Category: News

VISITOR numbers to the newly-extended Bluebell Railway have been “overwhelming” said commercial director Tim Baker, with year-on-year figures a third up on 2012.

Visitors have been queuing to get on the historic line at weekends, and Southern Railway has introduced a new half-hourly service from London on Sundays to cope with the demand.

As a result, a number of projects are now being brought forward including the renovation of Camelot, a larger locomotive which should now be in use by the start of the 2014 season.

Among a number of special promotions being offered this summer is the Monday Club giving senior citizens the chance to take the 22 mile round trip to Sheffield Park and enjoy a two course meal in the restaurant for just £15.

Meanwhile the East Grinstead Business Association is working with the Town Council to promote East Grinstead to the Bluebell travellers.  A special leaflet with map has been produced and a list of volunteers to greet the trains and passengers on arrival at East Grinstead has been drawn up to encourage people to explore our beautiful town and historic points of interest.

Volunteers to help as occasion ‘human signposts’ should contact Simon Kerr at the tourist information desk at the Library or email him on s.kerr@eastgrinstead.gov.uk.

THERE are no exhibitions planned for August

THE committee behind the fundraiser for a statue to honour pioneering plastic surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe is appealing to anyone who would like to contribute, to hold their own event in support of the plan.

For details see ‘Fundraising’ on www.mcindoememorial.com

Sculptor Martin Jennings is now making the clay version of the statue from which the bronze will eventually be cast. The maquette of the statue will be on display during August in the town museum in Cantelupe Road. Admission is free.

For more details about any of the following events, please contact Chequer Mead on 01342 302000

Indoor Boot Fair: 3 August at 10.30am until 2.30 pm.

Tables will be provided for all sellers and must be prepaid. Entry to public free.
For full details, or to book, call Ginnie on 01342 326627 – £10 private, £20 trade, additional space for a rail £5.

The King and I: Tuesday 6 August to Saturday 10 August

RODGERS & Hammerstein’s The King and I has captured the hearts of millions with its charming story of the British governess brought into the court of Siam to tutor the King’s many children.

Her western sensibilities clash with the ruler’s Eastern ways but over time, Anna and the King stop trying to change each other and begin to understand one another.

The unique love story is told with one of the most glorious and unforgettable scores ever written. The much-loved songs from the show include The March of the Siamese Children, Shall We Dance, I Whistle a Happy Tune, Hello Young Lovers and the unforgettable Getting to Know You.

Produced for Chequer Mead by Company of Friends, all proceeds will go to the auditorium refurbishment fund.

Performances
Tuesday 6 August at 7pm
Wednesday 7 August at 2pm
Wednesday 7 August at 7pm
Thursday 8 August at 7pm
Friday 9 August at 7pm
Saturday 10 August at 2pm
Saturday 10 August at 7pm

Ticket Prices
Tickets: £14.50
Pensioners: £13.50
Wheelchairs: £13.50
Chequer Mead Friends: £13.50
Children: £13.50
Students: £13.50
Family Ticket: £50.00 (Two adults, two children)
Additional Information: Opening Night special offer – All Tickets £12.50

Bullfrog Productions presents Mulan Jnr: Saturday 24 August at 2pm and 6pm

TRAVEL back to the legendary, story-telling days of ancient China with this action-packed stage adaptation of Disney’s Mulan. The Huns have invaded, and it is up to the misfit Mulan and her mischievous sidekick Mushu to save the Emperor! Mulan Jnr is a heart-warming celebration of culture, honour and a fighting spirit. The score includes favourites like Reflection, Honour to Us All and I’ll Make a Man Out of You as well as new songs which will get you up on your feet.This is a youth production. Tickets £12/children £10/family Ticket £38 (two adults, two children)

THERE was a real family feel to Ten Year Call, Act One Beginners’ end-of-year show which celebrated its tenth birthday with a cast aged from five to 23 including 11 ‘returners’ many of whom have gone on to pursue careers in entertainment.

