ARTSPACE: AROUND THE BANDSTAND

Interviewee Jean McSorley has pointed us towards Barrow's excellent  Local Studies Library and some material on the 1924 Park Gala.    Archivist Sue Benson has provided these scans from the Gala programme.   This was a very big event. Organised as a fund raiser for the After -Care of the town's Tuberculosis Patients, it attracted huge crowds  and involved hundreds of people in games, sports, demonstrations etc all over the park. Here we see some  details from the Gala programme.    We have races, dancing and a fancy dress parade around the Bandstand, a Pillow fight competition, we have a fairground, we have a group of children's performers, and we also have a demonstration of Psycho-analysis.  The North West Daily Mail were there too, and thanks to Sue and co at the Local Studies Library we can add to our picture of the day by reading their detailed report of 2 days later, while the park grass was sti...

One from the 70's.... An episode from what Showman Gary Bridgens describes as his "Beano" childhood in and around Barrow Park.. https://soundcloud.com/art-space-756835798/gary-bridgens-for-blog

Campaigner, activist and writer Jean McSorley gave a fascinating interview in which she discussed the town's former clubs and societies in which  members combined leisure with education, skill development  and self-advancement. Jean places the Park alongside these, seeing it as a gift to anyone with an enquiring eye, as an example of a more generous and further-sighted vision than we might expect from Victorian industrialists, and as something to value and maintain. Jean's family have a tangible legacy in the Park, and you can hear her explain it in this short clip..with the park lawnmower buzzing in the background. https://soundcloud.com/art-space-756835798/jean-mcsorely-for-blog The postcard is another from Mike Burn's collection. Thank you Mike.

News of a couple of events ....On May 18th we will be joined by the girls and boys from Bram Longstaffe Nursery, who will visit the Park and the Bandstand as part of their introduction to the town they live in. They'll tour the Park with their families and teaching staff, ace Fiddler and Piper Carolyn Francis will play some music under the Bandstand, and we'll get to talk about our project and arrange some more conversations for our archive. On the 20th, we will be in the park from 1.45 until 2.45 with Carolyn and her colleagues Mary Dunsford ( Harp) and Bev Whelan (Flute), and then by young musicians from Carolyn's Furness  Folk Academy, which draws on the many schools groups with which Carolyn plays and tutors in and around Barrow in partnership with Cumbria Music Hub. It's great to be able to provide a stage for these boys and girls, and we are very grateful to Carolyn for bringing them to the Park bandstand. And as if this were not  enough ...we are scre...