The day and date, Friday the 13th of September was inauspicious, as I wandered down to The Source in the Atlas Works in Denton Holme. My son’s musical group, A Celebration of Musicals, were organising a fundraiser for their upcoming production of Legally Blonde next year. The session was pretty amusing. In theory, it was a quiz night but before the quiz, various members of the upcoming cast put on musical pieces to get everybody in the groove.
Musicals… to Rock, Alt & Tex Mex
Now, I’m not a huge fan of musicals, but since my son took an interest in the musical productions put on by Joe Desborough and Heather Hood, at the Green Room Theatre, I’ve been more and more impressed by the sheer talent that has been displayed by this diverse group of young actors, singers and musicians.
Obviously, there’s a bit of proud dad at work here. I’m chuffed that my son has finally stood up, taken to singing in front of people and has started using his talents to entertain people. More importantly, the two productions of A Celebration of Musicals I’ve seen so far have been a great reminder of the sheer range of creative talent that exists in the Great Border City.
I’ve frequented The Source for many years, attending gigs in the backroom with its stage, attending meetings, jam sessions and latterly Phil’s Speakeasy sessions. I’ve danced, recited poetry and tonelessly sung my heart out. It’s probably the centre of my cultural life. For quite a while though, it seemed to have died a death. Fortunately, a couple of years ago I was really pleased when it seemed to spring back to life, with Jayden and Poppy organising things behind the bar.
There was a spell, it seems like a decade ago, when the musical scene in Carlisle came alive. The Moo Bar, the Skinny Gorilla, even the Kings Head and several other venues around town seem to be cultivating a really lively music scene.
It was here that I first bumped into Johnny and Tom’s band Hardwicke Circus and another group of lads who called themselves Beachmaster. Hardwicke Circus have gone on to greater things, even getting recommended to play at Glastonbury: by none other than Paul McCartney.
One of the things I like about Hardwicke Circus, beyond their catchy music, is that they don’t go around with any airs and graces, since they’ve gained recognition. Let’s hope their run is long.
In fact – just after I initially wrote this article, I noticed that they were hosting a label launch party at Carlisle’s West Walls Brewery . To kickstart the Alternative Facts Records label they had a whole bunch of guests on stage with members of the band. Mark Carruthers almost stole the show with his siong about the late lamented Joss Naylor, of fell running fame.
Jon Musgrave did a couple of tunes, but the highlight of the evening was when Joe King Carrasco got involved. That was a generation, continent and ocean spanning partnership. Joe’s all the way from Texas. He got involved with the Hardwicke crew over the course of a covid curtailed visit to SXSW in 2020. Joe was obviously enjoying himself. He was certainly showing off his love for Cumbria with the chorus of “Aye Aye Aye Cumbria”. It was Walking on Broken Glass that got the whole room moving though!
There’s another Source connection here, as Hardwicke’s Tom and Johnny were often involved in organising things upstairs in the cafe, for gigs, while they were also using the ground floor as a rehearsal studio.
In fact, at many Speakeasy sessions upstairs in the cafe on a Wednesday night, you could hear the strains of “Walking On Broken Glass” or one of their other compositions floating up the stairs from the rehearsals on the ground floor.
Spoken Words
That brings us nicely to another aspect of Carlisle’s talent. Phil Hewitson now runs the Carlisle Speakeasy group. This was a poetry and written word performance group, initially set up by Nick Pemberton, many years ago. Initially it was hosted in Foxes Lounge, where Becca was one of the staff who would open up the venue and clean up afterwards. Phil encouraged, nagged and cajoled me for a very long time to come along listen and take part. I was a reluctant visitor eventually.
It took me a couple of sessions to warm up to the quality of spoken word that was being put out by another very mixed group of people. There were young students flexing their vocal cords for the first time as they wrestled with their own literary creations. There were older more established poets and writers who came out with the most extraordinary words. The poems and spoken pieces ranged far and wide; from haiku detailing intimate corners of Carlisle’s history and architecture to the most gut wrenching battles with mental health that I had ever heard.
