Researched and curated by residents of Brighton & Hove, Queer the Pierallows the visitor to explore selected experiences of LGBTQ+ people in Sussex over the last 200 years, beginning with a blackmail letter written in 1798 from a solicitor to an army captain, accused of propositioning another man on a coach to Dorking.
Brighton charity Same Sky has launched its crowdfunder for Burning the Clocks 2018, which takes place from 6.30pm on Friday 21 December 2018. The parade runs from New Road to the seafront, with around 2,000 participants and more than 20,000 onlookers.
The theme for Burning the Clocks 2018 is ‘Remembrance’. Event organisers Same Sky have created a large-scale lantern in the shape of a heart for this year’s event. This will be surrounded by smaller Remembrance hearts carried by procession-goers on the night of the parade.
As in previous years, Brighton residents can purchase lantern packs to take part in the parade (costing £30-£33, available from early November). Lantern packs contain materials, instructions and four wristbands for four people to take part in the parade. They will be available for purchase at Brighton Pavilion, HISBE supermarket in York Place, the Wood Store on Elder Place and Book Nook in Hove.
Local artist Graham Carter has generously created a new limited edition print for Burning the Clocks for the sixth year running. These are also on sale to raise funds, with 80 limited edition designs created around this year’s theme of ‘Remembrance’.
For more information on purchasing lantern packs and Graham Carter’s prints, visit Same Sky’s Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/SameSkyBtn/. Businesses and restaurants interested in getting involved with the event as a sponsor or participant should contact jasmine@samesky.co.uk.
Six hundred years ago or more or, if you please, in days of yore,
A wicked wight yclept 'Old Nick', renowned for many a wanton trick,
With envy from the Downs beheld the studded churches of the Weald.
Here Poyning's cruciform and there, Hurst, Albourne, Bolney, Newtimber.
Cuckfield and more with towering crest, quae nunc prae scribere longum est.
Oft heard the undulating chime, proclaim aloud 'twas service time.
While to the sacred house of prayer went many a pious worshipper.
"Can I with common patience see these churches and not one for me?"
"Shall I be cheated of my due by such a sanctimonius crew?"
He muttered twenty things beside and swore that night the foaming tide,
Led through a deep and wondrous trench, should give those pious souls a drench.
Adown the West the steeds of day, hasted merrily away,
And night in solemn pomp came on, her lamp a star, a cloud her throne.
So Nick began with much ado, to cut those lofty downs in two.
At every lift his spade threw out a thousand waggon-loads no doubt.
Oh! had he laboured to the morrow his envious work had wreaked much sorrow.
The Weald, a wide and beauteous place, o'erwhelmed a sad and watery waste.
But so it chanced a good old dame, whose deed has long outlived her name,
Waked by the cramp at midnight's hour, or just escaped the nightmare's power.
Rose from her humble bed when lo, she heard Nick's terrible ado,
And by the starlight dimly spied that wicked wight and dyke so wide.
And, as with wonderment amazed, at workman and at work she gazed,
Swift cross her mind a thought there flew, that she by stratagem might do,
A deed which luckily would save, her county from a watery grave.
Forth from her casement in a minute, a sieve with flaming candle in it,
She held to view, and simple Nick, who ne'er suspected such a trick,
Scared at the sight of a new sun, fled, his work undone,
And muttering curses that the day should drive him from his work away.
Night after night our heedful dame, watched, but again Nick never came.
Who now dare call the action evil, to hold a candle to the Devil?
Notwithstanding the reputation of Brighton as a centre for the arts and artists philistines seem to be alive and kicking.
The setting of an important 20thC artwork has been recently ruined by the unthinking addition of a motley collection of seafront clutter. It is no consolation that some of it may not be permanent. Even the security camera mast, in itself, is sufficient to spoil the composition.
The Pride Community Parade will set off at 11am from Hove Lawns on Saturday 5 August.
The parade will travel east along Kings Road, north up West Street, east along North Street and north to Preston Park. The rear of the parade is estimated to arrive at Preston Park around 2pm
The Pride Village Party takes place on both Saturday 5 August and Sunday 6 August. St James' Street and surrounding roads will be road closed.
