Dorset's Green Fortnight Returns

Bournemouth and Poole’s Big Green Fortnight returns to Dorset this weekend। Following last year’s success, the festival is set to more diverse with a wider range of events and activates on offer.

Organizers of the festival are keen to showcase how living within our means brings better health, encourages closer communities and is fun and cost effective. This is certainly a positive shift from materialism and the increased spending that often comes with the summer.

Bournemouth Arts is most excited about the Big Green Film Festival, which will showcase a selection of exciting films and animations being screened at various locations during the fortnight. Key screenings are from the Arts University College and Broadstone Film who are all presenting films centered on a ‘green’ theme.

A cycle powered cinema will show ‘In Transition’ which will be followed by a discussion and talk where audiences will experience the practicality of running a film projector by pedaling! This particular event runs once only on the 26th May. Admission is free but registration is required. Contact Amy Gallacher for booking on 01202 633398, or by email on
a.gallacher@poole.gov.uk.

Other highlights of the Film Festival include screenings at the Lighthouse, showing:

· Wall-e (Saturday 21st May)

· Home (Saturday 21st May)

· Our Daily Bread (Saturday 21st May)

· The Pipe (Tuesday 31st May)

Other activities include a Talk by Geoff Jones from Dorset Humanists on Eco Living and building an Eco home. Other highlights include a Fashion Show (Eco Fashion Experience), The Green Unity Fair, Fun 5k Walk/Run, Exercise days for holiday makers and endless runs of activities for children.

The Big Green Fortnight runs from Friday 20th May - Sunday 5th June 2011. Visit http://www.bournemouth2026.org.uk/bgf/ for further information.

Bournemouth Creatives New Mini Fund

Bournemouth Creatives are launching a new Mini Fund for the arts.  We plan to award small amounts of money to people who can come up with a great way to spend it.  This could be to allow you to buy materials, to use for advertising your idea, to produce printed material etc etc.  Your only limit is your imagination.

The fund is open to everyone; individuals or groups, but you must give a good reason for needing the money.  The fund is also for all forms of art – from painting, music, theatre, photography – anything creative!  Please write a proposal on one side of A4 (digitally) and include your name and contact details.  BC will choose the best of these to ‘pitch’ to the group at a meeting.  We will then have an anonymous vote to choose the winner who will be awarded the money on the night.  The first award will be for £100.

Bournemouth Creatives will publicise the winners and the results of the money being used.  This should help bring the artist publicity, but also check they have spent the money as per the proposal.

The first award night will be at our July meeting – 20^th July.  Entries must be received by 30^th June and those chosen to ‘pitch’ their idea on the night will be notified by 13^th July.

If you are not sure whether this is for you – maybe unsure if you’d qualify – just give it a go anyway – all you have to loose is the chance to win £100 to spend on your arts project!

Email your proposals to elanormcbay@yahoo.co.uk by 13^th July 2011.

Building Sand Castles with your Inner Child

Photograph of a sandcastle on the beach at Boscombe by Tim Norris. Read Tim's Blog here.

The time-worn phrase "get in touch with your inner child" doesn't always have very pleasant connotations - you hear it most often associated with the therapeutic technique developed by Penny Parks for dealing with past abuse or other childhood trauma. Which is a shame, really, because getting in touch with your inner child is something that could well be said to be at the root of what Bournemouth Creative Breaks is all about.

It's often argued that to be creative, one must approach new tasks or situations with the attitudes one observes in young children - curiosity, eagerness to learn, and a willingness to make what an adult would brand as 'mistakes', when trying to build, design, investigate or create things.

Think, for example, of building a sand castle. Bournemouth, with its acres and acres of fine golden sand, is of course the most wonderful place to build sandcastles (NOTE TO SELF: Sand Castle Workshop Weekend for a future Bournemouth Creative Break ..? Yess!)

So, imagine if, as a child, you'd been put off the natural urge to discover and create, to learn about your medium, if you'd stopped when your first tower had collapsed under the weight of the shells and seaweed you'd decorated it with. You might banish the simple joy of working with sand and water, and found objects, that so captivates children and adults alike all year round on the beaches near here.

Yes, it's sad to see a sandcastle vanish underneath the waves of the encroaching tide. But surely there's a greater sadness, if you're permanently discouraged from trying to create another castle the next day before lunch. Children aren't precious about sand castles - in fact, it's normally the done thing for a young child to destroy a sandcastle, in my experience! - and if grownups could somehow retain - or, regain - that sense of freedom, then creativity would surely flow out like .. well, water across a beach.

As my friend Lorrie Whittington said in her blog Illusio Creative:

It’s all about perception isn’t it? Drawing and painting is still seen as the purview of the serious (or even amateur) artist, or children. Rarely do people continue to paint once having left school for the simple pleasure of it alone. 

Does that sound like you?

It's not always easy as an adult to begin to think of one's self as an artist, a 'creative', someone who can and will "do" art of some kind or another. The idea behind what we're trying to achieve here at Bournemouth Creative Breaks is to provide the materials, some (very!) gentle guidance and the atmosphere in which you feel safe and comfortable enough to try something a little bit different from, say, building a sand castle. We've got music-making, art and writing workshops going on all weekend in the hotel where you'll be staying. Plus, the beach is five minutes away. Bring a bucket and spade.