Acomb Bowling Club development plans recommended for approval

Westfield set to lose another area of green space

The report on this planning application has now been published (click)

It is recommended for approval.

The development, as it is presently proposed, is not in line with residents wishes as expressed in responses to a recent survey. They wanted to see a comprehensive plan for all the sites which lie to the rear of the Library.

There are two significant tissues.

  1. Planning officers claim that no discussions have taken place on the possible extension of the library. We don’t believe this is true The future of the “allotments” land, and also of that to the side of Chancery Court, must be determined together. They are inextricably linked.
  2. To offset the loss of open space on Front Street, officials are proposing a section 106 contribution to provide part of a bowling green at the York RI. This is located in the Holgate ward, about a mile from Front Street. While this may meet the need for bowling facilities (the site is already  green field sports pitch) it does nothing to help Westfield or to address the cumulative deficiency in green space provision in the ward. (It is almost as insensitive as the Councils decision to “relocate” the sports field from Lowfields to land near Bishopthorpe).

There is a very good argument to be made that the Front Street area needs more open space to accommodate the incremental increases in population that are occurring, not least as a result of commercial properties in the area being converted into residential accommodation.

This latest proposal just adds more pressures onto the rapidly diminishing areas of green space in the area.

The planning meeting is open to the public and takes place on Thursday 4th October at 4:30pm at West Offices. The planning committee will visit the site the previous day shortly after 10:00am.

What’s on in #York: The Peacemaker – How Family History Wrote My Novel

Sep _29Peace

York Explore Library :

Sat 29 Sep :

2.00pm – 3.00pm :

£3

On a hot night in the summer of 1938, Violet Lowther’s mother Peggy is dying, her father Ellis is drunk in the pub, and Violet’s life is being ruined behind a dance hall in Barnsfield by a young miner who doesn’t look like Clark Gable after all. What more could go wrong? By the end of September, the Prime Minister is flying to Munich to try to make peace with Hitler, and in the same week Violet travels to the remote moorland of Thorndale to visit relatives, escaping her own war with her father. But when Violet learns the truth about Ellis’ love for Peggy, will she be able to make her peace with him?

An engaging family drama, Janet Dean Knight’s debut novel explores the tensions in the run up to the Second World War, barely twenty years after the first. Janet’s research for her book drew heavily on family history, newspapers and other archive material, and in this talk she will share how York Explore Library and Archive helped her add the fine detail of everyday life in the 1930s to her compelling story.

Follow Janet on

Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: Night birds: printing workshop

Sep 29_Night

York Explore Library :

Sat 29 Sep :

10.00am – 1.00pm :

£20

Come and try your hand at mono printing and block printing onto paper to create a night-bird image. There will be a range of pre-prepared print blocks to use or – for those who are happy using a craft knife – have a go at creating your own bat, owl or night-time songbird design.

By the end of the workshop you will come away with a printed design for a 3D bird on a string or a 2D bird picture. Bring an apron and a bag/cover to transport your (wet) design so that it can fully dry back at home.

Author’s Biography:
Sarah Jackson is a mixed media artist

This event will take place in The Garden Room.

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: Strata – Rock – Dust – Stars

Sep _28Rock

York Art Gallery :

Fri 28 Sep – Thu 25 Nov :

10.00am – 5.00pm :

£7.50 or YMT Card Holder Free

This landmark exhibition showcasing ground-breaking moving image, new media and interactive artwork is coming to York this September, as part of York’s first Mediale.
The exhibition is inspired by William Smith’s geological map of 1815, which transformed the way in which we understand the world.
It will be the most ambitious and large scale media art exhibition York has ever hosted.

Curated by Mike Stubbs, Director of FACT, Liverpool, in partnership with York Museums Trust and York Mediale, the exhibition features works by artists Isaac Julien, Agnes Meyer Brandis, Semiconductor, Phil Coy, Liz Orton, David Jacques and Ryoichi Kurokawa.

For more information please visit our website.

What’s on in York: Finding the Words with poets Nick Allen, Katharine Goda and Pauline Kirk

Sep _29Find

York Explore Library :

Thu 27 Sep : 

6.45pm – 7.45pm :

£3 (or £2 with a York Card)

Finding the Words is a regular poetry evening every month at York Explore Library. Each evening brings together three poets and we aim to include both published writers and those working towards a collection. We’ll have a bar available and readings last around an hour. The evening is also a chance to share and chat, so please feel free to bring any news or information about poetry local, regional or national.
Nick Allen’s poetry has appeared in various magazines and anthologies – most recently, the Interpreter’s House, the Poetry Salzburg Review, Verse Matters and Un/Forced: a collection of writing from Rhubarb. His first pamphlet, the necessary line, was published by Half Moon Books of Otley, in October. He helps to organise the open mic evening, Rhubarb at the Triangle in Shipley, the last Wednesday of each month. He is a sub-editor with the on-line poetry magazine Algebra of Owls. He derives most of his sustenance from malt whisky and good espressos.

