Funds for the Contemporary Art Programme

The Telegraph & Argus covers the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation grant recently received by the contemporary arts programme of the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Bronte Parsonage Museum has received a grant of £92,000 from the Esme (sic) Fairbairn Foundation to promote its burgeoning year-long arts programme.
In the coming six months, for example, novelist, biographer and critic Margaret Drabble and poet Wendy Cope will be taking part in the museum's Contemporary Arts Programme.
Andrew McCarthy, deputy director of the museum, said: "The money will allow us to employ a full-time arts officer for just under £20,000 a year over three years, and contribute towards the budget.
"We don't have the staffing resources to do the job. We want the museum to be established not just as a centre for heritage but as a creative centre for the arts both regionally and nationally."
The Contemporary Arts Programme started last September, and while Andrew McCarthy says that it has been progressing "brilliantly", he feels that a full-time arts specialist will be able to develop a range of varied events throughout the year.
Yorkshire-born Margaret Drabble, whose novel Jerusalem the Golden won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, has written some 16 novels, biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson and edited both the fifth and sixth edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature.
She will be reading from her work and discussing the work of the Brontes at West Lane Baptist Church on November 28, starting at 2.30pm.
Wendy Cope, whose poem Bloody Men appeared on the front page of a national newspaper and whose 1986 volume Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis sold more than 40,000 copies, will be reading from her numerous books on November 10 at West Lane Baptist Church, starting at 7.30pm.
The first event, scheduled for October 6, involves the poet Amanda Dalton developing audio installations - with the help of museum visitors on the day. This will be located in various rooms in the museum between November 17 and December 14.
Andrew McCarthy added: "Through our contemporary arts programme we aim to commission and showcase new responses to the Brontes from established writers and artists.
"We also aim to encourage regional creative talent, offering opportunities to collaborate on special projects and to create opportunities for general visitors to experience the Parsonage in imaginative ways."
Tamar Yellin, author of Kafka in Bronteland and Other Stories, will be reading from her work at West Lane Baptist Centre on October 17, starting at 2pm.
The last event is a screening of Peter Kominsky's 1992 film version of Wuthering Heights starring Sinead O'Connor as Emily Bronte and Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Heathcliff and Cathy. (Jim Greenhalf)

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, In the News