02/05/2014 – Scene Magazine – From the heart of LGBTQ+ Life

Rainbow Fund reports on HIV grant funding made possible by Brighton Pride

Posted on 02/05/201403/05/2014 by Besi

Since its inception, the Rainbow Fund has repeatedly supported a range of local community groups and charities working in the field of HIV.

Last year funding was provided to groups including the Sussex Beacon, Lunch Positive and Peer Action.

The Sussex Beacon offers specialist care and support for men, women and families affected by HIV. Their services are designed to improve health, reduce stigma and prevent premature death. In November, The Sussex Beacon was awarded £4,000 by the Rainbow Fund to support their new Occupational Therapy project. Thanks to this funding they were able to provide 77 occupational therapy based rehabilitation sessions for people with complex, HIV related illnesses.

Occupational Therapy helps people return to independent living by helping to develop, recover or maintain daily living skills. Their Occupational Therapist works with the patients to improve physical, psychological and cognitive functions, which helps people to be discharged safely, more quickly and to live independently at home.

A spokesperson for The Sussex Beacon said: “Rainbow Fund funding has been extremely useful in helping the Sussex Beacon to lever in additional funds for our Occupational Therapy project.”

Paul Elgood, Chairman of the Rainbow Fund said: ‘This is a good example of the benefit our funding makes, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. The difference Brighton Pride makes to the local LGBT and HIV community can be seen very clearly through these 77 sessions, which simply would not have been possible without theirs and other’s support. Thank you to Pride and all of our supporters.”

Cut price muck!

Posted on 02/05/2014 by Besi

Fantastic deals in home compost kits are available for Brighton & Hove residents as the council celebrates International Compost Awareness Week next week (May 5 to 11.)

Compost bins are being offered to residents at greatly reduced prices, as part of a special ‘Share and Save’ offer promoted in partnership with getcomposting.com

The Buy One Get One Half Price offer means residents can team up with a family member, friend or neighbour to each get a compost bin from just £5 (plus delivery).

Once put to use, household organic waste can be recycled into fantastic peat free compost, that will not only improve the quality of home grown fruit and vegetables but increase yield.

Councillor Pete West, chair of the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability committee said: “More than 30% of the average household bin can be composted and although many households already compost at home, we want others to get involved.

“This is a great incentive to encourage more residents to get composting and set up their own composting communities, sharing the rewards.

“Once you get started, you will be surprised at just how much daily household waste can be composted – not just grass cuttings and unwanted plants but organic kitchen waste, fruit and vegetable peelings, tea bags coffee grounds and even the contents of the vacuum.

”If you don’t have room for a bin, why not join one of the 30 community composting schemes in Brighton & Hove? Around 800 households have already composted 6 double decker buses worth of food waste, mainly used for allotments and urban food growing projects.”

He added that home composting also helps to cut carbon emissions and reduces the amount of waste sent to landfill.

A range of compost bins are available to suit new recruits and seasoned gardeners.

To order, CLICK HERE:

Or telephone: 0844 571 4444.

The Buy one Get One Half Price Offer is available on selected products. A one off delivery charge of £5.49 applies.

For advice on reducing food waste, see the council’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign, which helps residents to learn how to waste less food, compost more, and eat healthily while making savings on their household food bill. CLICK HERE:

Busy month for Bear Patrol

Posted on 02/05/201402/05/2014 by Besi

Bear Patrol, the social networking group have a busy schedule of events planned for May many of which raise money for the Sussex Beacon. To date their fundraising total is £44,345,70.

Events include:

Monday May 5: Whitstable 10K run

Wednesday May 7: Golden Handbag Quiz (Charles Street 7.30pm)

Saturday May 10: Eurovision Party at The Royal Oak from 7pm

Sunday May 11: Thorpe Park Outing (Meeting near the entrance @ 10 o’clock) Note: tickets are cheaper online purchased in advance.

Sunday May 18: Bognor Prom 10k run

Sunday May 25: Picnic Rounders from mid-day @ Preston Park

Friday May 30 – Monday June 2: Camp! Bear-Patrol @ Hammonds Wood (places available)

For more information, CLICK HERE:

FACEBOOK:

EMAIL:

Charleston Festival Celebrates 25 Years

Posted on 02/05/2014 by Besi

Carol Ann Duffy, Richard Dawkins, Grayson Perry and Alan Bennett are amongst a string of high-profile names speaking at the 25th Charleston Festival.

Set up to reflect the intellectual and creative ideals of Bloomsbury group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, the original inhabitants of Charleston, the Festival retains its distinctive sense of intimacy and unique cultural context.

Today’s Festival echoes the hub of ideas which the house became in the early twentieth century, when it hosted John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot and E M Forster. Visitors to the Festival this year can look forward to an equally stellar line-up.

