Chiswick Culture

Culture

IS THRIVING IN CHISWICK

But it’s been a tough two years, says Torin Douglas

Culture is alive and well and thriving in Chiswick, despite COVID. We now have a beautiful Chiswick Cinema plus the Weston Studio at Hogarth’s House and three Sunday markets, all opened during lockdown. And Chiswick’s arts groups and venues have really risen to the COVID challenge over the past two years – though it’s not been easy for any of them. The Arts Society Chiswick moved its monthly lectures online, and its speakers adapted brilliantly to the new medium - but it’s great to have them back in person again. The Bedford Park Society held its annual lectures online, and is adding extra Zoom lectures this year. And Chiswick House and Hogarth’s House hosted Zoom lectures with other historic houses in the Thames Luminaries series. Chiswick Playhouse – with a full programme planned for 2020 – instead put on productions in the Tabard pub courtyard and, when allowed back indoors, cut capacity till restrictions were lifted. It launched a public appeal and fund-raising concerts and interviews to help it survive the crisis. In an exciting programme for 2022, it has just announced a concert celebrating Stephen Sondheim on 4th and 5th February. In 2020, Chiswick House had to cancel its weddings, Giffords Circus, Pub In The Park and outdoor cinema, but it launched an outdoor market and an outdoor festival of concerts and comedy in the walled garden. Supported by a public appeal and the Cultural Recovery Fund, it opened its doors again and started a new programme of exhibitions and talks - and we look forward to more in 2022. The Bedford Park Festival went online in June 2020 - including a virtual Green Days, Craft Fair and Bandstand, plus streamed concerts, talks and plays, an online photography competition and art exhibition and 14 ‘virtual’ Open Gardens. But it was back in person last summer with music events and talks - and a fete in the grounds of St Michael & All Angels instead of Green Days weekend. We hope Green Days, a Chiswick highlight for over 50 years, will be back in full this year in June. The Chiswick Book Festival also went online in 2020 - streaming interviews with Lady Antonia Fraser, Lloyd Grossman and others. A panel discussion at Chiswick House on ‘Hogarth, Soane and A Rake’s Progress’

was inspired by the Hogarth paintings which returned to Pitzhanger Manor for the first time in 200 years – unfortunately, just as lockdown began. We committed to running a live inperson 2021 Book Festival, under COVID rules, when no one knew whether the Government would allow that - or whether people would want to come. Audiences were delighted. We could have sold many more tickets for Gyles Brandreth, Ed Balls, Alan Johnson and others and we hope to be back to full capacity this year. Elsewhere, the local open studios event, Artists at Home, went online successfully in June 2020 and then live again in September 2021, and the Bedford Park Summer Exhibition returned to St Michael & All Angels Church in June 2021, after going online in 2020. In music, local choirs, singers and musicians produced wonderfully creative lockdown performances on Zoom, and Trio Manouche created The Lockdown Sessions with The Chiswick Calendar, which has now resumed its live weekly jazz concerts at the George IV. It was great to see local choirs and orchestras returning in 2021 to live performances in Chiswick’s churches, with more to come in 2022… Chiswick composer Cecilia McDowall’s 70th birthday year was marked by special concerts and interviews all over the world, and a commission to write a new carol for the Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Cambridge. Chiswick’s great cultural heritage was highlighted in lockdown by the ‘Exploring Chiswick’ project, encouraging people to download the local arts trails to their mobile or computer. It was launched in January 2021, when the Government was urging people to ‘stay local’, by a group of cultural organisations and has been refreshed for 2022. Exploring Chiswick ’22 is urging people who think they know Chiswick to “see it anew in ‘22”. New names are being added to the Writers Trail of poets, playwrights and novelists who lived in Chiswick, including Dylan Thomas, John Donne, William Morris, Somerset Maugham and James Berry. The project to celebrate WB Yeats in Bedford Park, will come to fruition in June 2022. And the Chiswick Timeline of Writers and Books will include several new authors, including Richard Osman, Dame Eileen Atkins and Sophie Ellis-Bextor – whose Friday kitchen discos in Chiswick were one of the undoubted cultural highlights of lockdown. Chiswick’s cultural organisations welcome you and would be delighted to see you at any of their events this year. Torin Douglas is the Director of the Chiswick Book Festival.