Tag Archives: Michael Eaton

Sillitoe Day 27 October 2012

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqdtStM5G4U

The Alan Sillitoe Committee is a voluntary organisation committed to raising awareness of one of Nottingham’s most prolific writers by putting on a series of events, the proceeds from which go towards a statue fund. Sillitoe Day is the biggest event in our calendar and falls every two years.

Our second Sillitoe Day is of particular significance as 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. It is also the 125th anniversary of Raleigh, the workplace of Sillitoe’s fictional anti-hero Arthur Seaton. The Committee will also be celebrating being one of 53 organisations commissioned to produce content for a new multimedia platform called The Space, and will launch the ‘Sillitoe Trail’. This is a unique Mobile Phone App that creates a literary walk through Sillitoe’s debut novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, visiting five key locations on its journey.

Sillitoe Day will be split into two sessions. The morning session (11-1) will see the launch of the Sillitoe Trail Mobile App which will be presented by Paul Fillingham and I. Paul has captured the 1950s aesthetic of the project through some beautiful visuals. He’s also the tech monkey, creating the Smart Phone App and generating the QR Codes etc. I’ve edited together the written content; selecting the writers and creating the narrative.

Ann Featherstone recording audio for the Mobile App at Paper-Stone studios

The morning session will examine five key locations from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Old Market Square, The White Horse, Raleigh, Trent and Goose Fair) with commissioned writers Al Needham, Derrick Buttress, Pete Davis, Ann Featherstone and me. There will also be videos from Alex ‘MotaMouf’ Young and Andrew ‘MulletProofPoet’ Graves and a short film from the British Film Council Collection called How a Bicycle is Made.

The afternoon session runs from 2 – 5 and is a more general celebration of Sillitoe’s work. It includes the launch of The Open Door, republished by Five Leaves; Sam Derby-Cooper will be showing his short film Mimic, based on Alan’s acclaimed short story, and the wonderful Frank Abbott will be previewing his special remix of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning . 

We’ve got two keynote speakers. Michael Eaton MBE will be exploring Sillitoe’s Nottinghamshire, basing his talk on the book of the same title that Alan produced with photographs from his son, David. William Ivory will be in conversation with Neil Fulwood about social realism, fresh from the success of his wonderful play Diary of a Football Nobody which is currently showing at the Playhouse. Closing comments will be from David Sillitoe.

Jane Streeter with her pen pal.

Sillitoe Day has also given us the opportunity to bring in two organisations who we treally admire. The Bookcase is an independent bookshop from Lowdham run by Jane Streeter, who was a long term pen pal of Alan’s. Eva from In Spades Design will also be selling her beautiful line drawings of Nottingham locations (my favourite is of the old Players factory) as well as mugs with quotes from Nottingham based culture (‘It’s thirsty work falling down stairs’)

Please support us by coming along and spreading the word. And if you can’t make it, get out a Sillitoe book from the library or download our Sillitoe Trail for free from The Space (available 27 October).

Other stuff.

Taking Derrick Buttress into The Space

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Me, Derrick, John Lucas. Photo by David Sillitoe.

As part of the Space project I’ve enjoyed spending time with Derrick Buttress. Derek, at the tender age of eighty, has just had his first short story collection published by Shoestring Press although he has five poetry collections, two memoirs and various scripts for radio and television under his belt. Derrick is our first commissioned writer and will be taking us from the 1930s up to the publication of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1958. He’s going to take us on a personal journey through the market square – a key location in the novel – and share his memories of when it was filled with GIs, communists, and folk doing a celebratory conga in celebration of VE Day.

Going to Derrick’s home was a little bit like stepping into one of his short stories in that I knew everything about his relationship with his wife Joan though a couple of comments. Joan was in the front room watching Casablanca, ‘for the seventeenth time’ Derrick informed me. I wasn’t sure if he meant that day, week or the duration of his sixty years of marriage. Later on Joan pulled me to one side and said, ‘you know he spends all of his time up there tapping away on that computer’ and shook her head, like I must be in agreement with her that this was ridiculous behaviour and I’d be better suited sitting down with her watching Casablanca.

As part of our public engagement for the Space project, Derrick kindly allowed me to piggy back on to his book launch Sing to Me and we chatted about his market square memories. The event was held at Lee Rosy’s on 11 April which is a lovely little venue – although if you’re planning a similar event there, make sure you keep the door shut upstairs as the noise quickly filters downwards. It was a lovely event with a highly respected audience including John Lucas, Ross Bradshaw, Wayne Burrows, Nicola Monaghan, Michael Eaton, David Belbin, Tony Roe, Al Atkinson, Cathy Grindrod and Aly Stoneman. Derrick then went on to share a story about working as a teenager in a factory full of women where a big breasted bully would deliberately pen him in to a corner and make him blush, much to the amusement of her cackling comrades.

After explaining the Space project to Derrick he said he wished he’d known me when he was younger. I can’t wait for new audiences to experience his writing and I hope that at eighty, he gets the wider recognition that he deserves. I can think of no better validation for the arts council than offering this writer a platform into the digital age.

 

Preview of Derrick Buttress’ book launch

Twitter: Arthur Seaton for more info on events

And of course The Space…coming 1 May.