Issue 32 Web Edition
Winter 08/09
Group News cont’d
The speaker at the meeting on Friday 7 March at St Robert’s Community Centre will be a Headmaster of a school that is about to change from a comprehensive to an academy. Meetings are on the first Friday of the month and start at 2pm .
Brian Elias
The new year has brought some changes to the structure of this group – we have “expanded”.
Anneliese Mitchell continues to give excellent guidance to her group of Improvers in her flat but the Advanced Group, having met in the Bilton Youth Centre for many years, had become too large. New premises (Community House) became available for Monday mornings, enabling us to welcome members from the waiting list and from 12 January one half of us meet there, the remainder continuing in the Bilton premises.
I am very grateful to Mr. Helmut Gerrards who has agreed to give some of his valuable time and knowledge to join Siggie Mattison and myself in leading these two groups, in rotation. Everyone will, I am sure, benefit from a slightly varying input in teaching but the basic method will remain, i.e. some grammar, some reading/translating of novels, watching/discussing German tv programmes and, of course, as much conversation as possible.
We all are looking forward to an exciting and stimulating year ahead.
Hildegard Kendall
February – the visit to Bradford Media and Photography Museum has been postponed because of concerns about transport and safety at a time when the city centre is being redeveloped.
March, Friday 13th – Ripon, contact Janet Coatman
May, Saturday 16th – Harewood House, contact Joan Miller
June, Saturday 20th The Bowes Museum -
Going Places visits 2009-
A team is needed to get interested members together in May 2009 in order to set a programme of visits for October 2009 and onwards. Each of these visits will require a named contact. It is possible to keep organisation to a minimum if public transport is used.
Contact Janet Coatman by email to if you can help and so enable visits to continue next year.
Unfortunately our lecturer, Mrs Hilary Smyth, has been ill and it was necessary to cancel the January Meeting at St Robert's Centre. We will recommence on the 4th Sunday of February, 22nd, and I have booked another date, Sunday, 24th May to complete the five lectures. Brian Graham and Val Cook will be publicising this and I will email or write to those members who have already signed up but it would help if you could mention it at your next meeting so anyone new who was thinking of coming will be notified.
Eileen Davis
Since the start of the lectures in September we have covered a wide period of time from the Tudors through to the Industrial Revolution. The representative painters of each period have been set against the background and context of their lives and the worlad they lived in. This has given us a detailed insight into the development of British Art and how it was influenced by fashion and considerations of the day. The powerful influence of the Grand Tours of the 17th and 18th centuries, for example, brought lasting legacies to society not only in paintings but in the birth of museums, private collections etc.
Brian Souter brings the artistic and historical context to life with fascinating information, very professionally delivered, using high quality screen projections of paintings etc.
I look forward with keen anticipation to Blake, Constable, Turner and other artists in the coming weeks.
Chris Rushton