Metal Culture
Library Friday at Edge Hill Station
We have decided to open our new library space to the public on Fridays from 11-4:30pm starting Friday 5th April. This is in response to the closure of many local libraries and a general lack of free community spaces in the area for study and to meet like-minded people The library will provide a welcoming space away from home, aimed particularly towards students and people in creative industries who work from home, for artistic networking, discussion, working and reading. There will be free tea and coffee, internet access and a dvd player for anybody who wants to watch any of the library’s dvds. People are also welcome to bring their own laptops and use the power points available.
As well as fiction and local history sections, the library contains rare books and archived material on all of the arts from performance to architecture to visual arts, which will be available for browsing. Ring the bell on the yellow doors on platform one for entry.
Forthcoming events at the Metal Library:
Saturday 27th April 1-5pm
Book Swap in collaboration with Wordscapes
Make room for some new books in your life by trading them in at our book swap. Join us for books, free tea, coffee and cake in Metal's lovely library. No need to book in advance, just drop in and bring a book to swap. We’ll also be collecting books in advance of the event, if you’d like to bring some down to donate email
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Thu 2nd May 5-6:30pm
Appreciative Journalling Workshop by www.AppreciatingPeople.co.uk
Appreciative Journaling is a positive psychology technique which helps you notice the positive things in life. It's proven to increase personal wellbeing, through small, incremental increases in mindfulness and noticing – and savouring the the good things that happen around you. Free, Booking essential, to book a place contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
These events are part of In Other Words Festival
Ideas Lab Peterborough
Metal worked with 12 artists and curators in an intensive week long lab at Chauffeurs Cottage in Peterborough between 18-22 March. This was the third lab supported by Arts Council England with the specific aim of building digital capacity in the Eastern region as part of Metal's lead role as Digital Escalator. The Peterborough Lab focussed on outdoor arts development and included an opportunity for those participating to develop new ideas for projection within Cathedral Square.
The Ideas Labs have generated significant networking opportunities for those participating and overall Metal has been able to work with 24 curators, programmers, arts leaders and artists between January and March. Read more.
Singularity, Duality and Multiplicity
Join us at Metal Liverpool on Wednesday 20th March until Friday 22nd March 12:00 – 16:00 for Singularity, Duality and Multiplicity, an exhibition by Liverpool John Moores University First Year fine art students.
'Notions of singularity, duality and multiplicity are explored by first year Fine Art undergraduate students from Liverpool John Moores University. The works reflect experimentation and development of images, including through the use of drawing, for expressing ideas about contemporary life and art.'
The exhibition forms part of LJMU's first year study module Form and Purpose. Metal have been working with the students to develop work for the show helping them to gain experience in a gallery environment from writing proposals to staging, installing and marketing an exhibition.
The Diamond Street
The Diamond Street App
Rachel Lichtenstein
Launched on 14 June 2013 at 7pm, Leigh Community Centre, Elm Rd, Leigh on Sea
Please reserve your free ticket here.
Rachel Lichtenstein will discuss the research, production and development of The Diamond Street App: a freely downloadable GPS-activated, rich media digital app for smartphones and tablets, which takes readers on a journey through the historic jewellery quarter of Hatton Garden and the stories in her latest book Diamond Street.
Using content from the book, along with specially developed rich media, soundscapes and specially commissioned films, this app allows you to go on either a virtual (armchair version) or a real guided tour around the area. This beautifully produced and designed app is the first of its kind, an immersive and embodied publishing model enabled by new technologies that transforms content from a literary non-fiction book about place into a dynamic interactive walk around the city streets.
Part new media experience, part walking tour, this location-based app fuses text, documentary film and image with real-time interaction. Guided by the author, along with a host of other characters, the secrets of the streets around you will be revealed as you wander around the area. The jewellery quarter of Hatton Garden is one of London’s most mysterious areas – home to diamond workshops, underground vaults, monastic dynasties, subterranean rivers and forgotten palaces. The Diamond Street App is your passport to this fascinating hidden world.
The Diamond Street App is funded by the Arts Council and produced by Rachel Lichtenstein in collaboration with Metal, Calvium, Phantom Productions, Field Studies Ltd & Hamish Hamilton.
Available to download free of charge in the iTunes app store and for android phones and tablets from 6 June 2013.
Rachel Lichtenstein is an artist, writer and curator. She is currently writing a trilogy of non-fiction books for Hamish Hamilton on different London streets. The first, On Brick Lane, was published in 2007 to much critical acclaim and shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize. Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden is the second in the series.
'Lichtenstein has brought alive something of London… how one street can be a kind of Tardis, a portal to another world of parallel commerce, codes, rituals, history.' The Times
See www.diamondstreetapp.com for more information.
