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Photos from Volunteers Afternoon Tea
On Saturday 1 June Metal kick-started National Volunteers Week in style!
We had a creative, workshop style afternoon tea party and good fun! Thanks to all 25 volunteers for coming and joining in with the fun and games. As well as getting to know each other, we created our own ‘wall’ and sampled some lovely sandwiches and cakes...
It’s never too late to join in with our volunteering programme – we can guarantee a rewarding and exciting time, with all the food you can eat thrown in!
E-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more details or see our Volunteering page.
Here is what the volunteers said they liked about the event:
'Meeting others and feeling part of something good.'
'Writing on the blackboard, friendly atmosphere, cake.'
'It was an interesting and fun way to get to know everyone.'
'Meeting fellow volunteers so that I don’t feel out of place at the event.'
'Getting a feel for the level of enthusiasm.'
Photos by Bradley Keeble.
Written by Colette Bailey 14 June 2013
Diamond Street App Launch
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.
The app in now available to download free of charge in the iTunes app store and from Google app store for Android phones and tablets.
Read more about the development of The Diamond Street App on Penguin blog here.
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
'A superb oral historian, she comes from three generations of jewellery dealers, and proves to be both an indefiable explorer and a skilled interviewer of people not in the habit of sharing their life-stories. The most impressive revelation of this splendid book is that trust, in this tiny, hidden world, carries a value high above wealth.' Miranda Seymour - The Sunday Times
See www.diamondstreetapp.com for more information.
Written by Colette Bailey 11 June 2013
Future Park 13 June
Future Park is Metal’s networking and information sharing evening for practicing artists, working in all disciplines, from across South East Essex.
The format of each evening is as follows:
7pm – 8pm: Practical session / ‘surgery’ run by experts on different (useful) subjects for artists.
8pm – 8.30pm: Up to 10 x 3 minute ‘open mic’ spots for artists to tell you about new ideas, existing projects, opportunities coming up etc. If you want to sign up for a slot, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
8.30pm: Invited guest speaker with opportunity for Q&A
ROHINI DEVASHER - Born in 1978, Rohini Devasher lives and works in New Delhi. She received her MA in Printmaking from Winchester School of Art in the UK and her BFA from the College of Art in New Delhi. Her work has been exhibited widely in India and abroad.
9pm – 10pm: Networking and drinks.
Artists, working in all disciplines who think they may benefit from engaging with a dynamic, ambitious, artist-led environment are welcome to drop by.
Venue: Please note that this month's edition of Future Park is at Cafe Valise, Leigh Community Centre, Elm Rd, SS9 1SP
Written by Colette Bailey 10 June 2013
Old Trunk at Village Green
Don't miss Old Trunk's stage at Village Green. Consisting of Writer/actor Sadie Hasler and actor/improviser Sarah Mayhew, Old Trunk will present original theatre that is 'compelling, fast-paced and visceral'.
Our interview with Old Trunk:
What is Old Trunk?
Well. The professional-sounding spiel is that Old Trunk is a new-writing theatre company that creates darkly comic, visceral, multi-role journeys of the soul for the stage, or something deep like that. But the less fluffy truth of it is that me and my co-Artistic Director and best friend Sarah Mayhew decided that there's a lot of nobs about and we'd like to create our own work and work with each other more. Under the officialdom of running a company we pretty much just chat about stuff we want and then do it.
How old is Old Trunk?
Although Sarah and I have worked together on loads of things (mainly comedy) for years, Old Trunk is only just turning one. In baby terms we're not yet on solids and you have to keep checking our bums every five minutes. I keep meaning to look through my phone for the date of the exact text where I said in a huff one day "Ugh. I just want to set up a theatre company and do plays all the time" and Sarah said "Alright wench, let's ruddy do it." That text would yield our proper birthday and we would know when to celebrate instead of just guessing and eating cake every day in the month of June for good measure. It feels pretty amazing to have done so much in just a year.
What projects have you done so far?
Our first play The Bastard Children of Remington Steele started off as an idea for a sketch show initially - over a pint in Old Leigh, then we changed our minds and I went away and wrote it as a play - the first I'd written in quite a while having been focused on solo character comedy - then we came together to read and edit, produce and stage. We premiered at the Camden Fringe and then had a near sold-out run at the Leicester Square theatre. We're now following the same model with our new play The Secret Wives of Andy Williams, which is the prequel to the last. It's an amazing joy to see it all start from nothing and then grow into a real living thing, thanks to the dedication and amazing talent of our fellow actors Charlie Platt and Edward Mitchell. We're very lucky girls. The hard work is paying off, with lots of top industry people being very supportive, and our wonderful patrons Jenny Eclair, Phill Jupitus and Deborah Frances-White bolstering our confidence, and it's all so much fun sometimes we almost feel guilty.
What can people expect to see on your stage at Village Green?
People can expect to see a mixed bag of utter delight. We've got local artists proffering their wares in the early part of the day - sketches, world theatre, physical theatre, puppetry, storytelling, song, music and dance... Then we're showing a sneaky peek of our new play. Then we've got the pant-splittingly funny Radio 4 sketch group Jigsaw, one of the finest character comedians around, Being Human's Colin Hoult with his show Characthorse, the Fringe First Award winning play Dirty Great Love Story which wowed audiences in Edinburgh and at the Soho theatre, and then we're finishing with another show of ours - The Vagabond Diaries - a collection of tales about being human, featuring the sublime music of M G Boulter and The Lucky Strikes. We could only fit more in if the day was longer and we booked the world's tiniest contortionists. But we went for regular sized people who flings their bits about. We think that's more fun.
Written by Colette Bailey 09 June 2013