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ANNUAL REPORT 2018 Ledbury Poetry Festival

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ANNUAL REPORT 2018 Wordcloud of survey responses, 2018 Ledbury Poetry Festival 1 2 Chairman’s Report – Ledbury Poetry Festival 2018 Another ambitious and creative year saw the board of trustees keeping a steady grip on the wheel of the Festival schooner as it sailed through all the waves, large and small, that any organisation has to deal with. At a time when audiences are thinking twice about any form of expenditure and with a more testing and competitive funding scene to face up to, the Festival did experience a dip in ticket sales which was undoubtedly compounded by the many free events that we offer as much as by the more thought-provoking but challenging events put on. Despite this, the Board is more than confident that the future holds so many great ideas waiting to be implemented that the programme, both the July Festival and the year-round community and school programme, can only get better and will confirm Ledbury as the UK’s biggest and best poetry festival. Peter Arscott Chairman Report on Ledbury Poetry Festival 2018 The Festival featured an eclectic range of events, from a poetic tour of eight Ledbury heritage sites, Tishani Doshi and Pascale Petit combining poetry and dance, Walled Garden Family Events to a reading and discussion in celebration of Martin Luther King. It featured a good number of high profile poets including Wendy Cope, Benjamin Zephaniah, Jackie Kay, Hollie McNish, Sinéad Morrissey, Jo Shapcott, Caroline Bird and Liz Berry. Zaffar Kunial was poet in residence. Michael Palin performed a tribute to Adrian Mitchell. Miles Jupp and Chris Difford chatted about their ‘desert island poems’ and Henry Normal mixed comedy and poetry. The Festival featured musical events with Bob Stanley, James Yorkston, Alexis Taylor plus a poetry and music collaboration between Paul Henry and Brian Briggs. Events with particular local relevance included Stories from the Hop Yards, a Friends of the Dymock Poets presentation of Voices from the Great War, Poems and Tilley Printers and Found Voices with Sara-Jane Arbury. An ambitious programme of American poets included Major Jackson, Linda Gregerson, Mark Doty, Marie Howe and Jericho Brown. Other international poets included the German poet Jan Wagner with his translator Iain Galbraith, Versopolis poets from Croatia, Poland and France/Brittany and Colombian poet George Mario Angel Quintero. The Festival also presented a Ukrainian Translation Duel and a Sign Language Translation Duel, exploring the intricacies and mechanics of translation and comparing the choices translators make. Ledbury partnered in an Arts Council funded project called Talking Transformations. Two poets, Deryn Rees Jones and Rafał Gawin wrote poems inspired by the theme Home and the poems went on a journey through translation following migratory patterns. (Home by Deryn Rees Jones was translated into French and Spanish and Dom by Rafał Gawin was translated into English and Romanian). This project was showcased and explored through an exhibition of artist films inspired by the poems, two poetry and art translation workshops, two schools’ workshops and a discussion event with Deryn and Rafał. The Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics participated in a number of events, offering new perspectives on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickinson. Plus an event exploring The Role of the Poetry Critic. Feedback from one survey respondent: “I thought this was an excellent 3 idea for an event, ably chaired by Sandeep Parmar. The subject was so fascinating I would have happily attended a longer event on this topic with all the emerging critics involved.” Emerging poets featured in 20 minute events, in the Ledbury Poetry Competition, National Poetry Competition and Eric Gregory Readings. The Festival showcased John Masefield High School students and Foyle Young Poets reading alongside established poets. Workshops and the Slam were as popular as ever. Events in partnership with magazines: Modern Poetry in Translation celebrated their LGBTQ focus and Poetry Wales explored Poetry and Ritual. Discussion events highlighted the relevance of contemporary poetry through a range of themes including mental health, climate change, sexual violence, queer language and class politics. The Festival held talks on poets including W.H. Auden, Derek Walcott and an immersion day on Wallace Stevens’ poem The Man with the Blue Guitar. An array of family and street performances throughout the Festival included the Ledbury Celebration Day on the High Street; The Live Poetry Jukebox combing poetry and art; Dr. Seuss and Box of Delights inspired activities in the Walled Garden; and Sally Crabtree in the Butcher Row House Museum bath! The Festival championed its community outreach programmes in events such as Community Showcase; Being Heard, featuring young people from Hereford’s supported housing project SHYPP; and 21st Century Mental Health discussion drawing on the work LPF is doing with mental health charity MIND. Ledbury’s shops and businesses