The Royal Pavilion & Museums (RPM) has successfully bid for nearly £2.8 million over four years (£689,507a year) from Arts Council England’s National Portfolio.
This offer is conditional on an agreed business case for invigorating the Booth, Hove Museum and Preston Manor and bringing the collections across the city closer to communities, through digital and schools activities to exhibitions, events and outreach.
At the Booth Museum a new ‘evolution gallery’ will feature a specially commissioned replica of an ‘Iguanodon Mantellisaurus’ (a type of dinosaur) and the story of its local discoverer Gideon Mantell. From birds to butterflies, flora to fossils, the Booth’s Designated collection will evolve into an interactive science centre, to share the story of what it is to be human in the natural world.
The Booth will also build on its popular events programme to attract new audiences; it has hosted award-winning life drawing classes, promenade theatre, sell-out pub quizzes, acoustic gigs and taxidermy demonstrations that have shown the venue and collections in a new light.
Hove Museum’s profile will be developed as a ‘museum of making,’ encouraging and inspiring a wide audience to experience the Craft and Film & Media collections. Programming, exhibitions and activities will explore the processes and the people behind objects in the museum with a ‘Maker in Residence’ from the University of Brighton sharing the collections with visitors.
Collaboration with local film organisations such as the Brighton Youth Film Festival, Cine-City and Film Archive South East will explore new ways of using the spaces and collections at Hove Museum.
At Preston Manor, the emphasis will be on providing greater access to parts of this historic building, and revitalising the kitchen gardens. Improvements to the visitor experience will build a better understanding of the house, collections and those who lived and worked there.
On the Royal Pavilion Estate a series of exhibitions and displays will mark key milestones over the next four years such as the 200th anniversary of the Royal Pavilion’s creator, George IV’s, ascension to the throne, and the 50th anniversary of the Moon landings.
The restoration of the Royal Pavilion’s Saloon will be completed in 2018 and the funding will enable an accompanying display to showcase the ‘behind the scenes’ work of a range of specialists involved, including carpet makers, silk weavers, upholsterers, decorative artists and historians.
The Arts Council has previously recognised RPM’s sector expertise in the use of digital programming and technology to engage audiences. During 2018-22 a digital publishing programme will promote exhibitions, events, and the unexpected stories behind the collections. RPM aims to reach a million sessions per year across their various websites by the end of the four year period
A Blue Plaque to be unveiled at Brighton Dome honouring music legends Abba who launched their career after winning the 19th Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden at the Brighton Dome on 6 April 1974.
The plaque will be unveiled on BBC Music Day (Thursday 15 June) between 6.45pm and 7pm, live on BBC Sussex. Bjorn Again will be performing Waterloo in the Pavilion Gardens shortly after the unveiling and everyone is invited to come down and join in the celebrations.
Royal Pavilion & Museums will take part in this year’s Brighton & Hove Pride, making it the first Museum service to have a Pride float in the UK. Pride 2017, under the title 'The Summer of Love', will mark the 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK via the Sexual Offences Act (1967). All of the RPM's five sites – from the Royal Pavilion to Preston Manor will be represented on the float. Staff will build the float and appear on it on the day, many of them in costumes they’ve made themselves.
This is just one item in an extensive programme of projects, exhibitions, displays and activities to celebrate the 50 years since the 1967 Act.
For full programme see:- LGBTQ takes centre stage at Brighton Museum.
The Royal Pavilion & Museums (RPM) is recruiting trustees and a chair for its new cultural trust shadow board.
The city council currently manages the Royal Pavilion & Museums and is creating a charitable trust to manage its service operation and development in future. The trust is seen as a significant step towards the future aim of creating a dynamic, resilient cultural and heritage trust for the city, bringing together RPM and Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival in a single entity.
The shadow board will guide the inception of the new organisation and help shape its structure and governance as well as new ways of working.
BHCC is looking to create a diverse board and applications from all sections of the community are welcome.
Applicants should have an understanding and passion for heritage, museums and collections and their social role and purpose. Demonstrable experience or a professional qualification in a range of sectors, including culture, arts, heritage, legal, charity, finance, property or transformational change, will be relevant to the role.
