Friday 22 August 2014

We will always have Gargrave...

Just signing off the last few details of the Gargrave Autoharp Festival....

The August 2014 issue of the Gargrave Parish Magazine is now available on its web site...

http://www.gargravemag.co.uk/

Click on the cover image and you will get into the pdf of the magazine.

On pages 10-11 you will see a little account of the Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014, written by me. As usual with these things, I was contacted on the Friday evening, and told that the deadline was Saturday morning. I did my best...


FROM the Gargrave Parish Magazine, August 2014

The Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014, Friday June 27 Saturday June 28 & Sunday June 29, 

The Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014 slotted in neatly after the Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2013, which laid the ground rules. The strong argument for 2014 was that, this year, we and the autoharp could be part of the Yorkshire Festival, the programme of cultural events leading up to the Grand Depart of the Tour de France. That all worked - we were very visible on the Yorkshire Festival web site and in the media, we were supported by Mike Harding, England's folk music guru. And wasn't the Tour de France great fun?

The good things about holding the Autoharp Festival in Gargrave were even better in 2014. Again we had the support of Sally Thomas and her team at the Village Hall -and we thank them, especially for the way the volunteers waded in again and again when they could see that we were overstretched. And, as the Fable of the Autoharp shows, Gargrave is now the place in England where everyone knows what an autoharp looks like - and how it sounds. And we had local support - witness the charming models on our poster, from Jaki Prescott's dance school, and the charming illustrations to the Fable of the Autoharp from Alan Poxon's art group.

In the Village Hall on the Saturday we had our programme of classes and demonstrations - this year we attracted new players from the North of England. As was the plan. We had our lovely concert on the Saturday evening, which included Gargrave favourites from 2013, Mike Fenton and Guy Padfield. Everyone commented that Guy Padfield had become a much more confident and skilled musician since last year. The special guest at the concert was Patrick Couton - in the year of the Tour de France our own star from France. Wonderful music. Patrick Couton's travel expenses were covered by local boaters, the East Lancashire and West Yorkshire Boat Club.

The members of the Boat Club have asked me to say that this is their way of thanking Gargrave for all the work that goes into keeping the towpath and the canal clean and tidy.

And on the Sunday we had our Autoharp Service - special thanks to Michael Bland, who led the service, and to Sue Watkiss, the organist, who found ways to bring into the church service the music of Nadine White, Scotland's autoharp guru. I want to especially mention the support of  Kev and Amy, Kevan Lawson and Amy Dalgleish, the new team at The Old Swan, Gargrave's lovely old coaching inn. I don't want anybody to feel left out, but... Some of the best music of the Gargrave Autoharp Festival 2014 took place in the Swan - as the professionals and the amateurs relaxed. Witness a musical duel between John McNally, a guitarist who understands the autoharp, and Patrick Couton, an autoharper who understands the guitar. On the Sunday evening about a dozen survivors gathered in the snug of the Swan, for a last informal session - music has been played in that snug for over two hundred years. In that snug, Robert Story, Gargrave's poet, sang his songs and played his fiddle...

As to the future, 2015? Yes, the good things about holding the Autoharp Festival in Gargrave were even better - but the difficulties were much the same. We were undoubtedly overstretched. There is only so much you can ask of volunteers. The quest for money is time consuming. We will have to think... But, in the annals of the autoharp, we will always have Gargrave.

Photographs by Andrew Milne, Official Photographer, Gargrave Autoharp Festival, more here:...
www.yourdemos.co.uk/gaf_2014.htm

Monday 14 July 2014

Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Meaning of the Famine, 1997

At the beginning of this year, 2014 - as part of tidying up projects - I put a lot of my earlier work on this free MediaFire cloud storage site...

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ooj5btdttc9y4/Documents

It has to be a free site - there isn't a budget to do anything else.  It has worked well.

MediaFire gives me a simple download counter - this does not count people who read the texts online, without downloading.  But it is a measure.  And soon we will reach 2000 downloads since this project began, in January 2014.

MediaFire also offer a more complex statistics package, as part of the paid for, premium upgrade.  But...  there isn't a budget...

Pity really, because over the past weeks there has been an odd little anomaly in the download patterns.  Within a few weeks there have been some 200 downloads of one complete book, Patrick O'Sullivan, ed., The Meaning of the Famine, 1997, Volume 6 of The Irish World Wide.  An odd little glitch and difficult to explain.  Some sort of mad robot harvester? - the patterns do not fit.  A seminar group, somewhere, looking at the research literature on the Irish Famine? - the numbers look too big.

The book is in my thoughts because I am in the middle of writing a review article for Irish Historical Studies, about recent developments in the study of the Irish Diaspora, looking especially at the ways in which the Famine has become a central theme.  I need not go over here the problems I had bringing together a volume called The Meaning of the Famine, in 1997 - nor the criticism that my book has faced since then.

I recently read an article by Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley - the historian of famine in China...

Article (Edgerton-Tarpley2013Tough) 
Edgerton-Tarpley, K. 
Tough Choices: Grappling with Famine in Qing China, the British Empire, and Beyond. 
Journal of World History, 2013, 24, 135 - 176


It is a comparative piece, which makes excellent use of my own chapter in The Meaning of the Famine (co-written with Richard Lucking) - my chapter made a good stab at unpacking the coded language of the British mandarin class.

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~histweb/faculty_and_staff/faculty_bios/k_edgerton-tarpley.htm






Saturday 12 July 2014

REPORT: SUPPORTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE IRISH DIASPORA

Just come to my attention...

SUPPORTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE IRISH DIASPORA
Report of a Research Project Funded by the Emigrant
Support Programme, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade


The Clinton Institute for American Studies is pleased to announce the publication of exciting new research on the topic of the Irish diaspora. More and more, states are seeking to understand the form and functions of diasporas and engage with them to provide new opportunities for knowledge transfer, tourism, conflict resolution, and many other matters. In the context of these emerging interests, Ireland has some prominence as a small nation with an over seventy million strong diaspora. The Irish government, through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), is currently undertaking a comprehnsive review of its engagement with the Irish abroad. This research report scopes the changing profile and needs of Irish emigrants in relation to the Government's strategic objectives in engaging with the diaspora, particularly through the ESP, and considers how best these objectives may continue to be met. 

http://www.ucdclinton.ie/

http://ucdclinton.ie/userfiles/file/Supporting%20the%20Next%20Generation%20of%20the%20Irish%20Diaspora.pdf

TechReport (Kennedy2014SUPPORTING)
Kennedy, L.; Lyes, M. & Russell, M.
SUPPORTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE IRISH DIASPORA: Report of a Research Project Funded by the Emigrant Support Programme, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Clinton Institute, University College Dublin, 2014

Thursday 3 July 2014

Gargrave Autoharp Festival, Photographs

There is a small selection of photographs by Andrew Milne, Official Photographer, Gargrave Autoharp Festival, here...





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/