CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF LIGHTHOUSE
CHRIS JARVIS RETURNS TO DORSET REMEMBERING GRAHAM STANSFIELD ROUNDABOUT FESTIVAL
LIGHTHOUSE NEWSLETTER EDITION 20 01202 280000 www.lighthousepoole.co.uk
CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF LIGHTHOUSE Putting on a production might seem quite straightforward from the comfort of the stalls, but the path to opening night is a long one on which all concerned must effortlessly embrace change and work with partners to create a magical, potentially life-changing experience for the audience. In forty years as the UK’s largest regional arts centre, change has been a constant factor at Lighthouse as it will be in the future. The planned reorganisation of local government in Dorset next year will bring new challenges as well as opportunities as Poole merges with Bournemouth and Christchurch to create one of two new unitary authorities. We are working closely with the CEO’s and Leaders of the local authorities to support and develop the significant creative culture that our region offers and to ensure that Culture remains top of the priorities as a significant contributor to the renown of the region. In April we saw the start of a new four-year funding cycle for Lighthouse, as one of 800 National Portfolio organisations funded by Arts Council, as well as the beginning of a new local authority funding agreement. This core funding provides the bedrock on which we make our plans and acts as a stamp of quality from the Arts Council and Borough of Poole respectively. As such it is absolutely crucial to our on-going existence and means that in our fortieth year we can move forward with confidence. However, to sustain Lighthouse the fundraising must continue at every level and as a charity we depend on the generosity of individuals, businesses and trusts/foundations that recognise the value of the arts to the shared community, not only in Poole but in the wider conurbation and the region beyond. As a business with a multi million pound turnover, we are also seeking new Board members to help us realise our vision and ensure continued good governance. Expertise is particularly sought in the areas of business development, Higher Education and Performing arts practice. This is a large geographical area with many audiences seeking many different things. This summer finds Lighthouse renewing its partnership with Activate to collaborate in Inside Out Dorset, bringing extraordinary performances to extraordinary places such as Poole Quay. For the first time, we are presenting a production for Bournemouth’s Arts By the Sea Festival, bringing the brilliant Roundabout Festival back to the area. Looking ahead we’re delighted to welcome Chris Jarvis for his first panto season in Poole. Having been synonymous with productions at Bournemouth Pavilion for many years Chris is just as thrilled to grasp a new challenge co-writing, directing and starring in a successful panto that is home grown in Poole. Working with others is second nature in the arts and culture sector and I’m excited to see the ways in which these and other collaborations are going to develop.
Elspeth McBain, Chief Executive, Lighthouse
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Lighthouse has been honoured with a prestigious award at the construction industry ‘Oscars’. The major refurbishment project of 2015-2016 won the South West Community Benefit category at the Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Awards, which celebrate the achievements of RICS professionals and their impact on local communities. The annual showcase of the most inspirational initiatives in land, real estate, construction and infrastructure is regarded as the UK’s premier property awards. The judges said: “This extensive project to refurbish an existing 1970s arts centre was driven by a desire to make Lighthouse more open to the local community whilst at the same time significantly enhancing the facilities for the performing artists. The wide range of educational projects and community activities undertaken following the completion of the project is testament to its huge success. The refurbishment has ensured that Lighthouse will enjoy a bright future at the heart of the local community.” Commenting on the award, Lighthouse Chief Executive Elspeth McBain said: “I am absolutely delighted that Lighthouse has won this award. It recognises the importance of the venue to our community and celebrates the achievements of the whole team to ensure that the building and what we can now do in it continues to inspire and delight.” The eight category winners will now progress to the grand final to be held in London in November. • Lighthouse has also been shortlisted for Civic Building of the Year in the SPACES Awards 2018. SPACES is a collaborative organisation for those in the building professions working in and for the public sector. The winner will be announced on Thursday 11 October.
CHRIS JARVIS Poole and Bournemouth may be the closest of neighbours, but they are very different towns – something Chris Jarvis, who is co-writing, directing and starring in Dick Whittington at Lighthouse this Christmas, knows all about.
