Great outdoors entertainment from poetry and Puck to a Picnic in the Park
As we enter the final countdown to the Ashbourne Festival with two days of International Streetfest taking place this weekend, event organiser TIM CHALLANS looks at other festival highlights coming soon
THE 2022 Ashbourne Festival starts this weekend with two days of the extremely popular International Streetfest and the Summer Art Exhibition.
There then follows two weeks of events to suit a wide variety of tastes including speakers, music, theatre and comedy.
I have told you about many of these events already but there are a few more that we are sure you will enjoy.
Two are outdoors in beautiful gardens. The very popular Poetry in the Garden is in the garden of Offcote Grange at 2pm on Sunday 26 June.
Ashbourne Writer’s Group returns with poems that they have written over the last year and the star of the show is the Derbyshire poet Sophie Sparham.
Sophie has written commissions for BBC Radio 4, The V&A and The People’s History Museum.
She co-hosts the night Word Wise which won best spoken word night at the 2019 Saboteur Awards.
Her latest collection ‘The Man Who Ate 50,000 Weetabix’ came out in April published by Verve Poetry Press. Sophie’s work has been published in Orbis, Under the Radar and The Morning Star.
Her poem Sunrise Over Aldi won third place in the 2020 Charles Causley International Poetry Competition.
She also facilitates creative writing workshops for schools and vulnerable adults and has worked with QUAD Derby, Leicester City Football Club Community Trust, Women’s Work, Padley Centre, Nottingham Poetry Festival and various schools.
This radical young poet is well worth buying a ticket for.
The usual fine selections of cakes will be available at the event.
Offcote Grange is also the location for Illyria’s “A Midsummer Nights Dream on July 2.
The second outdoor event is the festival finale, Picnic in the Park on 3 July.
Every festival hundreds of people enjoy an afternoon and picnic in the Memorial Gardens, Ashbourne. This year the entertainment will be provided by the internationally acclaimed Midland Youth Jazz orchestra.
A talk that will intrigue many people is “Bigamists, B**tards and Bandits”, a fascinating exploration into what genealogical research reveals about many families when you dig deeply enough.
On June 29 Dr Michala Hulme will help us trace our criminal ancestors (perhaps we all have them). “True Crime Stories” meets “Who Do You Think You Are?” as Michala Hulme explains how she uses census and genealogical material to track down Victorian criminals, and how you can do it yourself. This promises to be both informative and highly entertaining. Michala Hulme specialises in 19th Century history and makes frequent appearances as an expert on radio and television history programmes.
Details of these events and others are in the Ashbourne Festival brochure, on posters around the area, on the Festival website, social media and in more articles coming soon.
Tickets are on sale for this and other Festival performances and full information and links to buy tickets are on the festival website www.ashbournefestival.org.