Often, these words would be put to music accompanied by a lone guitar or The Source’s piano. Many of us made a rather special friendship with Tony Hendry. Tony was an extraordinary character who I first met sharing the room with our Free Range Friday group. Tony wasn’t part of the group as such, and I was curious about this chap who kept himself to himself.
I wandered across one Friday to have a craic. It was then that I discovered part of the reason Tony didn’t really engage with the group, he had really disruptive stammer. I’ve met many stammerers over the years both adults and children I’ve taught; but for Tony this stammer was a real burden. We managed to have a conversation and I discovered he was also a keen walker who loved the Lakeland fells and Scottish hills. He also showed me some of the poetry he was working on. Even with my level of literary ignorance I could see that these words had life.
A while later I bumped into him at one of the Speakeasy sessions at Foxes Lounge, and I was well impressed when Tony took his turn in the rota and started reading his poetry. He stammered and fought to get the words out. But, get those words out he did , and they were powerful evocations of his love for the fells, the countryside and his own struggles to be accepted and understood.
It was a very sad day when Tony passed away from cancer, fairly soon after his first collection of poems, Fresh Air was published. The collection was published by Phil’s own publishing company the Caldew Press, another of Carlisle’s hidden gems. They had been collaborating on another collection and sadly these had to be published after Tony’s death, but they made a fitting tribute to a lovely talented man. This collection was called Back And Forth.
I must say a word about Phil Hewitson himself who spins so many plates I really can’t keep up. I first met Phil, if memory serves me right, at another, now defunct, networking group called Wired Cumbria, a networking group that drew together many of the creatives and digital marketing people across Cumbria. We learned about his talent for film with his ongoing project the Quantum Time Lord and his passion for the spoken word.
It took ages before his association with the Caldew Press was revealed. Every month when he runs the Speakeasy sessions, he comes up with several pieces that run the gamut from the profound and serious – to the utterly bonkers: like his ongoing comic saga of the Kung Fu Penguin, a less than sartorial feathered detective with a dodgy theme tune.
More significant than all of that though, is the encouragement that Phil gives to all the talented people he gets to stand up and share their voice and their words. There is a wealth of talent around the written and spoken word in the city.
Dramatic Flourishes
Alongside all the music, poetry and written pieces there’s also a thriving dramatic life in Carlisle. The Green Room Theatre on Carlisle’s West Walls has hosted the Green Room Club’s productions for decades, it’s just a shame that despite the superb intimate atmosphere of the Green Room, there’s no dedicated theatre space capable of hosting bigger productions.
The old art college on Brampton Road certainly used to provide a larger space, but I haven’t heard of a production being held in their theatre for years. Some of the city’s drama enthusiasts have even moved out a short distance to Dalston where a group is rehearsing a play, Bronte, about those literary sisters and their family.
Image, Colour, Shape, and Texture
Carlisle’s creative wealth doesn’t stop there. There’s a whole range of visual talent around us. Let’s look at photography first because that’s the only art I can claim to have any idea about. In the last couple of years I’ve bumped into a host of keen, creative landscape and commercial photographers.
The Photographers
On the commercial side you’ve got people like Brian Austwick and Harry Atkinson, WIll McAllister, and Herd’s Media.
Brian came from a family photography passion, that was tied up closely with his dad. Dad was a BBC film cameraman who also had a passion for landscape photography. After Brian sold up his courier business in the Midlands and moved to Carlisle he was looking for a way to turn that thread into a living. He turned to commercial work, under the Brian Austwick Photography banner, with his partner Nikki and they have angled towards bringing transport and logistics businesses to life. Commercial work sounds dry, but Brian and his peers have a talent for bringing the potentially dull to life and getting stories across visually.
Harry Atkinson can be found turning anything from a soggy bouldering session to a Dalek swarm in Scarborough into memorable images.