Earlier this year Chris presented the Bournemouth and Poole Tourism Awards at Lighthouse and as patron of Wessex Youth Orchestra is very familiar with the venue – far more so than when he first performed there in the first few days of 2005, starring in Pantomime Relief to raise money for the Red Cross Tsunami Earthquake Appeal with stars of Beauty and the Beast (Poole), Jack and the Beanstalk (Bournemouth) and Peter Pan (Southampton Mayflower)
For Chris lived in Bournemouth for many years and starred in eight pantomimes at the Pavilion. It’s an association he continues to treasure.
“That was Brian Cant’s idea,” says Chris. “He was in Beauty and the Beast and came up with this idea of a variety revue to raise money for the appeal and we arranged a 10.30 show.
“I actually checked with my friends in Bournemouth that there wouldn’t be any unease about me playing in panto at Poole and of course there isn’t,” he says. “What’s clear to me though is that Poole and Bournemouth are very different beasts – they’re both pantos but they’re totally different audiences so there’s no rivalry, everyone’s talking and it’s all good.”
“The trouble was we had this Chinese Whispers situation and nobody fixed whether it was 10.30am or 10.30pm before it went on sale so the only solution was to do two shows that day – one in the morning and one late at night – as well as our usual two panto performances. It was exhausting, but such good fun and we raised £25,000. I have very fond memories of that.”
Chris is writing a new script for Dick Whittington with Peter Duncan who, with his production partner Darren Reeves, has co-produced panto at Lighthouse since 2016.
• Dick Whittington opens at Lighthouse on 7 December and runs until New Year’s Eve.
“I’ve written panto scripts for years, but working with Peter and Darren [Reeves, co-producer] as well as Elspeth, the Chief Executive at Lighthouse, is like having a team of writers with everyone going in the same direction.”
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WORKING TOGETHER Circa Tuisca Poole’s Hamworthy Park will be home to some lively new residents next month as the 11 acrobat-musicians of Circa Tuisca arrive to pitch their distinctive red and white Big Top then set up a circus village around it. They’ll be on site from Monday 2 July to prepare the ground for a new show, Now or Never, a collaboration with seven young musicians from Queen Elizabeth’s School – a Lighthouse partner school. A bigger and bolder version of Circa Tuisca’s signature fusion of acrobatics and brass, the site-specific show is the culmination of the company’s continuing reboot of circus traditions for the 21st century. It all began some weeks ago when Baptiste Bouquin from Circa Tsuica began working with the young musicians on their role in the show and was back in Poole last month for a second workshop. On performance nights, acrobats, musicians and audiences all play their part as performers mingle with the crowd, making and sharing Breton crêpes, before launching into a feast of music and circus in which they fly, fling and swing across the tent on trapezes, tightropes, Cyr wheels, trick bicycles, trampolines and seesaws. All the while, they play their thundering brass rhythms accompanied by seven young local musicians. Now or Never is one of the highlights of the Lighthouse40 birthday celebrations as Chief Executive Elspeth McBain explains: “We’re incredibly excited to be welcoming Circa Tsuica to Poole in our fortieth year. Visitors to the circus can expect something really spectacular – the likes of which have never been seen in Poole before!” The tour of Now or Never is supported by Ambition for Excellence using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Circa Tsuica’s Now or Never runs from 6 to 8 July at Hamworthy Park.
Inside Out Dorset Lighthouse is again working in partnership with Activate on Inside Out Dorset, the biennial festival of outdoor arts. The opening weekend, 15 and 16 September, on Poole Quay finds French company Cirque Rouages staging their fabulous production soudade, an enchanting story with spectacular acrobatics in which an exiled old man at the seaside recalls his past and resolves to carry on living, whatever it takes. With four performers on endlessly turning wheels and a high tightrope against the atmospheric backdrop of the Quay at dusk it promises to be a dramatic curtain raiser to this year’s festival.
