Our Annual Report begins with the sad loss of our President Prof. Patrick Nuttgens who died in March. He was very supportive of our efforts to bring arts to this community, attending our launch picnic, many shows, drawing the Castle Howard gate with the spider's web on the October banner, and talking about the family craft of stained glass to the Textile and Craft group. We were able to make a video of that session, which we will treasure.
In last year's report we featured two new activities which were emerging. Our list of activities begins with these - the Richard Spruce group and the Rural Learning Community - because they both achieved not only the goals they set themselves, but also because the activities brought in so many people from surrounding villages. This we saw as the way to sustain ourselves into the future.
Certainly the year has been a testing one for the Working Group as very full-time work, illness and family commitments have cut down on our available time and energy. It is no coincidence that these two new projects involved people from outside the village in helping us with organising and administration. We do need more help, so wherever you live, if you are interested in getting involved please tell us. We have lots of tasks to be done!

ACTIVITIES 2003 - 4

The Richard Spruce Society
This time last year some initial meetings had taken place between members of the Terrington Arts Working Group and members of Welburn Local History Society with a view to mounting something to publicise and celebrate the life of Richard Spruce, the Victorian plant hunter. Many meetings and bottles of wine later, a Richard Spruce Day was held on 12 June. Over 100 people heard excellent presentations from Prof. Mark Seaward of Bradford University about Spruce's work and international importance, and Angela Cox from Welburn who had delved into the archives to research his life in the Howardian area. The trail leaflet was unveiled, and after a splendid lunch served by the ladies of the church, many participants visited the sites before returning to the final wreath laying on his grave in Terrington churchyard. Visitors came from all over the country to hear more about Spruce, and we were particularly pleased to welcome two young scientists from Kew who are cataloguing his original specimens so that his work can be 'repatriated' to South America via the web.
The day was so successful that a bid is now being formulated to raise money for further activities related to Spruce and a book by Angela Cox.

Howardian Rural Learning Community
The Rural Learning Communities were set up by a Consortium of Colleges, the WEA and Rural Arts North Yorkshire. Rural Arts invited us to be the centre of the Howardian Community last year and we circulated every house in Terrington and a 5 mile radius asking what people would like to learn.
The result was that we were off the mark in September 2003 with a number of courses.
Over 900 person sessions were achieved in the courses listed below, between September and April, disregarding the separate courses at Huttons Ambo and Brandsby.
Water colour was much requested and this group has met for 10 weeks in each of the 3 terms to work with Jane Grainger.
Digital photography was also very popular and 2 courses of 6 weeks for 10 people were run before Christmas. A different course was run in Huttons Ambo in the Spring, alongside some Arts workshops.
A series of arts workshops was also run by Rural Arts at Brandsby.
Surfing the Net was run for 7 weeks at Hovingham Village Hall to make use of the ISDN line there.
A workshop entitled 'Let's make music and dance' at the end of September was led by Tony and Linda Lacey. This resulted in a group of intrepid musicians meeting weekly throughout the year, culminating in their first 'gig' as TVB at a Barn dance in aid of North Yorkshire Music Therapy.
In the Spring a 12 week Local and Family History course was offered by a WEA tutor at Welburn. This attracted people from several villages who shared information and research.
A projected Reminiscence course in May was cancelled because of lack of advance bookings.

Lesley Bradshaw attended a day conference at Askham Bryan, the lead college for the RLC programme, which highlighted the many exciting courses offered across the County. Not everything had gone well, but the number of new learners and new venues for learning was evidence of a need and of the hard work done by development workers, such as Yvonne Jones from Rural Arts who worked with us. Unfortunately the news at the end of the day was that the Consortium was to be disbanded as the budget had now been given to Community Education. There is no news yet about how it is to be used. Terrington Arts can support groups such as the Band, but the impetus has already been lost.

Shows
1   Our year began on 11 October when, after a brief AGM, around 80 people were entertained by the vibrant singing of Chechelele, a York choir specialising in African, Balkan and French folk songs. Their harmonies and rhythm were quite bewitching, and their effect immediate as they sang without music and with only occasional percussion accompaniment. Profits from the evening were passed on to the choir which supports African charities.
2   November was left blank in our programme to make way for the excellent Northern Lights Theatre production of The Killing of Sister George. The company handled all its own publicity for its tour of North Yorkshire, but the audience of only 30 showed that more targeted publicity, of the sort we do for the productions we book, is necessary.  
3   Wind in the Willows, by the Library Theatre in early December, was  memorable for both the show and the power cut. With 100 tickets sold for a family show, it was touch and go whether a performance was possible. Thanks are due to those who turned up with generators, candles and torches so readily. In the end the show was enjoyed by young and old with only one further brief interruption of light during a winter scene underground in Ratty's house.
4   The March touring production was the brilliant Blazin' Fiddles, which was part of the North Yorkshire-wide Festival of Many Cultures. This was the most expensive show we have ever booked, and we took the precaution of asking Ryedale District Council to underwrite it. However, we were over-run with requests for tickets, sold out a week before and so disappointed many of our members. All the players were virtuosos in their own right, and they showed us how extraordinarily varied Scottish fiddle music can be.
5   Golden Moments in Opera by Hatstand Opera Company enthralled an audience of 80+ on Thursday 22 April. They made opera very approachable for everyone, and also sang many favourites of the opera buffs in the audience. This was a Rural Arts on Tour production.
6   Our final visiting show on Thursday 6 May was Theft by Pickering Dramatic Club, making a return visit after their successful Little Grimley last year. This was a Bring your own Bottle evening again, but only attracted 40 people. We do find that audiences are harder to attract once the evenings are light, but we struggle to find performers willing to commit themselves to rural touring in January and February.
7   We have organised a number of small group Outings this year, mainly through emailing those who have given us their addresses. Groups large enough for one or two cars have enjoyed a trip to Pickering Dramatic club on their own home ground, Oddsocks Theatre's Jane Eyre in York, Derek Longden at Helmsley and an evening of Checkov at Alne.

