Lyric Lounge Events Team @ New Walk Museum July 10th
James Black
On Saturday 10th July New Walk Museum hosted the second meeting of the Events Team of Leicester’s Lyric Lounge. The meeting began in the informal surroundings of the museum’s gardens as the Happenings Group meeting drew to a close. Some plucky participants showed their dedication and commitment to the Lounge by attending both events!
The relaxed atmosphere of the garden get-together gave many people the opportunity to catch up with one another and to get up to speed with how each of us had set about promoting the fabulous events of July 30th, July 31st and August 1st. As well as the Lyric Lounge blog one of the best promotional tools has been The Word! Show on Panj Pani Radio. The programme includes live music and poetry last week’s guest was Lyric Lounge performer Mellow Baku who wowed the presenters with two of her songs. The show’s presenters Lydia, Lauren, Kishan, Diviesh, Yvette, Zara, Saskia, Karen and Tara also took the opportunity to discuss different aspects of the Lyric Lounge and their own thoughts on writing and performing poetry.
Once back inside the Lord Mayor’s Room at New Walk Museum Lydia Towsey our spiritual leader and organisational genius of the Lyric Lounge decided that it might be a good idea if we split ourselves up into four separate groups so that each group could focus one particular day at the Lounge. Seeing as 2009’s events involved 7 big shows, 10 open mic sessions, 30 new writing commissions, countless One-Ones and the participation of over 2000 people this was going to be quite a task indeed!
The first couple of groups read out their list of events in quite a conventional fashion covering diverse happenings such as Costa Coffee’s tablecloth poetry; where people are encouraged to etch their poetic outpourings upon the tablecloth (an event which runs throughout the three days of the Lounge,) The Knit and Think Poetry at Gallery 6; literally a mind-beading fusion of knitting and poetry and the 6-10 year olds Little People’s Poetry extravaganza.
However, none of this readied us for the Saturday group’s stylised news report. Quite how the group managed to organise this comedic bulletin within the allotted 15 minutes remains a mystery to us all but we certainly were brought up to speed with events of the day in a unique manner as the news of Book Doctor Allison Dunne’s Get Stuffed! and Mellow Baku’s ‘Lyrical Lounging’ whizzed back and forth between the ‘Studio’ and the ‘Live Roving Reporter.’
Things settled back down again as the final groups told us about Sunday’s events, (it is the day of rest after all!) Sunday’s events include Music and Words with Gwynne Jones and The Psychicbread, Tim Clarke’s Pictures and Words; a session which encourages the assembled to Draw, colour, collage and scribble their pictures of the Lyric Lounge in all of its glory.
With talented artists such as Jean ‘Brinta. Breeze, John Hegley and Fatima Al Matar involved Leicester’s Lyric Lounge is shaping up to be a monumental and unforgettable experience!
Stayed tuned to our Lyric Lounge blog and Citizens’ Eye for further updates on the events.