Alastair Herd of Herd’s Media is a completely different kettle of fish – or should I say sheep, or cattle? Alastair who I know through the Giraffe Network is another from a family of photographers. His speciality is tackling the challenges of creating stunning images of farms and estates, from ground and drone level. His real superpower though is setting up incredibly high quality live streaming of livestock auctions and events. Now, his wife Sophie has joined the business and is taking the wedding photography scene by storm.
His first love is still the agricultural side of life. Imagine how sharp you have to be to bring something like the audience of a sheep shearing competition to life and then be called back the next year.
Less commercial, but equally talented is a younger climbing acquaintance of mine, Mark Hetherington. He was a far more capable rock climber than me by several quantum leaps!
Recently though he seems to have lost focus on his climbing and has gone absolutely mad with his camera. Some of his more astral, night-time shots have been catching attention from photography buffs and calendar creators. I did test him about his climbing this evening, and he assured me he had been out to play at Shepherd’s Crag, so he hasn’t been completely lost to the cause. 😉
Masters of Colour… and a Patron
Sadly I have to confess ignorance regarding traditional art work. Painting and sculpture are genre that haven’t captured my eye, as much as my ear has been turned towards sound. However local PR firm, Intro regularly showcase local artists’ work in a pop space in Carlisle’s historic quarter on Paternoster Row, across from the Cathedral. I have been in to the pop up galleries a few times and been impressed by some of the work on display. Embarrassingly though, I don’t have any photos to showcase the creations – only the location.
The Streets
A steadily growing visual theme in Carlisle, has been the appearance of great slabs and tiny nuggets of street art, scattered through the town in often obscure locations. The Blank Wall Assassins are a concept dreamed up by Ben Heslop and friends of the street art leaning.
From the indigenous girl on the student flats in Caldewgate to the “Banksy” (actually a “Tabby”) on the wall of The Guild, the initially unsanctioned street art works have drawn in the council, Carlisle Ambassadors and transformed the city’s atmosphere subtly but positively. Ben has managed to bring some real international names to the city to create features as far removed from each other’s temper as the ethereal Grace of Parnassus, and the fearsome looking giant, Belatucadros!
The Shapers and Formers
Ceramics and sculpture don’t seem to feature very strongly in Carlisle, apart from the dated looking statues of Victoria and her contemporary big-wigs. I have only come into glancing contact with modern work.
Mainly this has been through exposure to Cazz Nash Ceramic‘s work. Some of her ceramic work is really eyecatching, quirky and needs to be touched, not just looked at.
The only modern sculpture I am aware of in the city is the tribute to the Cracker Packers of Carrs biscuit factory. Many a cream cracker and water biscuit has found its way out of the Caldewgate works and onto the larder shelves of Britain.
Havel Reeves was the artist commissioned to bring generations of, the mainly female, cracker packers to life with her sculpure. A couple of the women having a laugh about some of the latest factory craic!
When I first arrived in Carlisle in September 1980, it didn’t take long before I felt that the only creative thread in the whole town was the crew of rock climbers who were making headlines. The Carlisle Mountaineering Club “lads” were making so many headlines and had such a “hard” reputation, I was terrified to go out to the pub they used and meet them. But I was desperate to get some climbing done.
When I did pluck up my courage to meet them in the Howard Arms in the October, it was in the middle of a fairly riotous stag do for one of the characters below.
Petes – Botterill and Whillance, Jeff Lamb, Dave Armstrong and a supporting cast of a dozen more, were pushing boundaries from Carlisle; with numerous hard first ascents and exploratory forays. They seemed to be active everywhere, on rock faces from the Lakes to Pembroke, North Wales and the imposing granite of the Cairngorms. Oh how small and wimpy I felt. But they made this Essex boy welcome and taught me well.
How things have changed. Carlisle may not be the centre of the climbing universe any more, but there’s something brewing, something very creative and it’s looking good!
Here’s to even more creative crunch in Carlisle, as the University of Cumbria redevelopments get under way and the centre of the city is transformed once more.
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