Calne Festival

In 1977, very recently out of college, I spent some time in Calne, Wiltshire working as a community artist, thanks to my association with Southern Arts. A local schoolteacher, David White, had founded a festival in Calne a couple of years earlier, and thanks to that, I tried my hand at just about everything, including all-week primary school workshops and conducting the town silver band. Calne was then an industrial town, home of the C T Harris Bacon Factory, unlikely amongst the lovely Wiltshire downs.

I returned now and again over the intervening years, but for the past decade have been the Festival's Patron - a wonderful way to revisit a professional relationship that's now lasted 47 years. Totting up that enormous almost-half century, I felt it was time to step down, and this year's 50th Festival seemed to be a good time to do it. Remarkably, I'm going to be succeeded by a really major composer and musician, Brett Dean, who has moved to the town in the last few years. He has already invited some RAM students to be involved in the current Festival in a very interesting project. While so many of our festivals are downsizing, or even disappearing, it's wonderful to witness this very alive yearly celebration of the arts in a small Wiltshire town.

Pictured - the wonderful view from the school playing field - John Bentley School, Calne as I knew it, now Kingsbury Green Academy.