ARTSPACE: AROUND THE BANDSTAND

The Around The Bandstand Website is live. https://www.artspacearoundthebandstand.com/ Thank you to everyone who has contributed and made this such an enjoyable process. John

Here are some evocative photographs of Barrow Park from the 60's provided by David Bury who grew up in Piel View House while his father William was Parks Director. David and his sister Lynda visited last week and gave a fascinating interview, talking about their life in the park, their Dad's duties, and Pets Corner. Our website and the video piece that accompanies it are almost complete. The site will include  the whole interview along with many others, and many more images. Look out for news of a screening.

I had a great sit down last week with Clarry Dunlop, Tenor Horn player with the Shipyard Band for many years, and his wife Doreen.   Here he tells of the extraordinary concentration of musicians living around Cedar Road, Ormsgill in the early 50's, and points out faces from this photo of the 1952 Shipyard Band.  https://soundcloud.com/art-space-756835798/clarry-dunlop-and-a-photo-of-the-shipyard-band I'm currently working on the sound for the Around The Bandstand Video, which uses some wonderful footage from the 60's for which I'm grateful to  filmmaker Brian Crawford.  There'll be more from Clarry there, and in the project archive.

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...

First, a bit of music to set the scene..click back when you've got the idea.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNYwMCJ17Sg ..Ok? John Murphy is well-known around Barrow, as Councillor, Mayor and organiser of walks to Piel Island from his beloved Walney. He tells a good story, does John. He talked to us about his teenage years, about the coffee bars and dances, about courting his late wife, and his delight in the colour and flowers in the Park. In this excerpt he conjures a vivid image of Barrow Park Life in the 60's.... https://soundcloud.com/art-space-756835798/john-murphy-for-blog This postcard (above) was kindly loaned by Mike Burns. Mike's wife Sheila was involved in the Park re-development and the Friends Of Barrow Park Commitee and Mike has an enormous collection of postcards from Barrow...you'll be seeing more of them.

This is Heather Horner, she is the Librarian at the Mail, Barrow's newspaper. We met at Forum 28 when Heather was presenting an exhibition of old advertisements from the Mail, some very strange stuff indeed....as part of the show Heather had brought along some preserved and bound editions of the Mail from the 1950's and earlier, and allowed me to take some pictures. The Mail began to carry pictures in the 40's, and it's photographers would often visit the Park to record the change of the seasons or catch the latest crop of ducklings on the lake. This shot shows the Park playground's legendary Banana Slide in 1952, and just that week I'd spoken to historian and writer Gill Jepson about how it loomed over her in the 60's...here's a snippet from our conversation.... https://soundcloud.com/art-space-756835798/gill-jepson-banana-slide-for-blog

We've been regular visitors to the Local Studies collection in Barrow Library over the past few years.  It's a fantastic and almost bottomless resource run by some very friendly and helpful people who really know their stuff. You'll find photographs, digitally preserved newspapers, books, maps..all sorts of primary source information that'll help you find the history of your street, your school, or your Auntie that ran away to sea... You can find more about it here.. https://www.cumbria.gov.uk/archives/archivecentres/balsc.asp I spent a few days in March going through the beautifully bound copies of  Council Minutes from Edwardian times to see what I could find about the early days of the Park and it's Bandstand..and sure enough on the right is the very first mention of the Bandstand, from 1910. It reads: "The Chairman stated that Alderman Smith had offered to present a Bandstand for the Public Park." Many thanks to the Local Studies Library...

Introducing the Artspace Heritage project, Around The Bandstand, in which with the support of the Heritage Lottery Foundation we look at  Barrow Park, the Bandstand and at their place in the social life of the town. This is our first Heritage project. You may have seen or been involved with our schools arts projects. These are always to do with the history, geography or some other aspect of our locale; we've worked with several schools in Barrow and South Cumbria, and we currently have 3 artists working in and round the Sir John Barrow Cottage in Ulverston.  Around The Bandstand involves Artspace and Bram Longstaffe Nursery, but mainly it's to do with the people who have used the park over the years, whether for entertainment, as a playground, a courting spot or a place to find some space and quiet. Councillor Helen Wall helped get things rolling with her Barrow's Beautiful Places event at Forum 28 in Barrow. We met some lovely people, including many old friends, and ...