Events with availability include:

• A debate on the most significant cultural moments in the past 25 years, with a panel including Peter Bazalgette and Nicholas Kenyon

• Celebrated Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon reading from across the range of his work and that of his friend and mentor, the late Seamus Heaney

• Award-winning American author Lorrie Moore discussing her work and writing in the short form with Lynne Truss

An array of novelists of international repute include Ian McEwan, Robert Harris and Edward St Aubyn; Alison Macleod and Maggie Gee on being inspired by Virginia Woolf; global titans of literature Karl Ove Knausgaard and Tim Winton; Michael Ondaatje on his writing life beyond The English Patient.

Discussions of history and politics range from Jung Chang in conversation with Jon Snow about China’s Iron Lady to James Naughtie and Ben Macintyre on espionage. Charleston was established as a haven for writers and artists who were conscientious objectors in WWI, and speakers looking at the war from the perspective of a century’s distance include Max Hastings, Mark Bostridge, Helen Dunmore and Michael Morpurgo.

Moving towards the late May bank holiday weekend, other highlights with a few seats left include Christopher Hampton and William Nicolson on transforming recent history into literature, film and drama, and Rachel Cooke and Ben Watt discussing our image of the 1950s.

Diana Reich, Artistic Director of the Festival, said: “Eighty years after Virginia Woolf famously discerned a seismic shift in the human condition – ‘on or about December, 1910, human character changed’ – the Festival was born with the aim of making Charleston once again a centre for exploring new ideas and a hub of artistic and intellectual life. As we celebrate a landmark anniversary, we look forward to a bonanza Festival and to continuing to set the agenda, whilst remaining in touch with our unique heritage.”

Tickets are available from Brighton Dome Ticket Office, open 10am – 6pm Monday – Saturday.

In person: 29 New Road, Brighton, BN1 1UG

By phone: 01273 709709

Online: www.brightonticketshop.com

For listings of all events including sold out sessions, CLICK HERE:

Friday, May 16 – 1pm: Restorations and Transformations: Jamie Fobert, Charles Saumarez Smith, Jeremy Dixon, £14

Sunday, May 18 – 12pm: Vistas of History: Mark Bostridge and Helen Dunmore with Claire Armitstead, £14

Sunday, May 18 – 5pm: Breakfast with Lucian: Geordie Greig with Lynn Barber – RETURNS ONLY, £14

Sunday May 18 – 7.30pm: 25 Years On: Peter Bazalgette, Philip Hook, Nicholas Kenyon, Fiona MacCarthy and Francine Stock, £14

Wednesday, May 21 – 3.30pm: Catastrophe: Max Hastings – RETURNS ONLY, £14

Wednesday, May 21 – 6pm: Such Sweet Sorrow: Nicholas Hytner – RETURNS ONLY, £14

Wednesday, May 21 – 8pm: Last Sane Man: Tanya Harrod, £14

Thursday, May 22 – 1pm: Start the Week – Radio 4: Guest presenter TBA – RETURNS ONLY, FREE

Thursday, May 22 – 3.30pm: Their Brilliant Career: Rachel Cooke and Ben Watt with David Kynaston, £14

Thursday, May 22 – 6pm: The Way They Live Now: Sadie Jones and Edward St Aubyn with Nicolette Jones, £14

Thursday, May 22 – 8pm: Boyhood: Karl Ove Knausgaard and Tim Winton with Rachel Cusk, £14

Friday, May 23 – 1pm: Stoke and Sissinghurst: Emma Bridgewater and Sarah Raven with Nicolette Jones, £14

Friday, May 23 – 3.30pm: Pioneers: Rachel Holmes and Sigrid Rausing with Polly Toynbee, £14

Friday, May 23 – 8pm: Keynes and Our Grandchildren: Paul Mason with Robert Skidelsky – RETURNS ONLY, £14

Saturday, May 25 – 12pm: Ham Spray Triangles: Jans Ondaatje Rolls and Lucy Lethbridge with Virginia Nicholson, £14

Saturday, May 25 – 2.30pm: Sick Rooms: Michael Cunningham and Helen Garner with Susie Nicklin, £14

Saturday, May 24 – 5pm: Follow, Poet! : Paul Muldoon, £14

Sunday, May 25 – 12pm: Classical Encounters: Charlotte Higgins and Adam Nicolson with Imogen Lycett Green, £14

Sunday, May 25 – 2.30pm: Bark: Lorrie Moore with Lynne Truss, £14

Monday, May 26 – 12pm: Odes to Virginia Woolf: Alison Macleod and Maggie Gee with Frances Spalding, £14

Monday, May 26 – 2.30pm: Reckless: Christopher Hampton and William Nicholson with Rupert Christiansen, £14

Monday, May 26 – 5pm: Displacements: Linda Spalding and Michael Ondaatje, £14

For more information about Charleston, CLICK HERE:

REVIEW: Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe

Posted on 02/05/2014 by Michael Hootman

For most of the last few centuries Shakespeare scholars have relegated Titus Andronicus to somewhere near the bottom of the league table. The very aspects that they deem unworthy of Will – the torture, rape, mutilation and murder – are the kind of qualities that certainly don’t harm its box office appeal. Lucy Bailey‘s blood-and-guts production is occasionally hard to watch – it contains the most appalling murder I’ve yet seen on the stage – but it makes for a compelling, strangely entertaining, evening.