featured poetry artwork from the Festival’s Poetry Paradise Garden, a large-scale community poetry and art project. In all it was a Festival brimming with innovation, creativity and community involvement: our volunteer base is constantly expanding, and they seem to work tirelessly on the Festival’s behalf. The Festival welcomed four interns and six Spanish students, here to help in the delivery of the Festival. One of the abiding images of the Festival is one of these students, Esther, captivating the crowds with an impromptu Flamenco performance in the Ledbury Celebration street party on the final day. Photo: Paul Ligas Photography The Community Programme – overall participants 1,354 The Festival’s large-scale community artwork and poetry project “Poetry Paradise Garden” involved nearly 350 participants in 15 community and residential care settings across the county. Nursing homes were contacting us asking to take part. The project boasted an increase of over 100 more participants, and 5 additional settings from 2017’s previous project. Art and poetry is a powerful combination: it can stimulate memory and foster social interaction. Poetry Paradise Garden included “sensory poetry” for people with multiple and profound learning disabilities. For the first time, artwork from the Poetry Paradise Garden project was displayed in shops and businesses in Ledbury. This was a response to shopkeepers who fedback that they wanted to take part in the Festival, and the shop windows display, but didn’t have the time to prepare their own 4 artwork. What could be better than the Festival providing shopkeepers with artwork from its community programme? Participants’ work was also displayed in an exhibition in the panelled room of the Master’s House, in the Burgage Hall, and in outdoor places throughout the town. The outdoor displays formed part of Ledbury in Bloom, closely co-ordinated with the Festival, and gratifyingly the town was awarded “Gold”. Festival projects continue to reach out to other vulnerable groups across the county. The Festival has poets working with people suffering from chronic pain (NHS), in women-only settings, and with ex- offenders (probation service). New projects for 2018 include “Pictures and Poetry” at Hereford mental health charity, MIND, and poets working with Hereford Young Carers in Hereford, Ross and Leominster. The MIND partnership proved so fruitful that the Festival held a special event “The Power of Words: 21st Century Mental Health” featuring a panel of national mental health experts and advocates. The Young Carers are a particularly hard to reach segment, all the more so now that their funding has been axed by Herefordshire Council. The Festival was pleased to provide the groups with a platform for protest: a “Save Our Clubs” banner incorporating artwork and poetry from the groups was displayed on the railings of the Burgage Hall for the duration of the Festival. We will continue to work with them as long as the continuation of the groups allows. The Festival’s Community Programme targets areas of need in the county that fall within the top 20% of national indices of multiple deprivation, with groups running in the forgotten corners of the county. The important youth strand with SHYPP (Supported Housing for Young People Project) in Hereford continued, culminating in the “Being Heard” Festival event. One audience member wrote: “This combination of traditional poetry, rap and film conveys important messages. It is vital to hear voices that might not normally be showcased otherwise”. The Festival held a “Community Showcase” event, extended to 1 ½ hours, to allow participants from the Community Programme performance opportunities. The event was graced with first-time performers from disability charity Echo with very moving renditions of their poetry created with poet Carol Graham. The Festival’s Community Programme includes step-up opportunities for budding poets from workshop settings with supported performance events at the summer festival, and throughout the year. There were poetry salons, poetry slams and open mic’s, including for the first time in 2018, a Women’s Open Mic held at Hereford International Women’s Day. The Community Programme is a thriving and vibrant part of the Festival’s year round work and is touching many hundreds of lives. The Schools’ Programme - overall participants 2,045 The schools’ programme in 2018 saw the expansion of the Festival in a Day offer to schools. Each day took place at Hellens Manor and involved a performance, three workshops and a pupil showcase. 9 days were delivered in total with 11 schools, 517 pupils and 7 different poets. Teacher feedback was excellent: “As a class teacher, it was a pleasure to see my children so fully engaged in different types of poetry. Particularly with a boy-heavy class, this can be a challenge but the poets effortlessly engaged and inspired them to write their own and group poems. Seeing the confidence of the children as they recited their poetry showed how proud the children were of their own compositions.” 5 The Festival continued its creation of digital poetry trails.
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