These seasoned performers were given a run for their money by talented youngsters some of whom were on stage for the first time, but between them they served up a real box of delights in a wide-ranging showcase of drama, singing and dance.

First up were the Copthorne and Felbridge singing classes with a toe-tapping medley of songs from The Lion King, which featured a simply lovely solo performance of Can’t You Feel the Love Tonight?

The smallest performers were up next, and without a hint of nerves delivered beautifully enunciated versions of Nursery Chairs and If the World Was Crazy.

Sadly the energetic action in Ernie’s Incredible Hallucinations from the Inters Class was marred by technical problems with the mics, which rendered portions of the script inaudible, and it was greatly to their credit that the actors gave it their best despite being hampered by their mics.

But the cast was soon back on form for The Demon Headmistress and a shrewdly-observed look at the perils of Speed Dating.

One of the most intriguing of the short dramas was The Cagebirds, a surreal play which was as compelling as it was well-acted. Hannah Woodger was particularly good as the Wild One, but this ensemble piece was a credit to all the young actors who took part.

An extract from Once a Catholic produced a welcome injection of humour which was particularly enjoyable if, like me, you are the product of a convent school, before the first half closed with a pacey group performance of Everyone Dance.

But if the young performers set the bar high in the first act, they simply wowed in the second half, with a reprise of the shows the school has produced over the past decade.

Georgia Gunn put in a feisty and accomplished performance as Annie ably supported by a band of cute and step-perfect orphans under the ‘care’ of a slatternly Miss Hannigan played by Emma Peadon.

And it was good to see The Music Man back.

It’s a show which seems to have fallen out of fashion but in the hands of Sam Casella as the fast-talking con man Professor Harold Hill and Jonty Egginton, in fine voice as Marcellus, it was one of the highlights of the afternoon.

Another was Oliver!

Kristina Hewitt WAS Nancy. Pretty, with a beautiful voice and great diction, she combined the sassy street smarts of Dicken’s tragic heroine with real poignancy in a pitch-perfect performance. While Sam Cunningham made a sweet-voiced Oliver in his endearing duet with Bet played by Abby Ingham.

In an extract from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, it was Kendra Bletchley who stole the show with a lovely performance as Lucy which drew well-deserved ‘aaahs’ from the audience.

West Side Story could have been an overly-ambitious choice for a young company, but a slick extract featuring the girls in I like to Be in America and the boys in Officer Krupke showed they were up for the challenge.

And it was good to see a fresh take on an old favourite in the pop version of Alice in Wonderland, which was followed by a reprise of Footloose, a well-deserved hit for the school in 2011.

All the original cast were back bar one and gave hugely enjoyable repeat performances of Holding out for a Hero, and Let’s Hear it for the Boy.

And if that wasn’t enough to get audiences back for more, the finale featured an extract from Act One’s next show Our House, scheduled for 2014.

So congratulations on a real feel-good show – and best wishes for the next decade!

by Geraldine Durrant

The Barratts Homes development off Holtye Road has had its artwork unveiled by Town Mayor Margaret Belsey at a lunchtime gathering.

The new development is named Bluebell Gate as it includes a walkway (signposted with ceramic representations of indigenous trees and flowers) to the entrance to Ashplats Woods. The woods which are rich with Bluebells during the Spring.

Mrs Belsey said “it is lovely that the artwork has been inspired by the William Morris decorations of nearby Standen House and also the ideas of the children of Blackwell Primary and Sackville Schools”

TOWN Mayor Margaret Belsey led tributes in remembrance of those killed in the Whitehall bombing raid 70 years ago. Wreaths were laid at the War Memorial at East Court and outside the London Road site where the former cinema was destroyed, causing the greatest loss of civilian life in a WWII bombing raid in Sussex.

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THE primary purpose of a Probus Club is to provide meetings and fellowship for retired PROfessional BUSiness men who value opportunities to meet with others of similar interest, and who enjoy listening to guest speakers on a wide variety of topical subjects.

