Authors ~ Storytellers ~ Poets ~ Musicians ~ Acrobats
Discussions ~ Readings ~ Talks ~ Performances
WEDNESDAY 6th MAY
Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me – with KATE CLANCHY
Arts Centre
Devizes Road SN1 4BJ
Tel 01793 535534
12.30pm ~ 6th May ~ £9 (£8)
What is the role of teachers and education? Is school the best and right place to change the world?
What should you say and not say in the classroom? How does a teacher get the best out of
children, help them find their voice, and produce work of breathtaking brilliance?
Novelist, prize-winning poet, teacher, and writer, Kate Clanchy MBE is the author of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, a book about her experience of teaching in state schools. It won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and Philip Pullman reckons that ‘No one has said better so much of what so badly needs saying' and that it is ‘the best book on teachers, children, and writing that I've ever read.’
Teaching today is all too often demeaned, diminished, and drastically under-resourced. This book and Kate’s experiences show why it should not be.
WORDS ON WEDNESDAY OPEN MIC
Presented by Words on Wednesday in association with the Swindon Festival of Literature
Swindon Hub, 36 The Parade, Swindon SN1 1BA
1.30pm to 4pm ~ 6th May ~ FREE!
A chance to share words, poetry or prose, in a caring, sharing, and welcoming setting.
Bring along whatever you’d like to share or just join us to listen.
Everyone welcome!
Art Cure – what the arts can do for our health– with DAISY FANCOURT
Arts Centre, Devizes Road SN1 4BJ
Tel 01793 535534
6.30pm ~ 6th May ~ £10 (£9)
Might the arts – from reading to writing, song to salsa, poetry to pop, galleries to graffiti, dance to disco – be one of the most powerful tools for unlocking health and happiness?
Can the arts help us live longer, be stronger, and even save lives?
Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London, multi-award-winning science communicator, and BBC New Gen Thinker, Daisy Fancourt, has some encouraging answers in her new book Art Cure. With scientific evidence, Daisy demonstrates the life-changing power of the arts, how engaging in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body and helps us not only survive, but to flourish and thrive.
The Genius Myth – with HELEN LEWIS, in conversation with Matt Holland,
and with you
Arts Centre, Devizes Road SN1 4BJ
Tel 01793 535534
8pm ~ 6th May ~ £10 (£9)
Do you know a genius? Are you one? The tortured writer; the rebellious scientist; the monstrous artist; the tech disruptor: who’s a genius? Can we tell what society values by who it labels a genius? Can we also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate, in the name of a particular kind of cleverness?
In her latest book, The Genius Myth, best-selling author, staff writer at The Atlantic and former deputy editor at the New Statesman, Helen Lewis unpicks a word – genius - that we all use and asks if the modern idea of genius is distorting our view of the world.
Poets Three: KAREN DOWNS-BARTON, ZOE BROOKS, and CHRISTOPHER HORTON
Presented in association with Poetry Swindon
Lower Shaw Farm, Old Shaw Lane, West Swindon SN5 5PJ
Tel 01793 535534
7pm ~ 6th May ~ £8 (£7)
Prize-winning poet Karen Downs-Barton PhD is an Anglo-Romani writer who, after a childhood on the move, now lives in Wiltshire. Her latest collection, Minx, explores a vibrant but precarious culture little understood by a wider society and whose traditional ways are in danger of being lost.
Award-winning Gloucestershire poet Zoe Brooks is director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Her third collection of poems is titled Something in Nothing which places fairytale characters in a contemporary setting, revealing that fairy tales are very much not just for children.
Bridport prize-winner Christopher Horton has written for Poetry London and Wild Court. His third pamphlet collection, Clutter Jar, comprises taut, emotionally charged poems that explore memory, masculinity, and technology with clarity and lyricism.
