Behind The Scenery

A fascinating new exhibition has recently opened at Abbot Hall in Kendal to mark the gallery’s recent refurbishment and reopening. Run by Lakeland Arts , Abbot Hall has been shut since early 2020.  Since then over half a million pounds worth of work has gone on to modernise the building as well as offering time to its curators to pause and rethink its direction of travel and purpose. The result is...

We’re just coming to the end of another Spring season of what’s called Rural Touring across Cumbria. That’s the name given to getting professional performance art – be it music, theatre, magic, even dance – into rural areas, usually village halls but also schools, pubs and even libraries. There are about 25 organisations that do it across the UK. Here in Cumbria, it’s run by Cockermouth based Arts...

It’s April – so time to talk about daffodils – ten thousand of them to be precise. Behind the Scenery this month gets a look in at an astonishing Cumbrian arts project that’s been taking shape near Lowther Castle for the past 6 months or so. Ten Thousand Daffodils is the brainchild of Helen Ratcliffe. She’s brought together communities, creative practitioners and businesses to raise funds for char...

This month, Behind the Scenery goes Around the World in 80 Days . Jules Verne’s epic novel is getting Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake’s Spring treatment as their first big show of the year. With the single minded Detective Fix of Scotland Yard in hot pursuit, will Phileas Fogg and company manage to avoid arrest and make it home before their time is up ? Involving music, puppetry and circus, it promi...

As Spring is hinting at springing, Behind the Scenery in early March is about creating noise. The nicest of noise. Tom Speight gets the chance to chat with poet John Hegley who was in the county recently to promote his new collection inspired by and touching on the life, love letters and laughter of John Keats. It’s called A Scarcity of Biscuit, published by Carlisle’s very own Caldew Press . And...

This month, Behind the Scenery really does get to go behind doors that are usually closed. Tom Speight visits Number 14, St Georges Terrace, Millom , the birthplace and lifelong home of Cumbrian poet Norman Nicholson , who was born in January 1914. It’s a small terraced house built in 1880. There he meets Charlie Lambert, Chair of the Norman Nicholson Society , at the open day of the house which t...

This month, Behind the Scenery is all about the creation of sound in Cumbria. Sound creator and creative Dan Fox is Director of Ulverston based Sound Intervention. He says there are five ways of making sound - hit, pluck, blow, bow and sing. He was commissioned to create an 18 minute soundscape for the Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership . Dan talks about where his interest in sound came from,...

This month Behind the Scenery takes a trip to the farm. But it’s not just any old farm – it’s photographer Amy Bateman ’s 900 acre farm Croft Foot at Docker just outside Kendal, a mixed farm which she runs with her husband Colin. It forms the basis for a book she has written, alongside publisher Dave Felton, called Forty Farms , profiling agriculture and farming across Cumbria in 2022. Tom Speight...

This month Behind the Scenery takes time to find out what makes one of Cumbria’s cultural leaders tick. Liz Stevenson has been Artistic Director at Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake for 3 years. Just months after she arrived the covid pandemic led to the theatre having to completely shut – leading to huge challenges for its staff and its leaders. It’s now back at full throttle, but as with all venues,...

This month Behind the Scenery visits Whitehaven, St Bees, Keswick and the Langdales, to get under the bonnet of the arts and culture vibe in Cumbria. Tom Speight bases himself at The Beacon Museum overseeing Whitehaven harbour, where seagulls join him in chatting to Aldo Rinaldi, the chief curator of Deep Time , the ambitious multi million pound public art project backed by Copeland borough counci...

Two podcasts for the price of one in August ! Based at the recently renovated art deco Old Cumberland Pencil Factory in Keswick, Tom Speight finds out how August seems to be a particularly busy time for exhibitions all across Cumbria. First it's a visit to the always busy EVAN, or the Eden Valley Artistic Network , whose appropriately named FACTORY festival of creative arts has recently been exhib...

Based this month at Wordsworth Grasmere , Tom Speight discovers how the museum and attractions there have been recently developed to really bring William and Dorothy’s story alive – and discovers the joys of finding poetry in coffee cups. Curators Jeff Cowton and Melissa Mitchell take Tom on a tour of Dove Cottage, the newly developed museum and café, and finish up with a section of Wordsworth’s “...

Based this month at Rosehill Theatre in Whitehaven, hear how  Soundwave in Workington is making young musical dreams come true, how the writer of The Climbers at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, Carmen Nasr, was inspired by a trip by her brother to Kilimanjaro, listen to an award winning poem from the Kendal Poetry Festival - and find out why David Bowie appeared on stage in west Cumbria as a...

Trailer for Behind The Scenery, the new arts and culture podcast brought to you by Cumbria Arts & Culture Network.