Inside Out Dorset runs from 14 to 23 September. Full details at insideoutdorset.co.uk.
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The Roundabout Festival The Roundabout tent returns in September at a new location as we partner for the first time with the Arts by the Sea Festival This year the unique and intimate pop-up theatre can be found outside Pavilion Dance in Bournemouth where it will host five plays, a ‘Coastal Comedy’ with three professional stand ups and comedy club for kids. The three-day run opens on 28 September with a performance of Ride!, John Foster’s play about a racist murder by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1998; and also includes the Bournemouth and Poole College production, Life and Death in an Ocean Full of Hope. The bill is completed by three Paines Plough/Theatr Clwyd productions – How to Spot an Alien, the satire Sticks and Stones and Simon Longman’s drama about life in a dead-end town, Island Town.
w-Rap A plastic symphony for a synthetic century, w-Rap is a unique collaboration between composer Karen Wimhurst, director Katharine Piercey and the Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP) at Arts University Bournemouth. Using recordings of music made on traditional and improved plastic instruments by local primary and secondary school pupils in workshops run by educationalist Nick Crump, Karen Wimhurst has created a soundtrack that incorporates an operatic voice that will be staged at Lighthouse as a music theatre production directed by Katharine Piercey, Course Leader of Acting at AUB. Susan Lambert, Head of MoDiP, will introduce the premiere in The Sherling Studio on 26 September, which will be recorded – on vinyl, of course.
Hannah and Hanna In Dreamland At Lighthouse we work closely with many partners to enable new work to be made as part of our artists development programme. A story of friendship and prejudice, migration and identity played against the backdrop of an ever-changing England, Hannah and Hanna In Dreamland has been produced by UK Arts International in association with Lighthouse, The Marlowe Canterbury, Theatre Royal Margate, Folkestone Quarterhouse and Looping the Loop.
Big Birthday Bash
In the summer of 1999 Hannah from Margate meets asylum seeker Hanna from Kosovo. The two bond over a shared passion for pop music. Sixteen years later and Hannah is surfing a wave of gentrification in Margate, while Hanna is back in Kosovo. Then a Syrian girl, living in the Calais ‘Jungle’, pulls them back together.
Steve Power from Wave105 will be spinning hits from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, as well as the noughties and today’s crop of top pops; while ace time-travelling tribute band The Deloreans rock the Concert Hall with a no-filler set of guaranteed party starters.
Hannah and Hanna In Dreamland plays Lighthouse from 18 to 20 October.
It’s the biggest birthday party of the year so so do join us to celebrate.
If life begins at 40 Lighthouse is going to make sure our birthday goes with a bang at the very special Big Birthday Bash on 3 November.
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WHY I LOVE LIGHTHOUSE Charlie Kromer Cleaner
My story with Lighthouse goes right back to the beginning, to 1978. I was at school and living in Weymouth in those days, but I was mad about music and going to concerts. That meant I had to go to Bournemouth or Southampton but then Poole Arts Centre opened and it was that bit closer to home. By the time I was 15 or 16 we had moved to Poole and I was coming here at least once a month to see something – The Clash is a stand out memory and I was a big Genesis fans as well so I saw Steve Hackett here three or four times. I moved to the United States in 1983 and stayed for 29 years, 24 of them on the island of Maui in Hawaii. I never forgot Poole Arts Centre though, not least because Maui Arts and Community Centre is surprisingly similar – it’s multi-venue and has a really diverse mix of entertainment, community events and conference rooms. When I came back to Poole I was looking for work and there was only one place I wanted to be so I just walked into Lighthouse off the street and asked if there was anything going. Although I had a background in bar and restaurant work there were no vacancies, but there was a cleaning role so I took it and absolutely loved it – that was five and a half years ago. What I love is that no two days are ever the same and that everyone here is focussed on the same thing, to make sure we send people home happy. I want to help make memories for people so I’ll gladly help out wherever it is needed. For me a perfect day is a Norwegian folk band in the Sherling Studio, Russian ballet in the theatre and a top line stand up comedian in the Concert Hall. I love that we have such a diverse programme, although I’d like to see up and coming bands given a chance to play so that in 30 years someone like me can say they saw the big stars of the day at Lighthouse first.
