We popped to the book launch of The Elephant and the Buns at Elephant & Bun Deli in Cowbridge on Sunday and met the lovely author Megan Mattravers. We were lucky enough to be one of the early birds to get a free sticky bun with our book purchase and my youngest was delighted to get his books signed by Megan.
Like Megan’s previous children’s book Vintage Owl, The Elephant and the Buns is based on a true story and set in beautiful Cowbridge with some familiar shops and characters in the gorgeous illustrations from Owain Lewis (who also created the fabulous window display at the deli).
Book launch day at Elephant & Bun Deli in Cowbridge
The book is perfect for older primary school readers who might be overwhelmed by a thick novel without pictures, for confident readers aged 6-9 who are on the journey from picture books to longer stories, or simply for you to share with your younger children when you read to and with them.
The deli was an absolute trove of edible delights. I heartily recommend the sausage rolls. The spherical iced buns were the cherry on the top.
Megan is at the Goodsheds in Barry on Saturday 23rd October for a book reading and book signing event 10am-11am. Tickets are available here:
This has been a tough write as things have been changing constantly. Usually around this time of year I’d be compiling a list of family theatre treats for the festive period. Things are a little different this year, what with Welsh Government decreeing that being in an audience at a live performance is banned. However, here are few ideas for shows you can watch this Christmas season.
This free online storytelling show is jam-packed with music, fun and silliness galore. Once Upon a Time follows the adventures of some of your favourite panto characters including Aladdin and Cinderella.
Pre-recorded and available for free on YouTube in English, BSL with captions and an Audio Described introduction. Click on the link for a new panto character each day at 2pm.
Written and directed by Richard Tunley. With support from Taking Flight Theatre Company and Arts Council of Wales.
The Santa Show Online: Santa’s Christmas Countdown
Sunday 20 December 2020 / 2.15pm / £10 per household plus £1.29 booking fee / virtual show on Zoom / 90 minutes / ages 2-7
Take your seats from 2pm to sing along with your favourite festive songs like Jingle Bells. Join Father Christmas, Dotty the Elf and their friends in a festive, musical, interactive adventure to get Santa’s Christmas Countdown started.
During the show you can post your messages and photographs on The Santa Shows facebook page with Father Christmas and friends sharing your comments and pictures after the show.
Tuesday 15 – Friday 18 December 2020 / various times / £2 per ticket / outside Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff / 20 minutes / ages 4+
A real life actual show! This outdoor performance of three little reindeer stumbling across an old abandoned theatre in the woods has been very popular. Some shows have sold out, some have limited availability. It sounds magical, I cannot wait.
Me… and The Bed, two productions by The Little Angel Theatre
Friday 25 December 2020 – Tuesday 5 January 2021 / free / YouTube / Me… for ages 2-5 and The Bed for 6-18 months
Based on a poem by Sylvia Plath, The Bed is deigned to introduce the youngest audience members to the magic of theatre and takes them on an adventure under water, to the jungle and even into space to find the best bed of all. Me…, based on the popular picture book by Emma Dodd follows a little penguin as he faces the big wide world on his own for the first time.
Wednesday 23 December 3pm – Wednesday 27 December 2020 midnight / free / ages 6+
If you’re looking for a full length panto, National Theatre will be sharing their full length performance of Dick Whittington for free on YouTube. They had been due to perform to live performances but as London moved to Tier 3 these were cancelled. We enjoyed watching a fair few NT Live performances on our telly through YouTube during the original hardcore lockdown.
Not a show but if you and your kids want to get cosy and creative over Christmas, this is a great pack. Flossy & Boo are a witty pair of characters who have created workshops, shows, interactive festival installations and are perfectly placed to share ideas for imaginative things to do. We especially loved the den building. You’ll even get exclusive access to some online video extras.
At the moment live theatre is illegal in Wales. Sounds mad but there we are. It’s been a bit of a shock to the system to miss out on frequent live theatre, dance, music, festivals and now the festive period of pantos, musicals, indie shows, puppetry, all that magic.
