Spring 2021
Spring has well and truly sprung! With the fabulous weather bringing out the wealth of wildflowers in our gardens, hedgerows and woodlands, delighting all with their freshness and inspirational colours.
Plein Air painters have been noticed out on Exmoor and in our North Devon lanes, including local artists Luna North on Exmoor and Colin Allbrook. Over the lockdown period Colin has been painting a series of oil paintings, all based in the Taw Valley where he lives.
The team at Arts Destination South Molton has also been busy over the last year, holding a varied programme of Zoom events each month, the last event being a talk by the successful children’s writer, Claire Barker, who regaled her audience with stories and inspirations with great humour!
We are well into planning our flagship project, Deep Roots Festival, due to take place over three weekends this year, 11-13th June, 10-11th July and 25-26th September. The festival will be a combination of online and live events as we gradually enter into the lifting of Covid 19 restrictions.
One of the major community events within the festival is a film and poetry project, ‘Capturing South Molton in Words & Images’, sponsored by Home Instead, North Devon & Exmoor, being led by the Devon based poet, Rosie Jackson and filmmaker Gordon McKerrow. The local community are invited to submit their photos, words, drawings etc. on how they feel about living in, or around the market town of South Molton. These submissions will then be collated by Rosie and Gordon and formed into a poem and film to be shown publicly in South Molton Assembly Rooms later in the year. For details on how to join in please go here.
Deep Roots Festival offers events for all ages groups and tastes: classical, folk and popular music; poetry talks, readings and community projects; artist talks and demos; talks on the environmental; book readings; youth dance workshop etc. For information on events go to our Deep Roots Festival page or book tickets on our events page.
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January 2021
Well… that’s it! Goodbye 2020.
And as we used to say at school, “Good riddance to bad rubbish”! But it hasn’t been all bad for ADSM.
Even the darkest month of the year brought us its silver lining. Not only in glorious cloud formations with their shimmering edges, or the abundance of very jolly, sparkling Christmas decorations around The Square and private houses all over town.
At ADSM, we rejoiced and marvelled not only the at glories of the winter skies and the lights of the festive season, but in an artistic treat which brought joy to our hearts and smiles to our lips – local printmaker Judith Westcott’s presentation of her work.
For three quarters of an hour, one evening at the beginning of December, Judith amazed, entertained and fascinated us with tales of her inspiration, demonstrations of the stages she goes through to make her work, and explaining collaborations with other artists (known collectively as Pine Feroda) to create enormous, stunning prints – in which you can almost hear the roar of the winter seas and feel the wind and rain!
Judith’s Zoom event raised the bar for further ADSM Zoom productions – and the New Year programme bodes well with promises of kaleidoscopes of poetry and moonlit sonatas!
Join us if you can… and in the meantime, have a New Year filled with beauty of all sorts: music, friendship, family, nature, paintings and poetry … whatever brings you delight.
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