Terrington Players
1   The highlight of the year for Players was their Bit of a Do, on 23 January. Players provided a series of sketches, poems and readings for a very full first half of the evening, and Katalyst, a music group from Pocklington played for dancing after the interval. The evening raised over £1000 for the All Saints' Church, Terrington.
2   Players also contributed sketches and readings to a Summer Social Evening on 19th June in a joint concert with Terrington Village Choir.
Thanks are due to David Goodwin for finding time from his professional arts work to work with the enthusiastic bunch of thespians who range in age from teen-agers to old-stagers.

Textile and Craft Group
This Group, under the leadership of Elaine Hubery, goes from strength to strength. With a total membership of around 20, it averages about 12 per fortnightly session from 10.30 to 3.30 on Thursdays in term time.
The Autumn term featured many different types of Quilting, mostly introduced by Elaine, but with a guest workshop leader Isobel Holland in November. The final session of term, Making Christmas Cards, was enlivened by a visit of the Mathemagic Bus. T-shirts and Cards were designed and replicated in the bus, and Anita Barber was on hand to advise and lend specialist card equipment. The Bus visited for a second week to pick up anyone else who would like to have a go on the computers. 18 people used the facility over the 2 weeks.
The Spring term theme was fabric boxes, and all manner of boxes were constructed and covered by the group. After Easter techniques such as chenille and crochet have been explored. Some beautiful work has been produced by members of the group who interpret each theme very individually.
A number of outings to exhibitions and fabric sales have taken place through the year.

Community Arts
1   Hands On, led by Nobby Naughton, has appeared in so many Annual Reports that it is danger of becoming permanent! There were still people asking to have their hands moulded so a final day was held in October, followed by another day of clay to create the last models. Rural Arts North Yorkshire took on the task of firing them, then 8 people attended a Glazing Day in Thirsk before the second firing.  Many thanks to Sid Cope for remaking some after kiln breakages. We finally got the hands back in early summer, when the project lost out to higher priorities. However we hope soon to have final permissions to start work on putting them around the top of the wall surrounding the Plump.
2   Our banners continue to excite newcomers to the village. We have often been asked by visitors for photographs of the banners. We hope to produce bookmarks for sale in the Autumn. Better late than never!
3   Our Millennium Albums are still in the village, awaiting final explanatory notes and maps. We decided that we would postpone the presentation of them to the Borthwick Institute until after their move to York University. This is currently taking place, so we will make every effort to complete them in the Autumn.
terrington.com
The village website, designed by Nobby Naughton, is now around 5 years old. Last year's workshops resulted in some new pages being added but it has proved difficult to keep up to date. A workshop advertised last September attracted only 2 people. A rethink is under way, with some form of content management system to be devised, so that information can be contributed by a wider group of computer literate people.

Woodland Workshop
We were disappointed to have cancel the Woodland Workshop planned for April. In retrospect it would have been more expensive to make an obelisk than to buy one ready-made!

Membership
The Working Group would like to thank all members for their support for our portfolio of activities in the past year. Increasingly project groups run themselves and report back to the Working Group, which oversees progress and keeps tabs on the money.
In the past year we have had 68 households in membership, of which 11 were new, and 5 ex-officio members, so our newsletters go out to 129 people. Around 40 households have given us email addresses and we have been able to send more regular bulletins and offers to them. We also have a mailing list for shows of around 100.
14 (about 20%) member households are outside the Parish, indicating that we are casting our net into the wider Howardian area as we planned.
It must be assumed that our membership within the Parish is near saturation point as around 25% of the houses include members.
We benefit enormously from having a group of known supporters. We are able to take risks in booking shows and we can regain your tax back on subscriptions. We have been pleased in the past year to be able to increase our concession scheme for shows. In the past year you could have more than recouped your money if you had attended all the shows.  

External links
Our links with Rural Arts remain strong, Lesley Bradshaw serving on their executive committee.
We have also been consulted on strategy for the arts and rural touring by Ryedale District Council, North Yorkshire County Council and Arts Council England. Terrington also hosted an exhibition, in the Village Hall in January to demonstrate to the Audit Commission Ryedale's support for creative and expressive arts.  

An outside view of Terrington Arts
Last year Francois Matarasso, who was commissioned to research rural touring and its effect on village life, observed and interviewed us. He brought a Case Study of our work to Terrington in October for discussion with us and arts professionals such as Rural Arts staff and the North Yorkshire cultural officer, and others such as our local District and Parish Councillors. He subsequently used Terrington as an example of how arts can be run in rural areas at a national DEFRA conference. (His Presentation) A book Only Connect - Arts touring and rural communities has now been published, which covers all 15 areas studied. Terrington comes out well, with many mentions especially in the community section. He found it 'significant that Lottery funds were applied for by Terrington Arts, who were able to commission work on their own terms.'  Our ability to direct and pace our work seems to have been crucial to our success. We believe that our strength has also been in having a strong membership and lots of willing hands.

Thanks
We would like to thank all of you who have helped in any way with any of our activities in the past year - we really do appreciate the help we get with such things as leafleting and poster display, setting up and taking down for shows, making tea and coffee, serving at the bar, and helping with workshops and meetings. We couldn't do it without you!
We look forward to welcoming you again the 2004/5.

Lesley Bradshaw, Secretary
September 2004

Back to Top