If you’re gagging for a family theatre experience in the Vale of Glamorgan I have GOOD NEWS! The amazing Cardiff based Taking Flight Theatre Company are taking their brilliant First Three Drops show on a virtual tour around Wales. Memo Arts Centre in Barry are selling tickets for two shows on Sunday 22nd November at 11am and 2pm.
My kids and I experienced First Three Drops from the comfort of our own living room when it was first performed for RCT and we loved it. It’s recommended for little ones aged 2-9 and their families but my 12 year old enjoyed it too. It’s not like watching a recorded show on telly, it feels live and it’s lovely to see all the other families at the end, you really get that warm buzz of being involved in something with other people.
First Three Drops is a live virtual theatre show performed through Zoom
Each actor appears in a separate Zoom box on the screen from their own home and one of the highlights for us was watching comedy costume changes and how the actors transformed their spaces into different scenes.
The show feels new but as it went on it had familiar vibes as it’s based on a story from the Mabinogion. It’s silly and positive with all the chaos and magic I expect of the best family friendly live theatre and left us all dancing on the sofa.
It’s only £6 per screen so you just pay for one ticket for your household. Bargain.
You could go all out, get dressed up and get the kids to pretend you’re at the theatre, showing you to your seat with a torch and selling packets of Malteasers or keep it casual and just cwtch up on the couch.
Taking Flight are awesome at making their shows as accessible as possible so expect live captions and integrated audio description, it’s done so well that you don’t even notice it, all description is woven into the words of the characters. First Three Drops is in English, British Sign Language and Sign Supported English.
Book your tickets through Memo Arts Centre now to make sure you don’t miss out and let me know what you think:
First off, I love museums, I do. I grew up going to St Fagans and Cardiff Museum, places like the Big Pit and Caerleon and I take my own kids to museums on holiday, in Cardiff, France, West Wales, London. However, I’m not sure about the financial viability of a museum in Barry. We don’t need a new museum planned by dinosaurs. It’s a tough time for established museums so having a solid model and a viable business plan will be really important. Sustainability and future proofing need to be part of the mix too. It would be a shame if funding for a new museum pulled funding options away from existing volunteer led set ups such as the heritage railway at Barry Island.
I saw mention of the Vale being only one of two councils in Wales without a museum. That’s not necessarily an argument for having one. It smacks a bit of “everyone else has one, why can’t we?”. All mention so far has very much been of a museum for Barry not the Vale as a whole.
Have you been to Carmarthen museum? I’ve been several times over the years, my kids enjoy it and the staff are lovely but it’s a prime example of a council owned building that needs a huge cash injection to stop it rotting away. (The good news is that this year they’ve had £1.27million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and will be closed for the year while works are carried out.) Closer to home and in the Vale, have people considered the pig’s ear that the Vale made out of Dyffryn Gardens before the National Trust got in there? The damage is still there to see. It’s not simply through neglect but through the lack of the expertise and vast sums of money that such projects require.
Both of the examples above are of old buildings and perhaps the idea for a Barry museum is to house it in an existing modern building or build something bespoke. I’ve read in a B&D article that one option is to put a museum in where the current Arts Central gallery is. So just the one room? What’s the relationship with the library? What happens to the gallery? What happens to the Arts Development budget? What happens to visual arts in Barry? Does anyone remember the historical archive that was open to the public and lived on the top floor of the Memo? I certainly don’t and it’s long gone now. Have lessons been learnt from that?
History is important, heritage is important, culture is important. I believe in us learning more about who we are, where we come from and how it can inform our decisions moving forwards. The concept of a Barry Museum isn’t clear enough for me. A museum isn’t just about putting things in a space and wanting people to think it’s interesting.
Plenty of hand on exploring in the Clore Discovery Centre.
Exhibitions that encourage interaction and play.
Temporary exhibitions offer new and fun ways to interact.
National Museum Cardiff getting things right.
