Big Dog - The Three Crowns, Oakham

'Big Dog'
Paul Conneally
The Three Crowns
Oakham 2015

Heat and Dust

“The Fainting” unpublished lithograph by H. de Toulouse Lautrec (c. 1920)

heat and dust
somewhere the sound
of a tambourine

Paul Conneally

Walt Shaw - Gong Man

Walt Shaw - Gong Man

Walt Shaw, Gong Man, during our Loughborough University Fruit Routes Gong Workshop preparing to honour the new trees planted in the Barefoot Orchard on February 11th 2015 with a Gong Ceremony and performance.

Walt gave two inspirational workshops and it's only now after the event that I find we have a mutual connection in that we both had the privilege of working in the past with the late great Lol Coxhill.

Here's Walt with Mahood and Lol performing at the Lamp Tavern in Birmingham in 2006:

https://vimeo.com/94787452

I've got a feeling that fate has brought Walt and I together through Fruit Routes and that we will soon work together on future projects.

Paul Conneally
Loughborough University
February 2015

A Spade in the Barefoot Orchard

A Spade in the Barefoot Orchard

A spade used during the February planting of an additional 32 trees in the Fruit Routes Barefoot Orchard at Loughborough University. The planting was followed by a gong ceremony and performance, new type of wassail, to celebrate and bless the trees, the ground.

The planting and gong ceremony form part of artist and environmental activist Anne-Marie Culhane's ongoing work Fruit Routes supported by Loughborough University Sustainability Team through Jo Hasbury-Shields

Paul Conneally
Loughborough University Barefoot Orchard
February 2015

Exploring the Longitudinal Relationship Between Arts Engagement and Health

You can read this fascinating and important report on how arts engagement both as active participant or as audience member can have a positive impact on the health of individuals and communities here:

http://www.artsforhealth.org/research/artsengagementandhealth/ArtsEngagementandHealth.pdf

It comes via the wonderful organisation Arts for Health and is by Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt.

Paul Conneally
February 2015

The Banana Links

excerpts from
the banana links
paul conneally

(i)

in some ways the haiku today resembles the potato

before blight brought famine to ireland

(ii)

edible haiku are sterile mutants

new varieties cannot easily be produced by natural methods

(iii)

a haiku a day prevents a deficiency

which might increase the risk of stroke

(iv)

haiku a substitute for sweets and satisfy sugar cravings

(v)

your hands can benefit from haiku as well

(vi)

each haiku wrapped in foil and sold for a dime

'the banana links' are a dadaesque experiment

to see how truths about haiku might reveal themselves

through the manipulation of texts on or about bananas

Paul Conneally

Programme Seller King Power Stadium

Programme Seller - King Power Stadium

When I was a boy a football programme was, except for special matches, just a few sheets of paper, now it's a 'Matchday Magazine'.

To give the publishers and writers of Leicester City's Matchday Magazine it is just that, really well put together and a good value read at just £3.

This said the fans never call it a magazine, it's always the 'programme' and maybe that's what it should be officially called too.

Paul Conneally
February 2015

Fast Food And Gossip

Hot Food Stand

It stands at the entrance to Market Yard, just off Loughborough's busy Market Place.

A steady stream of customers, a mixture of shoppers and market traders, come to warm up with a hot drink and maybe a burger, hotdog or egg and bacon cob.

fast food and gossip
a single cabbage leaf
on the winter wind

Paul Conneally
January 31 2015