Our Club, founded in 1981, now has around 100 members, and meets on the third Tuesday of every month at the East Grinstead Sports Club from 10am for coffee and a chat until 10.40am when routine Club business is conducted, followed by the guest speaker and questions.

At around 12pm we return to the bar for an optional drink and bar lunch.

We arrange walks with a pub lunch in the summer, and each year we have a number of organised outside events and short holidays at home and abroad at competitive cost, all of which are very popular with members, their wives, and families.

For more information telephone 01342 714172.

MID Sussex District Council is giving local families the chance to lose weight and feel great this summer by signing up for a free health and fitness course.

The Mid Sussex Wellbeing team and Freedom Leisure are offering free Family Weight Management courses to local families with a child who is above their ideal weight. Spaces are available now and with the summer holidays just around the corner this is the perfect time to sign up, get active, and make the most of the sunny weather.

The Family Weight Management course is an exciting and fun scheme where qualified instructors give local families expert one-to-one advice on healthy eating and taking new forms of exercise. The course, run over 10 sessions, is carefully tailored to the needs of the individual family and is scheduled at a time which suits them.

The free initiative is based on the principle that small changes in lifestyle can have a big impact on health. The basic goals of the course are to:

• support families who are looking to eat more healthily
• increase confidence
• increase fitness and activity levels
• support children and adults to achieve and maintain a healthy weight

“Modern families have so many demands on their time, it is no surprise that many find it difficult to squeeze in enough exercise or to find the space in their schedule to prepare healthy meals,” said Councillor Christopher Snowling, Cabinet Member for Leisure and Community. “It’s not easy, but sometimes a fresh pair of eyes, a creative way of looking at things and some expert knowledge can make a real difference and that’s why our Family Weight Management courses are so successful.

“Our trained fitness experts can offer advice on how to fit exercise around the busiest schedule and it doesn’t matter what your level of fitness, they are able to devise a specific exercise programme that is tailored just for you. I urge anybody who might be considering joining the scheme to do so because it has the potential to change lives, not just now but for years to come. Childhood is the perfect time to develop good habits because they are likely to stay with you into adulthood and make a real difference to your long term health in the future.”

Sessions are run from local leisure centres at the Triangle, Burgess Hill, Kings Centre, East Grinstead and the Dolphin, Haywards Heath. However, if a family cannot reach one of the three centres then sessions can be provided in any location that is considered safe and accessible by the instructor and the family.

Any parents who have concerns about their child’s weight and are interested in taking part in the Family Weight Management programme can contact the Mid Sussex Wellbeing team by calling 01444 477191 or emailing info@midsussexwellbeing.org.uk. Referrals with parental consent may also be made by GPs, Practice Nurses, School Nurses, Health Visitors and Parent Support Teams.

THE Town Museum in Cantelupe Road has scooped the Collections on a Budget Award given by the Collections Trust at its 2013 OpenCulture Conference.

East Grinstead’s application was called Digital Preservation Made Easy and featured the museum’s work in making all its images available for visitors to enjoy – see below for full details of the project and the work it entailed.

Congratulating the museum on its success, Council Leader Peter Wyan said it was a tribute to the work of the many volunteers who give generously of their time and their talents to preserve and retell the story of our town.

East Grinstead Museum competition entry – Digital Preservation Made Easy

THE project has been a huge challenge for a museum that only employees a part time collection officer and relies on volunteers to undertake all other roles.

This project, which started in 2007 and is still ongoing given the 16,000+ accessioned images the museum has, is not just about the fact we are scanning the images and adding the picture to our Modes catalogue, it is the innovative nature of how it is done.

With the entire image collection listed in a paper catalogue, searching for a photograph was a long task, even with a fairly comprehensive paper index. So the main challenge was to not only put the paper catalogue records onto Modes for Windows, but to find the corresponding image, scan it and then link it to the Modes record. For a small museum that is reliant on volunteers of different ages and IT abilities, making sure there were clear and simple procedures in place for documentation and cataloguing was essential, and with over 16,000 images, and only one computer licensed to use MfW, this was going to be a long task.

