Hello Autumn!

It's been a long and extremely hot summer. I have been busy working at different extremes of my creative toolkit from curating an archive exhibition of Salisbury Arts Centre with Wiltshire Creative Trustee and old friend Kate Dalton, to delving into the fascinating area of horticulture and kitchen gardens thanks to Our Wilton and Wilton Community Land Trust. In between somewhere found me at Stonehenge deeply immersed in world heritage, travel trade and much older, more land based culture. I think I need a holiday!

This autumn my head will be full of interesting subjects like composting, thanks to an introduction to Garden Organic by Karen Waters from The Great Bustard Trust. Garden Organic steward the Henry DoubleDay research foundation and seed library (oh do look them up if you love gardening or even, just dream of gardening) GO (isn't that the best anachronism!) also work on wonderful sustainable, community based projects with communities across the UK from Prisons to food kitchens to well, hopefully people like Our Wilton . I will also be indexing and wrapping up the Salisbury Arts Centre Archives ready for their new home as Salisbury Arts Centre, Salisbury Festival and Salisbury Playhouse have now joyfully merged under one umbrella to form Wiltshire Creative and work together to continue to provide quality, innovative and community based art for the people of Wiltshire and beyond. I see the word 'community' cropping up a lot in this post... I'm hoping to be introduced to and meet some local communities this autumn through my photographic work. I recently had the honour of meeting Max & Clancy Steer a visionary couple who run the Cherubim Music Trust supplying professional quality instruments to gifted young musicians who otherwise, wouldn't be able to afford them.

But my most wonderful moment this summer was a brief catch-up with my ex-mentee from Oxfordshire Youth Arts Partnership's 'Creative Young Leader's" scheme. Rebecca Ritchie-Timms is such a dynamic, positive young woman and I was delighted to hear that her foray into Festival Management had been such a success, it was heartwarming to sit and talk about her Festival adventures and hear about her own tentative mentoring experience. All credit to OYAP as the fruits of their labours start to burgeon.

So, hello autumn you are my favourite time of year and I'm looking forward to getting out and about with my trusty NikonD610 and maybe, just maybe my Mamiya might manage an airing this autumn also! Have a great autumn, enjoy the harvests of your year so far.

Jx