Celebrating Creative Arts with Lancaster University

Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake is the venue for an exciting new festival celebrating the creative arts, being run jointly with Lancaster University later this month.

The Creative Arts Festival takes place from 17 – 27 May and offers a wide range of two-day courses, lectures, workshops and master classes. The events are open to all, with course fees starting at £31 and a programme of free lectures. Whether your particular love is drama, music, art or creative writing, you are bound to find something that will interest you.

The festival starts with a day of free events on Wednesday 17 May – you do not need to book in advance, just turn up on the day. The day starts with a tour of the Theatre by the Lake with its Director, Patrick Gilchrist. Lectures by academics from Lancaster University will cover subjects ranging from the nature of power in Shakespeare’s Richard II to how music functions as a language. You will have a wonderful opportunity to hear readings by two acclaimed local authors: novelist George Greene (author of Hound and Hawk) and poet Carole Coates (who recently published a poetry collection entitled The Goodbye Edition).

For art lovers, there are two-day courses on Creative Drawing with Mixed Media and Travelling with your Sketchbook, in which you can learn techniques for drawing the people and places you encounter on your travels.

For those who want to try their hand at creative writing, there are courses on Poetry for Performing and Screenwriting, for aspiring script writers thinking of writing for TV or cinema. The drama courses will throw new light on Shakespeare the Dramatist and show how plays are brought to the life on the stage in Performing the Imagination. No prior experience is required on any of these courses, but you should book your place in advance.

Musicians will have two great opportunities to take part in master classes: there will be a Bach organ master class with Tim Rishton, internationally acclaimed concert organist, and a conducting master class with the charismatic opera and choral conductor Ben Crick. Singers are also needed to join the choir for would-be conductors to practise on!

For further details about the Creative Arts Festival, please contact the Department of Continuing Education at Lancaster University on 01524 592623/4.