Filming the Arts Festival....

And still reflecting on my arty day yesterday I went on to a sub committee meeting for the Tonbridge Arts Festival to help put together the programme for literary events for the next festival. If you're interested it's highly likely that it will take place at the back end of June into early July 2012, which seems a long way off but, in planning terms, the more time the better. We went over last year's programme and came up with some innovative new ideas some of which, no doubt, will eventually fall by the wayside but there'll be a few that may make it all the way to next year's festival.
As if that wasn't enough, after dashing home for a hastily eaten dinner, I rushed over to the Angel Centre for the Tonbridge Film Makers presentation of The Film Show of the Tonbridge Arts Festival 2010. We were even graced with the presence of the Lady Mayor who had been a keen supporter of last year's festival and was clearly feeling nostaligic and wanted to be reminded just how good some of the events were. The film club had put together a slickly edited montage of the event split into the two main sections of Literary and Visual Arts and, in the second half of their show after a very welcome coffee and choccy biccie, Performing Arts. I managed to attend quite a few events but obviously it was impossible to go to everything so last night's show served as a timely reminder of just how rewarding the whole project had been. I felt really quite proud to have been involved in some of the organising and also having been compere at a few of the events. I knew that, in my own small way,I'd done my bit.  I'm sure the club secretary won't mind me saying that DVD's of their show are available for a £5 donation. The evening served to remind me of the spirit of the festival. The Flash Mob's fabulous version of Dancing in the Street, where the High Street was suddenly transformed into a scene from Fame on a busy Saturday afternoon to the stunned amazement of shoppers; the Big Picture, a giant installation on the Castle wall; The Fish project with their giant weird and colourful fishy sculptures along the riverside; Rob Parkinson's superbly musical traditional story time; the talk by the author of Heist, about the security depot robbery just a hundred yards or so from where it actually took place; and local-up-and-coming magician, Jonathan Shotton's, wonderful Las Vegas style show were just a few examples of memories which came flooding back to me thanks to Tonbridge Film Makers show....