What's On in The Arts

Steve Cooke Arts Columnist

Our local creative community has been typically innovative in its response to the deprivations we have all been enduring through the seemingly interminable Covid-19 Pandemic. Providing us with such as art packs, online workshops, virtual exhibitions, and virtual performances. Without their efforts us culture lovers would have found the withdrawal from active participation in and contact with the arts even more difficult to endure.

Creatives massively contribute to our individual and community resilience: combatting boredom, inspiring and consoling. It is with much relief and great anticipation that I can provide a taster of what we can look forward to locally across the arts as the ‘new normal’ limps over the Covid hill.

From the shellshock of 'Covid 2020' rises three 2021 exhibitions at TOUCHSTONES Rochdale: looking at the human impact of the pandemic, commemorating the Battle of Britain and querying the slow disappearance of Britain’s regional art schools.

Tue 18 May 2021 – Sat 1 Jan 2022 WHAT’S CHANGED?

Tue 18 May – Sat 3 July 2021 HARMONY, CONTRAST & DISCORD: John Beck & Matthew Cornford

Tue 18 May – Sat 18 Sep 2021 WE CAN DO IT. WAR’S OTHER VOICES.

Visit www.link4life.org

Like so many things, in 2020 the long-standing Darnhill Festival was cancelled. Determined not to let the area miss out again, Darnhill Festival Association are working with Cartwheel Arts to host the area’s first 'ARTS WEEK' during the May/June half term.

A series of pop-up activity around the theme of 'Wonder' will take place in and around Darnhill library from Monday 31 May to Sunday 6 June.

There will be plenty of opportunities to get involved from decorating your own window at home, attending a bookable nature art workshop, exploring the estate for new artwork, or having a go on a climbing wall. Full details and a full line-up of activity is being finalised and residents will receive details of activity through their doors soon. Alternatively, follow Cartwheel Arts on social media for further details. English Folk Expo presents ROCHDALE FOLK FESTIVAL on 4 - 6 June. Over a full weekend, free music events will be happening in local venues across town, including The Medicine Tap, Touchstones Rochdale, and The Flying Horse, with additional street performances occurring all around the town centre.

Additionally, taking place in the stunningly beautiful St Mary’s in the Baum, will be three ticketed gigs with an intimate, socially distanced audience, but there is also the option to watch the gigs from your home via live stream.

On Friday 4 June THE HUT PEOPLE, will take the audience on a musical trip across the globe, with their hugely entertaining blend of 'world-folk'. On Saturday 5 June, an uplifting afternoon of music from THE RHEINGANS SISTERS, the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winners. Saturday night brings JON BODEN & THE REMNANT STRINGS, performing self-penned songs as well as material from Bellowhead, Spiers & Boden, and Jon's A Folk Song A Day project, in which he recorded 365 folk songs in one year.

English Folk Expo Chief Executive, Tom Besford said: "I'm delighted to be working with Rochdale Town Centre Management and the Council to bring live music to our beautiful town centre. Rochdale is looking better than ever with loads of great pubs, restaurants, and attractions. We're all looking forward to safely enjoying fantastic live music once again."

Rochdale Borough Libraries, along with all GM library authorities, will be taking part in the FESTIVAL OF LIBRARIES, 9 – 13 June www.manchestercityofliterature.com/project/manchester-librariesfestival/ .

EBOR STUDIO and GALLERY FRANK are in the initial stages of planning a SUMMER EVENT in their garden with food, drink, music, art demonstrations, talk and demonstration of the beehive and an exhibition in the gallery. They are hoping it will be in July.

SALTARELLO - an exhibition by Kara Lyons is opening in Gallery Frank from Tuesday to Friday 10 - 5.30 or by appointment, Sunday 23 May until Saturday 5 June. Saltarello is an Italian folkloric dance and used here as the title of this exhibition of sculptures and drawings by Kara Lyons. This work, although abstract, is suggestive of the uninhibited movement of women’s’ dance as a celebration of convivial feminine joy.

PLASTIC GRASS - an exhibition of sound, installation, sculpture, and video by Maryanne Royle will be in the gallery from 12 - 26 June. The show contains an imagined past; an absurd and fanciful dream inspired by speculative fiction and a brass quintet. The exhibition can be viewed by appointment or during a daytime event in the garden on the 19 June featuring a performance from Manchester band Beau Mec.

Four Ebor artists are doing a sound art project with Manchester International Festival which will culminate in an event at St.Chad’s Church in Rochdale on either the 8 or 15 July. mif.co.uk/mif-sounds-artist-announcement/

Wider afield MANCHESTER INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL (MIF) returns from 1-18 July with a wide-ranging programme spanning visual art, theatre, music, dance, digital and film, by artists from Manchester and all over the world.

As a Festival of original new work and specially created events, MIF has been able to work with artists and venues creatively to develop a varied and flexible Festival that can safely go-ahead whatever restrictions are in place.

Events will take place safely in indoor and outdoor locations across Greater Manchester as well as online. The 2021 Festival programme includes socially distanced performances, free exhibitions and installations across the city and the return of Festival Square, the beating heart of the Festival, with free live music and DJs and great food and drink in a new location in Cathedral Gardens.

OLDHAM COLISEUM THEATRE is preparing to welcome audiences back into the historic building from 24 June as part of an eclectic Summer season combining a return to live theatre, a continuation of innovative online events and an outdoor Pride celebration.

After over a year of closure due to the pandemic the first live theatre show at the Coliseum will be the award-winning Edinburgh Fringe sell-out one-woman show "THE GREATEST PLAY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD..."

"The Greatest Play in the History of the World…" takes us on a heartfelt journey that starts and ends in a small, unassuming house on a quiet suburban road. Julie narrates this story of two neighbours and the people on their street, in a universal love story that celebrates the human race in all its glorious messiness, confusion and joy.

Starring BAFTA nominated Julie Hesmondhalgh (Coronation Street, Broadchurch) and written by Ian Kershaw, the play is squashed full of exquisite observation and heartbreaking beauty. The breathtaking show, which previously ran in London’s West End has been adapted especially to fit with potential continuing coronavirus restrictions.

The Greatest Play in the History of the World runs from Thursday 24 – Saturday 26 June.