The Museum was able to recruit an IT professional as a volunteer. In order to make the whole process easier, he developed an in house cataloguing programme based on Modes records, which can be accessed by volunteers on any computer within the museum’s network. This means that multiple volunteers can transcribe hand written paper catalogue records onto a bespoke database from any museum computer. Our collections officer regularly runs a bespoke programme on the server to extract the most recent data stored. This programme converts new data held by the database to a (“TAG”) format which can be directly imported into Modes. As the data is exported, various data fields are converted by fixed rules, making the conversion process consistent.

As Modes records steadily increased, the task of matching and scanning the images to the records was the next challenge. Because the physical images were stored by categories (eg. transport, houses, people, etc), it wouldn’t be a simple case of going through the drawers of images and chronologically scanning the images – would a Modes record for that image even exist yet? There must be a more efficient way of managing this process.

The IT Manager created a very smart programme that, (whenever and whatever order the image had been scanned and providing it had been saved into the right folder), ‘read’ the file name of all the images in the ‘pictures’ folder and then ‘read’ the unique record numbers in the Modes export files. If the Accession number of an image matched the Accession number of a record, it would unite the two and automatically the image would appear in Modes.

A ‘Check Modes Update’ report can be run at any point which reports how many Modes records there are, how many images have been scanned in total, and how many ‘matches’ of linked records to images exist, the aim being 16,000 Modes records, 16,000 images and 16,000 matches.

Because of the efficiency of the system, it means anyone can come in at any point and just pick up where the previous person left off. The scanning and cataloguing of paper records is now a simple task because there aren’t any confusing technical procedures involved. All volunteers can contribute to the task using multiple scanners and cameras, and at any computer in the museum (and in some cases, volunteers could even access the network from home and carry on inputting catalogue records at their leisure).

Impact of the project

The impacts of this ongoing project have been multiple. The volunteers can all be involved and, because of the regular back-up system set up on the network, can all visibly see the completed records within the hour. This gives a huge sense of satisfaction and shows the volunteers that their time and work is tremendously valued.

It has also enabled improved search functions for staff, volunteers and visitors alike. As well as importing items into MfW, bespoke programmes are also used to convert data exported “from” MfW for display by the web server to any PC at the museum including the PC available in the Research Room in the Museum for everyone to use. This means that anyone can do a quick keyword search at any time and be confident that they are searching the most up to date digitised data.

This also really helps museum staff and volunteers answer the various and multiple enquiries that the museum receives about ‘whether we have a photo of…?’ The museum provides high resolution copies of images to visitors and commercial organisations and with so many images available we are able to quickly and efficiently respond to image requests, as well as being a useful source of income.

Another impact of the project is the fact that, with such high resolution copies of the images in the system that are accessible to all, we very rarely have to physically riffle through drawers and boxes. This cuts down on handling and will improve the long term preservation of the collection.

Relevance to the criteria and category

The Collections Practice Award: This award celebrates projects which demonstrate the application of innovative practice to improve the sustainability and use of collections in arts and cultural organisations.

Budget of the project

Modes for Windows £800
A4 scanner £250
A3 scanner £900
Printer £500

Purchase of the above items was funded by grants.

Next steps for the project outcome

There is still so much we don’t know about our collection and would love to build on some Revisiting Collections work we carried out in 2011. We have recently begun this through our 6 The in-house keyword search function is also a useful tool to have when volunteers are researching for exhibitions, articles and other information as it means they don’t have to use Modes. Facebook page where we encourage our users to add their own comments and knowledge to the images that we post.

We are also investigating setting up our own HistoryPin Channel to create a series of ‘Then and Now’ collections available to for the public to view and comment on. The potential to move forward and use the images and information in innovative and creative ways is very exciting and a challenge we look forward to embracing.