Returning to Rome after defeating the Goths, Titus (William Houston) casually orders the murder of their Queen’s son almost as if it’s a bureaucratic necessity. Tamora (Indira Varma) witnesses this atrocity and vows vengeance on Titus and his family, a promise which is made easier to keep when the Emperor Saturninus (Matthew Needham) makes her his empress on a whim. The new empress is aided by her Moorish lover Aaron (Obi Abili) whose cunning and spite would give Iago a run for his money.

Some parts of the play are so strange it’s hard to know whether it’s daringly experimental or just a bit unhinged. When Titus asked his handless daughter to pick up his recently severed hand with her teeth it’s so absurdly grotesque it gets a laugh, though it’s hard to know whether this was Shakespeare being darkly comic or lip-smackingly bloodthirsty. And Tamora furthering her evil plot by dressing up, with her sons, as the spirits of Revenge, Murder and Rape in order to scare Titus into doing her bidding makes for an effective, if head-scratchingly lunatic, piece of theatre.

I would take issue with the way Bailey handles the murder of the nurse. Apart from being incredibly unpleasant, it makes little dramatic sense. It’s one of the few murders in the play which is done without any malice or revenge – it’s committed simply as a precautionary measure – so there’s no reason for it to be so extravagantly nasty. It needlessly turns Aaron, who’s unpleasant enough, into a kind of American Psycho of the ancient world.

However, it’s certainly a spirited production which never fails to look great and to do its utmost to engage the audience. My main problem was that some of the lead performances, while very good, never seemed to reach critical velocity. Houston starts the play with Titus obviously mentally damaged from the horrors of war but this results in what was, for me, a rather mannered, twitchy performance. He didn’t have the commanding presence the role demands which is pretty much the same for Varma who gave a fautless interpretation of the role but without ever reaching the heights. The stand-outs were Abili who certainly had the charisma and energy to do Aaron justice, and Samuel Edward-Cook who, as Demetrius, was a palpably dangerous force encapsulating the worst excesses of masculinity.

Continues at Shakespeare’s Globe, Bankside, London until July 13.

For more information and tickets click here.

Glowchoir hits Eastbourne

Posted on 02/05/201402/05/2014 by Besi

Glowchoir is an inclusive singing community experience – a space for LGBT folk and their straight allies to meet and sing together.

Glowchoir is a monthly Natural Voice community choir, currently meeting monthly in Ipswich and London, that provides a safe space for LGBT folk and their straight allies to meet and sing songs of passion, songs of protest and celebration in glorious a cappella harmony.

There is NO need to be able to read music, NO experience necessary, NO judgements…and NO limits!

Glowchoir is run by Natural Voice Practitioner, Kirsty Martin, the musical director of The Hullabaloo Community Quire in Brighton and is coming to Eastbourne on Sunday, June 15.

What: Glow Community Choir

When: Sunday, June 15

Where: St Saviour’s Church Hall, Spencer Road, Eastbourne BN21 4PA

Time: 2.30pm – 6.30pm (arrive from 2.15pm)

Cost: In advance £17/£14 concs: On the door: £20/£17 concs

To book a place, EMAIL:

For more information about Glowchoir, CLICK HERE:

Or telephone: 07950 232145

Call us now

Day: May 2, 2014

Rainbow Fund reports on HIV grant funding made possible by Brighton Pride

Since its inception, the Rainbow Fund has repeatedly supported a range of local community groups and charities working in the field of HIV.

Cut price muck!

Fantastic deals in home compost kits are available for Brighton & Hove residents as the council celebrates International Compost Awareness Week next week (May 5 to 11.)

Busy month for Bear Patrol

Bear Patrol, the social networking group have a busy schedule of events planned for May many of which raise money for the Sussex Beacon. To date their fundraising total is £44,345,70.

Charleston Festival Celebrates 25 Years

Carol Ann Duffy, Richard Dawkins, Grayson Perry and Alan Bennett are amongst a string of high-profile names speaking at the 25th Charleston Festival.

REVIEW: Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe

Glowchoir hits Eastbourne

Glowchoir is an inclusive singing community experience – a space for LGBT folk and their straight allies to meet and sing together.

Latest News

Call us now

Since its inception, the Rainbow Fund has repeatedly supported a range of local community groups and charities working in the field of HIV.

Share this:

Fantastic deals in home compost kits are available for Brighton & Hove residents as the council celebrates International Compost Awareness Week next week (May 5 to 11.)

Share this:

Bear Patrol, the social networking group have a busy schedule of events planned for May many of which raise money for the Sussex Beacon. To date their fundraising total is £44,345,70.

Share this:

Carol Ann Duffy, Richard Dawkins, Grayson Perry and Alan Bennett are amongst a string of high-profile names speaking at the 25th Charleston Festival.

Share this:

Share this:

Glowchoir is an inclusive singing community experience – a space for LGBT folk and their straight allies to meet and sing together.

Share this:

Latest News