Here is a sneak video preview:
ITV NEWS
ITV News piece by Tom Barton about Southend on Sea's City of Culture bid, featuring Anthem and Colette Bailey:
Lantern Parade Peterborough
Photo: Copyright Lantern Company
Four Artist’s Bursaries – large scale lantern production and workshop skills
Metal are looking for four bursary artists to work alongside our production team as we create the opening celebrations for Peterborough Arts Festival in September 2013. We are developing, in partnership with the Lantern Company, a large-scale lantern parade and performance for Cathedral Square working with a lead artist, composer, schools and community groups.
As part of the project we are offering four bursaries for artists based in Peterborough and the wider Eastern Region to work alongside the Lantern Company and be part of the main production team.
Deadline: 12pm on Thursday 21 March 2013
Read more and apply here.
Future Park March
Future Park is Metal’s networking and information sharing evening for practicing artists, working in all disciplines, from across South East Essex.
Metal, Chalkwell Hall, Chalkwell Avenue, Southend on Sea, SS0 8NB, Tel: 01702 470700
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14 March 2013
7-8pm Surgery on writing funding applications with Colette Bailey
8pm: 3min wonder presentations
Followed by guest speaker Russell Martin from Artquest and informal discussion over a glass of wine.
Artquest provides everything a visual artist needs to know by encouraging critical engagement and providing practical support. Helping artists to make work, sell work, find work and network, Artquest provides the information to drive creative practice and help artists thrive on some of the lowest incomes in the creative sector. Run by artists, for artists, they build a bridge from student experience to sustainable working life, and throughout the artists' professional career. Artquest launched in 2001, is hosted by University of the Arts London and is a National Portfolio Organisation of Arts Council England.
Hansel and Gretel
To coincide with NIE Theatre's production of Hansel and Gretel at the Key Theatre in Peterborough (14-16 February), Metal invited artist Robyn Woolston to create a visual art installation for the bar area.
Working with Vivacity arts and NIE, Robyn created a gingerbread-house lined with sweets in a vinyl forest with a trail of houses hung in the trees outside.
In a series of workshops, school children were invited to decorate trees to populate this fictional forest from local schools: The Beeches Primary School, St Thomas More and Hampton Vale.
IDEA13 March Surgery
Come to the IDEA13 Surgery on Wednesday 13 March 4-5pm to find out how can we help you promote your work or organisation on idea13.org, an online network for culture in Southend.
This free event is open to both current IDEA13 members and people who wish to subscribe, individuals, groups and organisations. We will show you how to create/improve a profile on IDEA13 and how to promote your events.
You are welcome to stay for the whole duration or just drop in at any time between these hours.
We can help you upload information and images to your profile (bring a CD with your images and any text describing your work but please make sure you have your login details with you*).
Metal, Chalkwell Hall, Chalkwell Park, Southend.
Please RSVP and email any questions to michaela (AT) idea13.org
*If you don’t remember your Idea13 password, please request a new one here before the workshop on http://idea13.org/forums/
Lee Baker Talk
Artist’s Talk: LEE BAKER
Monday 25 March 2013 7pm – 9pm
Metal, Chauffeurs Cottage, 1 St Peters Road, Peterborough PE1 1YX
Lee Baker is Metal’s current artist-in-residence in Peterborough. We are hosting an evening with Lee on Monday 25 March at 7pm at Chauffeurs Cottage where he will talk about his work and early ideas for developing future large-scale work in the city. The evening will be friendly and informal with an opportunity to join in the conversation, ask questions and contribute to the artist’s research process. Refreshments will also be provided.
The event is free and all are welcome. Please rsvp to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Brighton-based Lee Baker is our first artist in residency at Metal Peterborough. His work takes the form of painstaking large-format paintings and installations, utilizing vivid color and extreme perspective to ‘build’ meta-cities and architectural environments, often set against a stormy backdrop of ashen clouds, pending night and potential destruction. His fine art practice explores stark visions of the indestructible meta-city against the indiscriminate forces of nature. Drawing on the narrative and scenic elements of films such as Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, Disney’s Tron, and further exploring the idea of a self-aware ‘thinking’ city, developed in films such as ‘Tekkonkinkreet’ and Makoto Shinkai’s ‘A Place Promised in our Early Years’. His most recent work, investigates the idea of future archeology and mythology, exploring the idea of the projection of history onto megalithic structures such as Stonehenge in England or Ahu Tongariki on Easter Island.
Baker creates his own megaliths, abstracting and simplifying, building constructs and giving them meaning. ‘Refractive Monolith’, for instance, is a three-dimensional reaction to or conversation with Lee Baker’s paintings. Utilizing approximately 10 thousand metres of acrylic yarn, he has ‘drawn’ and occupied the space with this imposing architectural shape, forcing its perspective upon the viewer. As with Baker’s paintings, the joyous colors give a false sense of security while at the same time the full spectrum of laser-like yarn represents the building’s volatile infrastructure and relative weakness. The graded gray walls delineating the building’s silhouette serve to enhance to colours while implying the finality of the structure’s life.
For more information, see Lee Baker's website.
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