
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/news/royal-albert-hall-concert-president-higgins-sold-within-hours
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/news/philip-king-choose-acts-royal-albert-hall-concert-president-higgins
http://www.embassyofireland.co.uk/home/index.aspx?id=90062
Friday 31 January 2014
Gargrave Autoharp Festival, the weekend of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, June 27, 28, 29, 2014
Gargrave Autoharp Festival, the weekend of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, June 27, 28, 29, 2014
The core of the Gargrave Autoharp Festival, Yorkshire, England, is now in place - the weekend of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, June 27, 28, 29, 2014.
As ever, we are in alliance with the Gargrave Village Hall, in the pretty village of Gargrave in Yorkshire. The village lets us use the hall, for free - for autoharp lessons and demonstrations. And we give them music.
This year our autoharp tutors are...
Mike Fenton, and his wife Rachel - demonstrations and various classes
Guy Padfield, teaching the beginners
Nadine and Ian White - 2 workshops
Heather Farrell-Roberts - 2 advanced workshops
Basically, the A Team...
And this year, 2014, we are part of the Yorkshire Festival, the Cultural Festival of the Grand Depart of the Tour de France. The weekend after our Festival, July 5, the Tour de France starts out from Leeds, in Yorkshire. Which is fun...
Gargrave Autoharp Festival posters can be seen and downloaded from
The two little ballerinas are pupils in a little dance school in Gargrave village.
The Gargrave Autoharp Festival on The Yorkshire Festival, Cultural Festival web site, see...
See also
For more on Mike Fenton see
Note especially his contribution to the new BBC version of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Patrick O'Sullivan
Yorkshire
England
The Irish World Wide, 1992-1997, SIX VOLUMES ONLINE
Much of my earlier work, rescued from pre-digital age,
printed books, is now available on the web.
This includes the 6 volumes of Patrick O'Sullivan, ed.,
The Irish World Wide, 1992-1997. See...
It is possible to download the 6 volumes of The Irish
World Wide as 6 individual, large pdf files.
But each volume is also separated out into individual
chapters - each chapter in its own pdf file, and easy to download and carry
around. This solves a recurring problem,
that I get requests for copies of specific chapters.
Special attention is drawn - of course - to my own chapters on The
Irish Joke, in Volume 3, and on Famine Theory, in Volume 6. But if someone wants to jump in at the deep
end, I recommend reading my Introduction to Volume 5, Religion and Identity -
gives an idea of the style and the method...
Patrick O'Sullivan
Sunday 12 January 2014
Gargrave Autoharp Festival, 2014 - weekend of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, June 27, 28, 29
At the Yorkshire end the core of the Gargrave Autoharp Festival, the weekend of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, June 27, 28, 29, 2014, is now in place.
Many factors influence the choice of that weekend - what the Gargrave Village Hall could offer us, I was told to avoid the dates of the TT races on the Isle of Man, meeting up with Mike Fenton's fan base amongst the caravanners...
Yesterday we had a very good photo shoot for the Festival poster - in line with the Gargrave Autoharp Festival tradition that we have a beautiful and striking poster.
This year, 2014, we are part of the the Cultural Festival of the Grand Depart of the Tour de France. The weekend after our Festival, July 5, the Tour de France starts out from Leeds. At that weekend Yorkshire is FULL. No accommodation left.
Will that affect our weekend? Do I need to worry? As yet I do not know. There could be leakage forward from the Tour de France, as people extend their stay. Or Yorkshire might be empty. Or something in between.
Patrick O'Sullivan
http://letour.yorkshire.com/
Many factors influence the choice of that weekend - what the Gargrave Village Hall could offer us, I was told to avoid the dates of the TT races on the Isle of Man, meeting up with Mike Fenton's fan base amongst the caravanners...
Yesterday we had a very good photo shoot for the Festival poster - in line with the Gargrave Autoharp Festival tradition that we have a beautiful and striking poster.
This year, 2014, we are part of the the Cultural Festival of the Grand Depart of the Tour de France. The weekend after our Festival, July 5, the Tour de France starts out from Leeds. At that weekend Yorkshire is FULL. No accommodation left.
Will that affect our weekend? Do I need to worry? As yet I do not know. There could be leakage forward from the Tour de France, as people extend their stay. Or Yorkshire might be empty. Or something in between.
Patrick O'Sullivan
http://letour.yorkshire.com/
Tuesday 7 January 2014
Book Review, McCarthy, Scottishness and Irishness in New Zealand since 1840
This Book Review - or a version of it - will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Australasian Journal of Irish Studies.
REVIEW
McCarthy, A.
(2011). Scottishness and Irishness in New Zealand since 1840. Manchester
University Press, 240p.