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REMEMBERING GRAHAM STANSFIELD The life of one of our most cherished partners Graham Stansfield will be celebrated on 14 July with a memorial service at St Mary’s Church in Lytchett Matravers from 1pm and afterwards at a reception at Lighthouse. Graham made an extraordinary contribution to Lighthouse in an association that dates back more than 30 years. He programmed music and literary events, establishing the enduringly popular lunchtime recitals. Graham passed away on 13 April after a long and valiant struggle with cancer, an illness he steadfastly refused to make concessions to having worked consistently throughout lengthy and often debilitating periods of treatment. Indeed, just six days earlier he had introduced his latest work – new settings of poems by his beloved Thomas Hardy – at a concert in St Michael’s Stinsford, the Hardy family church, given by the Wessex Consort ensemble he co-founded with conductor Andrew King. Born in 1940 in Beaminster, where his mother, his grandmother and an uncle and aunt were all organists at different churches, Graham won a scholarship to Westminster Abbey Choir School where he sang at the Coronation in 1953 before returning to Dorset and, on the advice of a minister, went to teacher training college before studying music under composer Herbert Howells at London University. In 1969 he formed the progressive rock group Rare Bird whose first single, Sympathy (written by Graham), went to number one in France and Italy and sold three million copies around the world. Finding the rock and pop world an uncomfortable fit, Graham wrote theme songs for television shows including Agony, the hit sitcom with Maureen Lipman. After spells at South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell and as founderdirector of Epsom Playhouse, Graham returned again to his native Dorset and got a job programming at Poole Arts Centre, beginning a connection that lasted for the rest of his life. In recent years Graham wrote music for string quartet, a chamber opera, an oratorio and the ballad opera Paix a Peyresq. For the last three years he had been largely concentrating on a wide range of choral music with Wessex Consort, releasing two CD albums with them, A Choir for All Seasons and ’Tis Christmastide. A third, featuring Graham’s settings of Hardy poetry, will be available on Aeterna Records later this summer. Graham was deeply knowledgeable about his passions, a constant source of inspiration, and as a highly skilled and expressive composer and arranger his work was supple, nuanced and intelligent, evidently as enjoyable to perform as it was to hear. In a business where such qualities are rare enough to be remarkable, Graham was unswerving in his efforts to secure the best interests of the artists he represented and booked, leaving them free to concentrate on giving of their best for the audience. Graham was a kind, generous man with a keen sense of fun and a uniquely positive outlook on a world that frequently appeared anything but. He will be much missed by all who knew him, but especially by his wife Pam and children Mel, Lu, Andrew, Caroline and Austin and his wife Jackie and their children Ellie and new arrival Henry Graham.
Former chair of Poole Arts Trust, David Pratley will perform Richard Rodney Bennett’s elegant and witty narrative miniatures, The Twelve Days of Christmas, in a lunchtime recital on 6 December in aid of the Lighthouse40 fundraising appeal.
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CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS Processions This collaboration between Artichoke and Lighthouse, ran between the months of February – June. The project was comprised of a programme of 8 creative banner making workshops, led by professional and renowned local artist Denise Poote. It culminated in a march in London on 10th June, where our participants walked with their banners, along with thousands of others who had taken part in similar workshops all over the country. Marches also took place in Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh. The project was commissioned by 14-18NOW and managed by Artichoke. Lighthouse was one of the 100 arts organisations around the UK to host funded workshops to commemorate 100 years of women having the right to vote. Within the workshops, the women were encouraged to reflect on the 21st century female experience and what having the vote means to them. They were also able to learn new creative skills, form friendships and share experiences. The march in London was a wonderful way to finish the project. Dubbed a ‘mass participation artwork’, participants were each given a purple, green or white sash (the suffragette colours) and asked to walk in line with others wearing the same colour sash, appearing as a ‘flowing river of colour through the city streets’. The banners will now be exhibited outside the Sherling Studio in July and August.