Katharine Goda writes poetry as a way of recording and reflecting on moments which would otherwise go unnoticed. Her work has appeared on the YorkMix poetry blog and been chosen for two Forward Poetry anthologies. She enjoys participating in Poetry Society stanza groups and workshops, volunteering with participatory arts organisations and running poetry writing sessions.

Pauline Kirk was born in Birmingham, and now lives in York. She has had ten collections of poetry and six novels published, three under her own name, and four as PJ Quinn. Her most recent collection, Time Traveller, was published by Graft Poetry. She is Editor of Fighting Cock Press, and a member of the editorial group of Dream Catcher.

This event will take place in the Marriott Room and cost £3 or £2 with a York Card

To book ticket please click here.

What’s on in York: Dystopia and cake – Fiona Shaw discusses her latest novel, Outwalkers

Sep _27Fiona

Rowntree Park Reading Cafe :

Thu 27 Sep :

4.00pm – 5.30pm :

£6

A future England, and Jake and his dog Jet are trying to reach Scotland. But nobody leaves England now, and there’s a border, and guards with guns, and the government has eyes everywhere.

Come and hear about Jake, Jet and the Outwalkers. And come and discuss what you think might happen in the future. And in case that all sounds too stressful, come and drink tea, and eat cake, because everything feels better with tea and cake.

Author’s Biography:

Fiona Shaw was born in London and studied at the University of York and the University of Sussex, completing her academic studies in York with a PhD on the American poet, Elizabeth Bishop.

She is the author of a memoir and five novels. She has been a Royal Literary Fund writing fellow, and has run a reading-round book group (also for the RLF). She is also a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Northumbria.

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: Good Grief Workshop

Sep _27Good

Acomb Explore Library :

Thu 27 Sep :

2.00pm – 4.00pm :

Free

Grief, bereavement and loss are extremely hard to talk about…but they shouldn’t be!

Come together with professional artists and storytellers, to, share memories and find creative ways of expressing what has happened and who you are, through the arts.

This workshop is run by Next Door But One. All we ask is for you to bring an object that has a story attached to it (a photo, a song, a piece of jewellery, anything) and we will all make poems, art and music from it.

This is a free workshop, but please book.

Follow on

Twitter: @ndb1arts : Facebook: /ndb1arts : Instagram: nextdoorbutone

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: Unfortunate Princes

Sep _27Princes

Fairfax House :

Thu 27 Sep :

7.00pm – 8.30pm :

£14.00 (Members: £12.00, Students: £8.00)

By 1745, the son of the deposed James II & VII, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, had been living in exile for over 55 years, firstly in France – ‘the support and shelter of unfortunate princes’ – and then Rome. This lecture will discuss the background and progress of the most famous attempt to restore the senior and Catholic branch of the Stuart Dynasty by the Old Pretender’s son Charles Edward Stuart – Bonnie Prince Charlie – during the turbulent years of 1745-6.

Dr Jacqueline Riding is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London and alumna of the University of York (PhD). She is the author of the award-winning Jacobites: A New History of the ’45 Rebellion (Bloomsbury 2016), trustee of the Jacobite Studies Trust and senior editor of Jacobite Studies (Manchester University Press).

Jaqueline Riding: http://www.jacquelineriding.com/

Twitter @jaqriding

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: The Gothic Home and Family

Sep _26Gothic

York Explore Library :

Wed 26 Sep :

6.30pm – 7.30pm :

£5

An introduction to the origins of the literary Gothic in eighteenth-century Britain, discussing how three particular novels helped to define the terms in which the home and family have subsequently been represented in Gothic literature, art and film.

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve and A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe demonstrate that the Gothic is nothing if not a self-referential mode, and this talk will be illustrated with literary and visual examples of its strange and (sometimes) funny as well as frightening metamorphoses over the past 250 years. Along the way it will ask what we mean when we refer to a cultural artefact as ‘Gothic’.

Author’s Biography:
Jim Watt teaches in the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York. He is the author of Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict, 1764-1832 (Cambridge UP, 1999) and of essays and articles on the Gothic and other topics. His latest book British Orientalisms, 1759-1835 is forthcoming with Cambridge UP.

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: Waterstones Presents – An Evening with Sir Max Hastings

Sep _24Max

York Explore Library :

Mon 24 Sep :

6.30pm – 8.00pm :

£5

Waterstones York are delighted to present author, journalist and broadcaster, Sir Max Hastings.

Sir Max will discuss his new book, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975, a masterful chronicle of one of the most devastating international conflicts of the 20th century and how its people were affected.

No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.

Tickets available from Waterstones York

To book tickets please click here.