Will the museum be partnered with another organisation? Will it build on existing research and networks? Are there any links with HE or FE? How can we future proof a museum? Do we need a museum? Who is it for and what’s it about? There needs to be a real definition of purpose and cause. What difference could it make? Is it diverse? Is it telling stories? Is it about people? Is it look at all of the history of Barry ever or is it concentrating on e.g. the industrial revolution? The M Shed in Bristol does an absolutely cracking job of telling the story of Bristol, the good and the bad, but it’s a huge beast of an operation, it’s part of a city of over half a million people, a population 10 times that of Barry and it’s part of Bristol Museums. Even well established museums have had to diversify their offer to increase income with events such as silent discos and sleepovers.
Is a Barry museum trying to do everything but failing to deliver as an experience? How innovative is it? Are there any interactive exhibitions or displays or projects? Will there be a complementary participative programme, paid for by whom and delivered by whom? Who does the marketing? What’s the budget for that? Will there be volunteers? Who recruits and manages them? Where is it? What’s the parking situation? The public transport? How big is it? Where does the capital funding come from? What’s the scale?
Who curates the museum? There have been some really interesting projects and examples of questioning who makes those decisions, who decides what belongs or doesn’t in a museum. My seven year old and I have been loving the recent BBC series Secrets of the Museum showing the archives, curating, restoration and work that goes into planning and bringing objects to life in a meaningful way at the V&A. Again, I know it’s a completely different scale to a potential Vale of Glamorgan or Barry museum but archiving, preservation, context, storytelling don’t seem to have been referenced in anything I’ve read so far.
An incredible range of exhibitions, igniting imaginations.
Museums are no longer about looking quietly at objects in cabinets.
The ultimate in interactive museum experiences – the slide experiment.
The Science Museum in London is clearly far better resourced than your average council run museum but it really demonstrates what museums have become in 21st century.
I don’t have enough information to give a proper response to the tweets and newspaper articles about a Barry museum. There are too many variables. From the B&D article it sounds like there has already been a feasibility study. What were the results and recommendations? Where can I access the information? Has anyone met with directors of other museums? Is there a network of council run museums? What are the challenges or opportunities of a museum being run by a council? I’d imagine there would be the same frustrations that I see in theatres and arts centres that are managed by a local authority which I won’t go into here but there’s a long list.
In the B&D article there was mention of Barry pre Victorian era industrialisation. That is only part of Barry’s story. Then there’s the Butlins and Gavin and Stacey side of things which focus a lot on the Island but don’t quite encapsulate the rest of the town. I worry that the idea of a museum is maybe something in the minds of people who fill Facebook with “they never should’ve got rid of the Lido” posts that doesn’t quite match up to or even exceed contemporary museum curating, management, delivery, innovation, partnerships, networks, potentials and so on.
I’ve waffled, I know. I’ve asked far too many questions. I’m just hugely concerned about the sustainability of a museum for Barry, that lessons haven’t been learnt from the project that turned out to be a damp squib in the top space in the Memo and that it’s apparently pushing out the gallery. I love museums and I really value the work that they do, I have too many questions and reservations at the moment to get fully behind the concept of a Barry Museum.
I know the weather is glorious at the moment so you might not be thinking of indoors things this half term but I’ve been hunting theatre shows for a birthday treat this week. Thinking of my imaginative boy with his love of magic and reading, this is what I’ve found.
The Small Space Theatre, Barry
Family Magic Show
New for 2019, Family Magic Show, suitable for ages 8+ starts this half term in the smallest magic theatre in Wales. Tuesday 26th February, 5.30pm doors for 6pm, show tickets £12.50. thesmallspace.co.uk
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff
The Giant Jam Sandwich
The Giant Jam Sandwich for ages 3-7 is based on the children’s picture book which tells the tale of four million wasps invading a quiet village. It’s had great reviews and the trailer looks suitably silly. Friday 1st March, 12pm & 3pm, tickets £10. shermantheatre.co.uk
New Theatre, Cardiff
Billionaire Boy
For toilet humour and David Walliams fans, Billionaire Boy is at the New Theatre for most of half term. 26th February – Saturday 2nd March with evening and daytime shows (Tues 7pm, Wed 2.30pm, Thurs & Fri 2.30pm & 7pm, Sat 11am & 3pm), tickets start at £13 with £3 off for under 16s. newtheatrecardiff.co.uk
Vale of Glam Mam 