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Durham culture a winner!

March 25th, 2010 by DurhamCityOfCulture

Great news – Lumiere, the magical festival of light which many of you enjoyed last November was a winner at Tuesday’s Journal Culture Awards. It won in the Best Event Durham category. The quality of the finalists in the Durham category which also included Brass and the Durham Book Festival just goes to show the strength of Durham’s events programme.

We’re now counting down to the Durham Mysteries, an exciting contemporary revival of Durham’s Mystery Play cycle. The audience at the Culture Awards were privileged to see a short clip from one of the plays, Kane and Abel, featuring rap and breakdance! Tickets are on sale NOW! at Gala Box Office.  Find out more about the plays at www.durhammysteries.co.uk

We’ve just finished producing the spring and summer events guide and there’s some fantastic stuff to look forward to. The guide will be available from beginning of April at Tourist Information Centres but you can download a preview.

 As well as the Mysteries, coming up is the Bishop Auckland Food Festival in the Durham Dales, one of the biggest food festivals in the North East, at Auckland Castle on 17 April and Northern Rocks: The North Pennines Festival of Geology and Landscape from May 22 – June 6.

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Opportunities to explore your creative talent!

February 8th, 2010 by DurhamCityOfCulture

There’s a couple of opportunities that I wanted to tell you about this week.

Firstly,can you hold a note? The organisers of Durham’s Mystery Plays are looking for singers to take part in a new production set to be performed at Durham Cathedral at the end of May.

They want singers of all ages and abilities to be part of a community opera, ‘The Fall of Creation’. You can get involved by joining the ‘Creation Chorus,’ a large scale choir which will be made up of amateur singers at all levels of experience, along with schools and already established choirs from across the region. Its an opportunity to get involved in something that’s going to be truly great for Durham. More info here.

Also, if you’re involved in a creative or cultural project or have an idea, come and meet the County Council’s arts development team this month to discuss whether your project would be eligible for the small arts development grant scheme. Find out more…

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Great new features on website

February 4th, 2010 by DurhamCityOfCulture

There’s some great new features on our website and I start this blog with a plea for help. From the County’s rich heritage and wonderful landscapes to new festivals and events, from dance projects to local theatre group productions, we need your help to show the judges what the County’s made of! There’s a new page on our website called Your Culture. Help us to celebrate all that is Durham by sharing your pictures and youtube videos – it’s really easy to use and once you’ve uploaded your pics, they should appear within 24 hours.

There’s some other new features too:

Visit the Culture Map to find out more about the rich and diverse cultural history of the County.

Take a look at Our Talent, a selection of creative individuals and organisations who live or work in the County. And if you’d like to be included, contact the creative team for more information.

Find out who is supporting the bid by checking out the testimonial page. There’s support from people such as Alan Shearer, Bill Bryson, Andrew Motion and many more… And you can add your own message of support by filling in the comments box which appears on each page.

We hope you enjoy the new features, let us know what you think here.

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Billy’s help deliver Durham’s City of Culture bid

December 11th, 2009 by DurhamCityOfCulture

The bid’s being delivered today (Friday 11 December) and yesterday the communications team had the pleasure of accompanying 14 young people from schools across the County on a trip to London to help present Durham’s submission.

After a VERY early train to Kings Cross we hot-footed it across London to the Millennium Bridge. The boys, all keen on the performing arts and dancing got to meet one of the Billy’s from the West End show, Rhys Yeomans and helped launch Durham’s bid with a show-stopping performance of the classic Billy Elliot leap. (check the picture for the results!)

No time to rest though, on to the Tate Modern for a spot of lunch and a warming hot chocolate. The kids were full of beans, one of them even broke out in spontaneous break-dancing and put out his lunch box to see if he could attract any busking fees!

Afternoon was made up of a trip on the London Eye – you couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day and a matinee performance of Billy Elliot where the boys got to meet some of the cast before the show.

It was a non-stop day and 10 out of 10 to the children who were brilliant all day and thanks to the teachers and volunteers who worked so hard to make it such a success.

Get your friends and family to back the bid!

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Deadline nearly here!

December 1st, 2009 by DurhamCityOfCulture

The City of Culture team have their heads down this week as they work towards the 11 December deadline for submission of Durham’s entry. Watch out for details at the end of next week. There’s still time to back the bid so help us by spreading the word.

In the last week we’ve had feedback from Lumiere which confirms it was a phenomenal success with local businesses reporting record takings and positive comments flooding in from all quarters – and of the 75,000 who visited the festival, over 12,000 travelled from outside the region and 1,500 came from overseas!

Coming up this weekend – budding thespians, singers and dancers have a chance to get involved in The Durham Mysteries which are likely to be one of the major theatrical events of the decade!   

Performers (18+) from across the County can attend a workshop at the Gala Theatre on Sunday 6th from 2 – 5pm and if hip hop, breakdance or rapping is your thing, then there’s a workshop (for age 13+) on Saturday 5th 1 – 4pm. More info about the Mysteries here. Youth workshops will be advertised soon so watch this space.

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