R u r a l A r t s

Art On Your Doorstep – The Delivery Diaries
Art Cafe: Cake for the soul!The British summer is as reliable as Big Ben – just as the kids start their holidays, the weather has got wetter. Fortunately, the rain has driven quite the crowd to join us today for Art Café – a cosy arts activity session especially for older people. The group meet monthly, here in our Snug at Rural Arts, where tea and cake are never too far from the paint brushes and pottery wheels.

With us today are a mixture of familiar faces from last month’s café, as well as new starters. That’s the great thing about Art Café – anyone over 75 can drop in and out as they please. You can be a dab hand or try something new, and the Rural Arts team are on hand to help. Poppy, who’s leading the session today, explains “we’ve chosen activities that are easy to pick up, so anyone arriving a bit later or who needs to skip a session can still join in”.
Today the group are doing tile painting, and the idea is for all the tiles to be put…

Art On Your Doorstep – The Delivery Diaries
An empowering afternoon for women It’s an all-female audience at the performance of ‘No Petticoats Here’ in The Courthouse, Thirsk. As part of the ‘Art On Your Doorstep’ project, the show is offered today as a matinee, making it easier for older people in the area to come along - some with carers, who can attend free of charge. They’re about to hear Louise Jordan who is a singer, a musician, and perhaps most importantly, a storyteller. For 15 months Louise researched and wrote the songs that tell the stories of the women of World War I. Against the backdrop of this 19th century courthouse, she’s about to introduce us to each of her comrades.
The first is Ada York, a 17 year old Edwardian woman who ran away from home against her father’s wishes to train as a nurse. Ada, like all the other women Louise will introduce, is a strong and determined young woman. These tales aren’t the traditional war stories of grieving women left behind, but of the i…