The Mountain Arts Festival 2016

About

Community Action Nepal is pleased to announce the second Mountain Arts Festival at The Rheged

Discovery Centre, Penrith, Cumbria, CA11 0DQ. The event – ‘A Day in The Hills’ – will bring together the works of an excitingly diverse collection of climbers, writers, thinkers, artists and performers. In showing the culture surrounding mountains, their contribution as inspiration to mountaineers and climbers will be celebrated. The event runs from 19-27 October 2016.

Over the course of the festival there will be walks, talks and lectures given by a range of highly acclaimed thinkers involved with mountains. Two separate guided walks, lead by Professor Terry Gifford, Claire Hind & Clare Qualmann, on Friday 21 October allows participants to question the relationship between creativity and hill walking, whilst lectures on Saturday 22 October include Professor Terry Gifford’s thoughts on Mountaineering Literature and an interview with ‘Rock Queen’ Catherine Destivelle. On Sunday 23, the lecture ‘Climbing as An Art’ sees Andy Kirkpatrick in conversation with Doug Scott, followed by Gwen Moffat and Claire-Jane Carter talking about climbing with Ben Ayers.

An extensive programme of films, most notably a few of the late Jim Curran’s engrossing films, run alongside other fascinating lectures delivered by a number of acclaimedwriters speakers, including Sir Chris Bonington. An emphasis is placed on discussing the work of CAN in Nepal. Meanwhile, there will be a variety of rousing musical performances happening over the course of the festival and Friday night will conclude with a supper and a Ceilidh evening featuring Striding Edge, the legendary Cumbrian Ceilidh band.

During the festival, there will be an art exhibition based around the title ‘A Day in The Hills’ which will be free of charge for admission. The internationally acclaimed walking artist Hamish Fulton will be showing a text wall made specially for the Festival alongside Julian Cooper’s skilful landscape paintings. The dialogue between the works of the many diverse contemporary artists serves to explore how mountains inspire artists. A number of the artists will also be speaking about their work during the festival.

At the Mountain Bazaar, where exhibitors will be selling many things including books, films and prints, there is also a special pop up exhibition of ‘Savage Arena: The Legacy of Joe Tasker’ run by the Mountain Heritage Trust. This promises to be an unmissable weekend for anyone interested in the creative connections between mountains, walks, writing and art making.