We take into our hands a new
book by Angela McCarthy, aware that there is already a body of work in place. Amongst my favourites, amongst the published
articles, is the 2001, ‘ ”A good idea of colonial life": personal letters
and Irish migration to New Zealand’, which firmly laid ground rules. New Zealand was going to study its migrants’
letters, and was going to contribute to our better understanding – and better
use – of the Emigrant Letter elsewhere.
As for books, my favourite is the 2005 Irish migrants in New Zealand,
1840-1937: 'the desired haven', which should be better known to scholars of
the Irish Emigrant Letter. That book explores
its letter collections using the ground rules – again, ground rules – of David
Fitzpatrick. And it bravely shapes its
Thematic Index alongside that of Fitzpatrick’s Oceans of Consolation. Since I am especially interested in how
knowledge is created and shaped, the Diaspora Studies geek in me always enjoys
Angela McCarthy’s literature reviews.
In tandem with such studies
of Irish settlement in New Zealand there has appeared a sequence of articles
studying Scottish settlement and letters, and a book which combined
perceptions, the 2007 Personal Narratives of Irish and Scottish Migration,
1921-65:'For Spirit and Adventure'.
I should pedantically make the point that it is now easily possible to
track the influence of all these works using online resources like Google
Scholar and JSTOR – and if we are going to theorise about ‘the Irish’ and the
Emigrant Letter, New Zealand will not be ignored.
We are therefore looking at
scholarship about, cumulatively, two emigrant groups, the Scots and the Irish,
and scholarship which often studies them in a comparative manner. Since most statements about ‘the Irish’ are
disguised comparisons, this approach is valuable. And this approach is rare – partly for almost
geo-political reasons, and here I would include the politics of academic
careers. Communities themselves are
interested in difference – to track the real life effects of prejudice, or as a
way of shaping a distinctive identity, or as part of generation control
systems. This new book by Angela
McCarthy is about identities, Scottishness and Irishness. It is thus an exploration of repertoires of
identity, which – I have pointed out elsewhere – mostly coalesce around leisure
activities.
There are obvious dangers,
for the writer and for the reader. The
specialist reader is inclined to read with most attention the material about one
specific group, and I must confess that that is what I did, at a first reading
of Scottishness and Irishness. This
is, sort of, fair. We see how the writer
handles the material with which we are most familiar. There are dangers with cumulative material
about ‘Irishness’ - literature reviews can, over time, develop into a kind of
shorthand. Detail is lost, time and
place, research discipline and methodology.
An inter-disciplinary approach must be critical. Here, for example, Stivers (p17), is a study
of alcohol use in the USA and American stereotypes – it is not a study of ‘the
Irish’.
A second, closer reading,
truer to author’s intentions, took on the themed chapters, the matched Scottish
and Irish detail – each chapter shaped by a knot in the research material and in
background theory. This sent me back to
the literature on Scottish identity – see above, online resources – so that I
could begin a better dialogue with the book.
There is no doubt that, at times, the book can be a bit programmatic –
but after a while I found this to be a strength rather than a weakness. The geek in me sees this book as the
literature review, writ large. And I am
struck, as I read the material about the Scottish identity alongside the Irish,
not by difference, but how similar the two groups are. Both groups move from one little archipelago
in the northern hemisphere to another little archipelago in the south – and,
for the most part, entirely within the structures, economic, control,
patronage, of the British Empire and its successor organisations.
It is always possible to find
a difference, of course – but is it, to coin a phrase, a difference that makes
a difference? One difference that
McCarthy does highlight is that whilst Irish societies in New Zealand frequently
articulated political aims, Scottish societies were predominantly cultural (p
142). In our own time, when there is a
restored and active Scottish Parliament – and, soon, a referendum on Scottish
independence – this certainly makes us pause.
We are certainly looking at matched control systems here. And the detail of the ways in which the Scots
of New Zealand ‘forged’ – to use Linda Colley’s word – a cultural identity are revealing. Look, for example, at the Scottish use of
Robert Burns (p140) – there is no matching Irish use of Thomas Moore. In another part of my working life, the study
of song, I look at Burns and Moore as models for nineteenth century
lyricists. When it comes to repertoires
of identity some bits of the possible repertoire simply work better than
others. In the new country, in the new
communities, selection processes take place.
Yes there will be discussion of authenticity, but there will also be a
willingness to invent tradition, as the need arises.
Another way into McCarthy’s
material is to explore gaps and absences.
