Tuesday 19 April 2011

Culture debate for Leicester mayoral candidates

Performing Arts Leicester (PAL) has confirmed the Mayoral candidates who will attend the Arts and Culture debate taking place on Thursday 21st April. The following candidates have agreed to participate:

Geoff Forse, Green Party
Gary Glen Hunt, Liberal Democrat
Peter Soulsby, Labour Party
Ross Ian Grant, Conservative Party
David John Bowley, Independent
Mohinder Farma, Unity for Peace and Socialism
Rick Moore, Independent
Mu-hamid Pathan, Independent


Titled “Arts and Culture: not the icing on the cake but the main ingredients of a successful city”, the debate will be chaired by Dominic Shellard, Vice-Chancellor of De Montfort University and Chair of Leicester’s Cultural Partnership Board.

The event will take place at The Y, East Street, in Leicester on Thursday 21st April at the new time of 8pm. Tickets are free but must be booked in advance by calling 0116 255 7066.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

New ways of funding creative projects

Here are a few new ways of promoting the funding of creative projects which we think are worth highlighting:

www.indiegogo.com is a US website which helps you to promote your film project for crowd funding. Make sure you have a niche audience, creative perks and a personal pitch and can promote it yourself. You'll need to get at least 100 visits to get a donation I'm told. Nottingham film-maker Jeanie Finlay talks about her experiences of crowd funding for her film Sound It Out on directorsnotes.com

www.wedidthis.org.uk is a new UK site run by Ed Whiting to enable arts projects to pitch for crowd funding. Rewards could include invitationts to private views, rehearsals, merchandise, signed prints etc. The 12 projects on the site so far have raised £8k but it's early days... the site takes 5% commission.

www.thebiggive.org.uk provides match funding for charitable arts organisations. The match funding bit is a bit complicated to us, and its most relevant to limited companies with staff and a board of trustees.

Monday 4 April 2011

Wayne Anderson's illustrations in Chateau retrospective


Wayne Anderson is an illustrator who has been working away in Leicester/shire for many years. He won the Gold Medal in 1976 for Best Illustrated Children's Book from the Society of Illustrators for Ratsmagic and has had over 50 books published in many languages over the years. A retrospective of his work is being hosted by the Chateau de Belcastel this summer: http://www.chateaubelcastel.com/CB11PR.html. The Chateau is between Toulouse and Clermont Ferrand and Wayne has produced 100 limited prints of the 'Dragon of Belcastel' to celebrate the exhibition. More info on Wayne (who won a Creative Leicestershire bursary to digitise his work in 2008) on www.wayneandersonart.com