Dominoes by Phoebe MacIntosh Created by Lighthouse and Black Theatre Live this year, Dominoes toured Dorset before a short run at Stratford Circus in London. As a result the show has been invited to the Assembly Fringe at Edinburgh this year before embarking on a further tour in the new year. The play concerns history teacher Layla McKinnon as she prepares for her wedding and discovers that there are a few things she needs to learn before heading down the aisle. She discovers something about the past that she finds unsettling: a threat to her friendships, her sense of identity and the wedding itself. As she pieces together her family tree, reminisces about the past and worries about the future, she tries to hold onto her best friend and her husband-to-be and find out who she is and where she fits in.
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NEW TRUSTEES Everything that happens at Lighthouse is the result of people working towards a common aim, to make sure the 1,000-plus live performances and film screenings seen here every year are the very best they can be for our audiences. Poole Arts Trust, the charity responsible for the running of Lighthouse, is looking for new board members to support the senior management to drive our continuing success and fulfil our ambitions for the future. As Trustees they will help shape overall strategy, ensure the quality and compliance of our governance and trading activities and provide invaluable independent guidance and judgement to help us realise our vision. Joining an experienced board, new Trustees will have substantial senior-level accomplishments and will be able to work at a strategic level alongside Lighthouse staff. Expressions of interest are welcome from all candidates, although we are particularly keen to hear from applicants with the following knowledge and experience: : Arts Practitioner, preferably in the performing arts : Finance : Education (HE preferred) : Strategic commercial experience Trustees are a non-executive voluntary role and a minimum commitment of three years is required. Trustees serve as nonexecutive directors for one or two, three-year terms and time is given voluntarily. Meetings take place five times a year plus an annual away day. Trustees will also be asked to become a member of a small subcommittee that focuses on a particular subject or area. For a Trustee information pack please visit www.lighthousepoole.co.uk Contact Michele Shield on 01202 280000 or email hr@lighthousepoole.co.uk. Deadline for applications is noon on 30 July 2018.
SUPPORTING THE FUTURE At Lighthouse we are passionate about providing opportunities for learning and participation across all ages. We are constantly fundraising to enable us to expand our learning programmes because although we receive crucial funding from Arts Council England and the Borough of Poole, as a charity we also depend on the generosity of individuals, businesses and trusts/foundations who recognise the value of the arts to our shared community. Without this support we would be unable to deliver learning opportunities such as:
YOUNG TECHNICIANS Earlier this year seven young people took part in six masterclasses, each related to a different technical aspect such as lighting, sound and stage management. The programme culminated in participants having the opportunity to shadow and support Lighthouse technicians during a jazz performance in the Sherling Studio.
SERIOUS MUSIC WORKSHOPS Our new outreach learning programme, aimed at actively engaging young people to make and play contemporary music, will be delivered to two of our partner schools. We’re pleased to be collaborating on this with Serious, who specialise in running diverse learning and participation projects and are one of the leading promoters of Jazz and Contemporary music in the UK. Can you help to support our new work, talent development and learning ambitions? Any contribution – large or small – really does make a difference. If you’d like to get in touch about supporting Lighthouse please email fundraising@lighthousepoole.co.uk
a gift to the future
01202 280000 www.lighthousepoole.co.uk
LIGHTHOUSE TO LIGHTHOUSE RUN There’s still time to help support and sponsor Lighthouse stage door attendant Stephen Collins on his remarkable ‘Lighthouse to Lighthouse’ 40-mile run on 1 July. Stephen will be running the 40 miles between Dorset’s last working lighthouses – at Portland Bill and Anvil Point – and is being supported by Lighthouse staff and friends including duty manager Tom Holmes, BSO chief executive Dougie Scarfe and Dorset School of Acting principal James Bowden. To sponsor or help Stephen on his run email him at stephen.collins@lighthousepoole.co.uk.