Photographs of Wainsgate

Inspired by the idyllic setting of Wainsgate Chapel in Old Town, with far reaching views into the surrounding valleys around Hebden Bridge and in the centre of Brontë country in West Yorkshire, Ciara Sturges (Londonstonestudio) and Wainsgate studio resident Rob Hopper have brought together a cohort of folk to create a memorable inclusive event in the Hebden Bridge calendar for 2017. 

The Chapel itself is host to a number of local artists including Alan Coulson, Sally Dawson Amanda Farrell and Amanda Allan. Ciara and Rob have curated a selection of makers and artists to showcase their original designs and products at the chapel on July 8th 2017, hosted alongside the Hebden Bridge Open Studios weekend where you can see the paintings and portraits of Alan, Sally and Amanda and the temporary installation ‘Vessels’ installed in the chapel interior by artist Komal Lad and Amanda Allan. There will be live music to add to the mood with tea, buns and indulgent cakes. Or you may be tempted to soften the day with one of the fantastic gins and mixers, beers or wine selected for the day by the lovely Elly and Sean from the station’s Pig and Barrel Pop up Pub.

Come and pay us a visit – it will be well worth your while.

Chongololo – African Fabrics and Knitting

Kempadoo Millar – Flat Caps

Becky Pytchces – Paintings and cards

Londonstonestudio – prints and textiles

Rob Hopper – Ceramics

HEBDEN BRIDGE OPEN STUDIOS

Komal Lad and Amanda Allan present Vessels. Artist talk, bird-making workshop and refreshments.

A Hebden Bridge Arts Festival event

Paddy Garrigan and the Stroller Priests are a three piece band from Ulverston and Lancaster, featuring songwriter Paddy on guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonium and piano; Ben McCabe on drums, french horn and backing vocals: and Darren Leadsom on bass and backing vocals.

The band’s music is best described as alt-folk/rock. Story songs with great melodies, occasional wig outs and pleasant squawks. Sea monsters, James Joyce, the afterlife, Dad’s Army, the stoned freaks in the town centre and the universe blues are just some of what awaits the listener, set to a deftly musical soundtrack of runaway grunge, barreling (or barrelhousing) rock’n’roll, mandolin dub, melodious folk and epic guitar heroics.

Paddy Garrigan – Vocals/Guitar/Mandolin
Darren Leadsom – Bass/Backing Vocals
Ben McCabe – Drums/Backing Vocals

REVIEWS OF DEBUT ALBUM ‘I JUMPED SHIP’

“Absolutely awesome record, been singing it for days.” – Tom Robinson (BBC6 Music) on ‘Sea Monsters’, played on his BBC6 Introducing and Saturday night show

“Bonkers but amiable three piece from the far north of England take two years plus to produce a debut which has some trouser-bursting brass and lots of chutzpah. Mandolin ska folk psychedelia doesn’t even make a halfway decent description. Off the wall and up the alley.” fRoots Magazine

Award-winning poets Rachel McCrum and Caroline Bird, both acclaimed poets in their own right, are teaming up for a double headliner spoken word show, touring venues in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland reading poems from their most recent collections.

Rachel McCrum

Rachel McCrum – The First Blast To Awaken Women Degenerate
The eagerly anticipated debut collection from the award-winning Rachel McCrum. Recognised as one of Scotland’s highest profile poets and performers, her first collection asks questions of displacement and of the elasticity of space; of human defensiveness and of animal aggression; of inertia and movement: of threat and of resistance. What happens when we raise our voices? What happens when we are no longer heard?

Caroline Bird

Caroline Bird – In These Days of Prohibition
In her fifth collection of poetry Caroline Bird surrenders her poetic weaponry and goes on a quest to write the ‘simple truth’. The surreal imagery of her early work is re-deployed to venture into the badlands of the human psyche. Her poems hold their subjects in an unflinching grip, addressing faces behind the veneer, asking what it is that keeps us living. In These Days of Prohibition are days of intoxication and inebriation, rehab in a desert and adultery for atheists, until finally Bird edges us out of danger, ‘revving on a wish’.

The Breath is Stuart McCallum (former guitarist of The Cinematic Orchestra), Irish singer Ríoghnach (pron. REE uh nah) Connolly and McCallum’s fellow Cinematic alumni, pianist John Ellis and drummer Luke Flowers. Born out of Manchester’s fertile music scene they mix Irish folk influences with mesmerizing guitar riffs, anthemic themes and powerful hooks. Connolly’s soulful vocals are interwoven into the electronic fabric of McCallum’s distinctive soundworld. In turns hypnotic, lush, powerfully raw and raucously punchy, their songs entrance, uplift and break your heart as The Breath conjure a kaleidoscope of sound that perfectly frames Connolly’s raw songs and soul cleansing vocals.

Drawing on the influences of traditional Irish folk song, Connolly’s original lyrics pour forth from her own life in a torrent of meaning. She sings songs of birth and death, woman’s rights, first love, the call of motherhood, the death of men at sea and post-colonial wrongs. All delivered with compelling emotional honesty and a raw urgency as McCallum, Ellis and Flowers delve deeply into the spaces between rock, ambient, folk and jazz to deliver a powerfully hypnotic accompaniment that moves from chilled soundscapes to rocking anthems. Recorded in Manchester and at Real World Studios and mixed by sound guru Tchad Blake, The Breath’s debut album ‘Carry Your Kin’ is released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records in July 2016.

Poet/Spoken Word Artist Jemima Foxtrot’s new show follows her stunning debut Edinburgh Fringe show Melody which she performed to a spell-bound audience at Wainsgate in 2015.

June 2017
Jemima is   currently developing this new show Above the Mealy-Mouthed Sea, supported by Arts Council England. Above the Mealy-Mouthed Sea is an Unholy Mess Production in association with Clapham Omnibus.

Above the Mealy-Mouthed Sea is co-written and directed by Lucy Allan, with movement direction by Tara D’Arquian, it is currently in development at The Clapham Omnibus.