The Royal Pavilion & Museums Foundation has supported the purchase of King George IV’s only surviving grand piano at auction. The historic piece was secured after a successful bid of £62k was made using money from Art Fund, Arts Council England/Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, The Leche Trust and the Royal Pavilion Foundation. The piano could be on display at the Royal Pavilion as early as the Easter weekend 2017.
The piano, commissioned for the Royal Pavilion by George IV in c.1821, was made by Thomas Tomkison and is the most celebrated of Tomkison’s surviving works. The maker’s flamboyant approach to case decoration is thought to have appealed to George’s Francophile and adventurous taste. The piano, described as an elegant, rosewood grand, is extravagantly decorated, inlaid with brass, gilt mouldings, and gilt turnbuckles and has elegantly carved legs.
At a cost of £236 5/- the piano was well over twice the cost of a standard top quality English grand piano at the time. Accounts reveal that Tomkison supplied other ‘extra elegant’ pianos to the Prince Regent, but no others are known to have survived.
The first phase of a major project to revitalise the Royal Pavilion Estate has been awarded £3m from the Coast to Capital Local Growth fund. The grant award will go towards a major refurbishment of the Grade 1 listed Brighton Dome Corn Exchange and Grade 2 listed Studio Theatre as the first phase of an ambitious heritage project at the Royal Pavilion Estate.
The £3m grant joins funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England (ACE) and Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), along with money from the city council, charitable trusts and individual patrons. Together this ensures £19.3m of the £21m phase one project costs are now in place. Fundraising will continue throughout the build which will include ways to support the project digitally, a seat appeal and event activity.
The multi-layered project, which will be delivered in three phases over the next few years, aims to reunite the historic Estate created by George IV in the early 19th century to create a centre for heritage, culture and the performing arts which reflects the unique spirit of Brighton.
In honour of the continuing work of Selma Montford and the Brighton Society, a local benefactor is providing a new web platform valued at £1,800, developed at no charge.
The new web platform is smart phone ready, comprising all the areas of the work of the society, presented in a state of the art visual interpretation which will be the best in Brighton (and Hove actually) for any amenity society in the city.
The web platform will go fully live at 5:00pm on Friday 10 February. From next week, the web platform will be developed and maintained on a weekly basis on behalf of the Brighton Society at no charge.
Next week councillors at Brighton & Hove City Council’s policy, resources and growth committee will decide on whether to establish a trust from April 2018, together with a 25 year funding agreement, to be reviewed every five years. It would mean management of all the city’s museums transferring into the charitable organisation with ownership of the buildings and the city’s collections staying with the council.
The trust would include the Royal Pavilion, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Hove Museum & Art Gallery, the Booth Museum of Natural History and Preston Manor.
If agreed, the council would create an interim board of trustees, to include councillors. Staff working for the service would transfer to the new trust once it is established. The taxable benefits of trusts - a tried and tested model for museum services - include gift aid on admissions, business rate relief and cultural exemption on income. The trust model came out as the most financially sustainable long-term for the service, with a surplus of around £250,000 projected by 2022/23. The council will support the new trust in its first three years of business to allow it time to develop new sources of income.
Due to central government budget reductions which are affecting all council services, the city’s museums, including the Royal Pavilion, could face having their council funds reduced from £1.145million in 2016/17 to £753,000 in 2019/20. In addition, a building condition survey in 2015 identified a need for £1m a year for repairs and maintenance. Many of the buildings are heritage listed. A trust would have more scope than the council to raise funds to support the maintenance budget.
Brighton & Hove's museums service is one of only 23 in the country to be part of Arts Council England's Major Partner Museum Programme. It is also the lead organisation for museums development in the sector across the South East, supporting 300 museums. The city’s five museums hold World Art, Natural History and Decorative Art collections which are nationally designated and internationally significant, as well as other collections, including archaeology, fashion, fine art and local history.
The Royal Pavilion and Brighton Museum & Art Gallery is also part of the ambitious Royal Pavilion Estate heritage project to reinvigorate and reconnect the buildings and landscape of the Estate and improve the centrepiece of Brighton & Hove’s cultural quarter. Phase one works involve a major refurbishment of the nationally-important Brighton Dome and Corn Exchange.
