Events

Conversation With Series

Chris Meredith

Join us for our third conversation in this warm and welcoming series of conversations with authors and artists, taking place over Zoom.

Leigh Hendra (The Hours Bookshop & Cafe, Brecon)will chat with renowned Welsh writer, Chris Meredith - you can join us by emailing hello@bleddfacentre.org to register your place... these events are free, and if you can donate to our charity, please do click on the Donate button on our website, thank you.

Christopher Meredith is a novelist, poet and occasional translator from Welsh into English. Born and brought up in Tredegar, in south Wales, he worked as a steel worker, a teacher and a lecturer before turning his attention to writing fulltime. He is the author of five novels, a collection of short stories, and numerous collections of Poetry. Awards include an Eric Gregory Award (Society of Authors) and the Welsh Arts Council Young Writer Prize for poetry. His groundbreaking first novel, Shifts, won the Arts Council Fiction Prize on publication and was more recently shortlisted for the title of Greatest Welsh Novel of All Time.

Chris has spoken at the Hay Festival many times, the Edinburgh Festival, the London Book Fair, the Ledbury Poetry Festival, the Leipzig Book Fair, the Gasteig in Munich and at the Writers and Teachers' Centre in Manhattan, New York. His work has been read on BBC Radio 3, Radio 4, Radio Wales and BBC 1 and he has given readings, talks and lectures all over Britain as well as in the Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, France, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Slovenia and the USA.

He lives in Brecon with his wife and is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Wales.

For 'Conversations With' at Bleddfa, Chris will be reading from and discussing his new Poetry Collection 'Still' and novel 'Please' which were released simultaneously in April of this year.

The Conversations With series are a collaboration between The Bleddfa Centre and The Hours Bookshop, Brecon, taking place on the thrid Thursday of each month, over Zoom.

The Big Skill Midsummer Crafts Festival

Join us for our annual two day crafts festival, held this year in the beautiful setting of The Bleddfa Centre.

You will be able to participate in free workshops on both days (timed bookings will be available nearer the date on The Big Skill Eventbrite page from 17th May), and browse and buy from our artisan crafts stalls, as well as relax in the Orchard, and pop into the Centre's Caffi Celf for lunch or cake.

The workshops will be suitable for all ages and abilities, and include workshops such as willow weaving, clay, stone carving, upcycling textiles, metal bug making and much more!

We are inviting writers, musicians and storytellers to join us too.

Hopefully we will have a Medieval Beer Tent,  and a ceilidh in the evening... TBC

You will also be able to visit the exhibition in Hall Barn.
This exhibition will display art from our practitioners, and participants from our workshops throughout the year in local community centres, and will be an opportunity for everyone to express how the pandemic has affected the community, and the future, from all perspectives. 

The event is free to enter and take part in. 
If you are able to, donations to The Big Skill or The Bleddfa Centre are appreciated.

There is plenty of free parking, and the Centre café and gallery will also be open all weekend.

For more information, please email events.bigskill@gmail.com

If you know that you can get a lot more out of storytelling but aren’t sure how, or your storytelling has hit a plateau, this course will sort you out. Led by award winning and well-travelled storyteller Michael Harvey we will delve into the nitty-gritty of the practice of storytelling. You will leave with a storytelling toolkit brimming with tried and tested techniques and approaches. If you have a specific project in mind you’ll have a viable and vibrant work-in-progress to take away with you. There are comments from 2019 and other information in the link below…

https://storytellingatbleddfa.com/intensive-performance-course/

Freeing the Storyteller's Voice

With Pauline Down and Michael Harvey

The voice is at the heart of our storytelling practice yet many of us have a pretty meager grasp on how to work with it and develop it. How about being able to find a resonance and authenticity in your storytelling voice and having a range of tried and trusted methods and techniques to build on after the course is over? This is what were offering on the Freeing the Storyteller’s Voice course.

The workshop will equip you with simple and effective techniques and attitudes that will help you tell with resonance and spontaneity, make clear and supple contact with your audience and get more satisfaction and joy from your practice as a storyteller.

This is an experiential course that will transform your performances by giving you the tools to develop your own authentic and embodied storytelling voice in the company of two highly experienced performers and facilitators. We will be working on how we can make our voices clearer and more free and bring the energy and flexibility of your voice into the heart of your storytelling. There will be a mixture of whole group, small group and partner work.

If you have any feeling that your voice may not be ‘good enough’ this is probably the course for you.

Please bring some story material to play with.

If you have any queries at all, just email me.

More information on how to book here: https://storytellingatbleddfa.com/freeing-the-storytellers-voice/

Storytelling and the Body

With Michael Harvey.

Storytelling is all about the words but when we perform we have to drag our bodies on stage with us. We are highly self-conscious of how we look and our own body image and it can be challenging and awkward to stand in the gaze of the audience and be ourselves.

The good news is that it is just this openness that makes storytelling compelling. In this weekend workshop you will learn and apply a number of simple and effective techniques and skills that will allow you to embody your story with your own unique style and tell with authenticity and joy.

This workshop will introduce you to a number of clear, practical and doable techniques to help you have a better experience of being in your body which will in turn help you become more present, playful, clear, confident and authentic in your storytelling. The work is based on the kind of movements we do everyday and when we are telling stories – no back-flips or other challenging moves!

I will be using a combination of Franklin Method as well as other techniques I have picked up along the way, particularly from my time with the Labo experimental storytelling group at La Maison du Conte in Paris, led by Abbi Patrix and in training with with Miranda Tufnell. I have trained as a Franklin Method educator and adapt the exercises and apply them to storytelling. You can find out more about the Franklin Method here.

The Devil's Violin presents 

The Beast In Me

Imagine a world where the lines separating humanity and animals have blurred, in which dark forests contain refuge as well as danger, and where blood is not always thicker than water.

The Devil’s Violin is Daniel Morden (story), Oliver Wilson-Dickson (violin) and Sarah Moody (cello). Their new show, The Beast In Me, is a masterfully woven tapestry of stories about our perception of beauty and the value of kindness.

‘In years to come, old friends will turn to one another and reminisce about this evening, reliving the pleasure of when The Devil’s Violin comes to town with their 21^st century sensibilities enhancing the ancient craft of storytelling.’  Avril Silk

‘A scintillating combination of music, sound and story’  The Times 

thedevilsviolin.co.uk/tour-dates

Tickets will be on sale via the Night Our scheme website... dates announced soon