If we were to indulge a typical focus group study of Irish identity, discussion
of violence would loom large – particularly a willingness to use violence for
political ends. This is how we were seen
in the world, and still are, to a certain extent. Lee and Casey (2006), the standard work on ‘Making
the Irish American’ – ‘making’, not ‘forging’ – must pause to give Kevin Kenny
a chapter to explore that very issue. And this makes discussion with our colleagues
in the Armenian or the Basque Diaspora so… productive. There is very little about this part of the
repertoire in McCarthy’s book, but the author is, of course, aware of debates –
there is discussion of the 1988 movie, The Grasscutter, a standard
thriller in which a violent secret organisation intrudes into the idyll. But in that case the secret organisation is
Irish Protestant and loyalist. Mostly we
see the Irish and the Scots behaving like a standard subaltern group within the
British Empire – if anything McCarthy’ selected quotations give an impression
of Irish unwillingness to engage in violence.
So, a book that makes us work
hard, and makes us think – especially when we place it alongside wider study of
diaspora. For this we give thanks.
Patrick O’Sullivan
2013
The rescue of 'Tolkien in Oxford'
A quick report, to thank those who expressed
interest...
I nipped down to London for 2 days last month.
The BBC paper file of Leslie Megahey's 1968 film 'Tolkien
in Oxford' was made available to me, and I was able to go through it. I spent all of Wednesday, December 18, in the
editing suite, with Leslie Megahey and Charles Chabot, film and video
producer. The video file supplied by the
BBC Library - technically a PRORES 422 HQ file - was of very good quality. We were all very pleased with the quality of
the images - especially remembering that the film was originally shot on 1960s
16mm film.
Just to sum up what was done on the day...
1. Captions
Captions were inserted where they would have been
inserted during the original transmission.
2. Credits
The original film was broadcast in 1968 as part of a BBC
arts magazine series called 'RELEASE'.
It shared the evening, I understand, with a film about Barbara Hepworth,
and combined credits for both films were floated in towards the end of the
slot.
On Wednesday December 18 2013 we created and installed a
sequence of credits for the 'Tolkien in Oxford' film ALONE - the sort of thing
that would have appeared in 1968, had the 'Tolkien in Oxford' film been
broadcast alone. In re-creating these
credits we called upon our joint memories AND the BBC paper file, which we had
to hand. So, we think they are right.
Typefaces for the Captions and Credits were simply a
judgement call, as were placing and timing.
Since we had the original director of the film in the room, there was no
argument about that.
3. Some tidying of
the actual video file. A few scratches were
removed, as were most of those jumps and clicks that are artefacts of the
original negative cutting technology.
These are especially noticeable in the rostrum camera sequences. A little bit of theological discussion here,
about how much we should interfere with an archive 'document' - but from the
BBC side an insistence that what we were aiming for was a 'transmission
quality' file.
The amended and restored video file has been returned to
the BBC.
I think we are happy enough with the quality of the restored
piece. The image quality is generally
very good. The overall structure, now
that we can see it, is good. The gags
work - now that we can see the complete piece.
Individual contributions are good - we were struck, for example, by how
good a job Joss Ackland had done with the readings.
And, I think I will add, we liked the integrity of the
piece. Leslie Megahey remind me about
the decision to NOT include talking heads academics - for example, he remind me
that I had negotiated on his behalf with J. I. M Stewart (Michael Innes),
before he decided that that was not the way to go. And you have to think, what, in 1968, could
the talking heads academics have contributed to the discussion?
I understand that there is now beginning within the BBC
some discussion about how these BBC TV arts 'magazine' films might be restored
and re-displayed - though they were not broadcast as individual pieces, they
were costed and created as individual films, and work as standalone films. So, we might have started something.
Patrick O'Sullivan
Love Death and Whiskey - now on Amazon at £1.17, including postage
I have mentioned before, in this blog, my mix of amazement and consternation at Amazon's pricing of my song lyric book, Love Death and Whiskey...
Last year the price seemed to have settled down at around £3 per copy.
Ok. Now amazement, consternation, bafflement... Amazon is selling the book at £1.17 including postage. Including postage.
This, of course, is a price far below the price I can manage. It practically guarantees that no other book shop will stock the book. What will it do for sales? And, if copies do sell, what part of that tiny price will eventually reach me?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Death-Whiskey-40-Songs/dp/095678240X
Well, I wanted my song lyrics to be in the hands of singers and musicians. The book was meant to work as a box of samples. I guess that I am, maybe, in the end, happy about this strange development. But baffled.
Last year the price seemed to have settled down at around £3 per copy.
Ok. Now amazement, consternation, bafflement... Amazon is selling the book at £1.17 including postage. Including postage.
This, of course, is a price far below the price I can manage. It practically guarantees that no other book shop will stock the book. What will it do for sales? And, if copies do sell, what part of that tiny price will eventually reach me?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Death-Whiskey-40-Songs/dp/095678240X
Well, I wanted my song lyrics to be in the hands of singers and musicians. The book was meant to work as a box of samples. I guess that I am, maybe, in the end, happy about this strange development. But baffled.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)