Above is the working document, a receipt from the local post office, for the text based piece 'NICE TO SEE YOU' that was exhibited as part of my show 'The Blind Fiddler Home Entertainment 1806 - 2012' show at Snibston Discovery Museum. Below is how it appeared in the exhibition. The show could not have been realised without the help of the wonderful curator Alison Clague - Paul Conneally April 2016
After the forced closing of Coalville's Snibston Discovery Museum, Leicestershire County Council now announce that they will not be opening a smaller mining museum in its place onsite.
Snibston was a shining cultural jewel in the heart of the East Midlands, centred around the former Snibston colliery site. Despite huge public and national opposition Leicestershire Couny Council recently closed the museum citing financial reasons but declared that it would be opening a new smaller mining museum, in and around the former colliery buildings and headstock which is a listed national monument.
The council has now gone back on its word announcing on the 11th of January 2016 that it would now not be opening a new museum at Snibston, one that celebrates the proud mining history and heritage of North West Leicestershire, again citing financial concerns.
Plans are currently in progress to disperse the many thousands of artefacts and displays that made up the celebrated Snibston Discovery Museum. These include huge steam trains, beam engines and one of the best fashion collections in the UK. Leicester City Council are looking to take back some of the engines and other artefacts that were passed to Snibston by them for display. Leicester City Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, is keen to find ways to upgrade the already excellent Abbey Pumping Station museum and house steam engines and other gems from the industrial revolution and beyond in the heart of Leicester.
Despite similar financial cuts handed down from central government to Leicestershire County Council, Leicester City Council has been and continues to invest in cultural and heritage projects including the acclaimed King Richard III Visitor Centre. This approach is already bringing a payback in terms of increasing visitors to Leicester City and the money that they bring with them and spend in local businesses.
Snibston was beginning to gain a reputation, through its Transform Snibston project, for bringing fine art and heritage together as well as being the destination for many school, college and university trips for educational purposes.
It appears that some elected members of the Tory led Leicestershire County Council do not share the Labour led Leicester City Council vision of preserving and promoting local culture and heritage preferring instead to see a one off financial hit in the selling off of public land and facilities to property developers and building companies.
"Freedom For A Song comes from INDIFFERENT, a series of prints, images and texts, by artist, poet and cultural forager Paul Conneally. INDIFFERENT emerges from cultural forages in and around Snibston Discovery Park and the villages that surround it. The forages form part of the process underpinning Spoil Heap Harvest a piece commissioned by Snibston as part of TRANSFORM.
INDIFFERENT sees Conneally juxtaposing the poetry of the playwright and poet Francis Beaumont, who was born in Thringston, North West Leicestershire, with not frottages but presages of plant and other materials, made on a cultural forage through the Snibston Colliery spoil heap, now a country park. The artist invites the viewer to seek for pictures within the presaged image in the same way that a psychologist might ask a patient to look for images in the famous Rorschach or Ink Blot Test. What can you see? You can report back to the artist what you feel the image to be by email: little.onion@ntlworld.com or by commenting on this page using the comment form.
Throughout Spoil Heap Harvest Conneally will make psychogeographic cultural forages through the wider footprint of the former Snibston colliery which is in Coalville, North West Leicestershire. The forages and interventions will be mediated by the poetry of William Wordsworth, Francis Beaumont and the paintings of John Constable. All three of these cultural giants deeply connected with the area in ways for the most part unknown by local and wider communities.
Wordsworth lived in the area, with his whole family, for a whole year and it was at Coleorton that he first read his completed masterpiece, The Prelude, to Coleridge. Constable, Sir Walter Scott and many other famous artists and writers clamoured to North West Leicestershire to stay with George Beaumont at his home Coleorton Hall, just down the road from Snibston. George Beaumont himself was the lead benefactor for the setting up the National Gallery in London."
SNIBSTON DISCOVERY MUSEUM - 2011
Snibston has now been closed down by Leicestershire County Council it sits at this moment closed up with all the people's cultural and heritage artefacts locked up inside.
'Maurice' - New Century Works, Maguire and Conneally (2012 - 2015)
In 2011 as Transform Snibston took shape I spoke with artist and cultural geographer, Maurice Maguire about the tunnels spreading out and to Snibston Colliery, now the site of Snibston Discovery Museum.
Tunnel Talk was the resulting podcast: Tunnel Talk
Indifferent - three prints - Paul Conneally 2011 INDIFFERENT sees Conneally juxtaposing the poetry of the playwright and poet Francis Beaumont, who was born in Thringston, North West Leicestershire, with not frottages but presages of plant and other materials, made on a cultural forage through the Snibston Colliery spoil heap, now a country park. The artist invites the viewer to seek for pictures within the presaged image in the same way that a psychologist might ask a patient to look for images in the famous Rorschach or Ink Blot Test. More on this work: Freedom for a Song
Freedom For A Song comes from INDIFFERENT, a series of prints, images and texts, by artist, poet and cultural forager Paul Conneally. INDIFFERENT emerges from cultural forages in and around Snibston Discovery Park and the villages that surround it. The forages form part of the process underpinning Spoil Heap Harvest a piece commissioned by Snibston as part of TRANSFORM.
INDIFFERENT sees Conneally juxtaposing the poetry of the playwright and poet Francis Beaumont, who was born in Thringston, North West Leicestershire, with not frottages but presages of plant and other materials, made on a cultural forage through the Snibston Colliery spoil heap, now a country park. The artist invites the viewer to seek for pictures within the presaged image in the same way that a psychologist might ask a patient to look for images in the famous Rorschach or Ink Blot Test. What can you see? You can report back to the artist what you feel the image to be by email: little.onion@ntlworld.com or by commenting on this page using the comment form.
Throughout Spoil Heap Harvest Conneally makes psychogeographic cultural forages through the wider footprint of the former Snibston colliery which is in Coalville, North West Leicestershire. The forages and interventions mediated by the poetry of William Wordsworth, Francis Beaumont and the paintings of John Constable. All three of these cultural giants deeply connected with the area in ways for the most part unknown by local and wider communities.
Wordsworth lived in the area, with his whole family, for a whole year and it was at Coleorton that he first read his completed masterpiece, The Prelude, to Coleridge. Constable, Sir Walter Scott and many other famous artists and writers clamoured to North West Leicestershire to stay with George Beaumont at his home Coleorton Hall, just down the road from Snibston. George Beaumont himself was the lead benefactor for the setting up the National Gallery in London.
Paul Conneally is cultural forager at Snibston Discovery Museum for TRANSFORM SNIBSTON.
We move together along the disused railway track towards the top of the Swannington Incline.
"Don’t look the dog in the eyes. He don’t like it”
one upright arm
sustains the cheek
come walk with me
when things go wrong
there’s always the hedgerow
Paul Conneally 2011
From ‘Health Walk’ Paul Conneally with Nita Pearson ‘Whitwick to Swannington and Back’ May 2011
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Notes
The line: 'one upright arm sustains the cheek’ is a fragment from “HOW RICH THAT FOREHEAD’S CALM EXPANSE” by William Wordsworth. Wordsworth tells us that the poem HOW RICH THAT FOREHEAD’S CALM EXPANSE was inspired by a print at Coleorton Hall, North West Leicestershire. Mrs Wordsworth’s impression was that HOW RICH THAT FOREHEAD’S CALM EXPANSE was also written at Coleorton Hall despite William’s note that it was written at Rydal Mount in the Lake District.
The inclusion by direct reference of Romantic peotry in Michael Gove's new National Curriculum for English is to be welcomed. Some teachers feel the works of the romantics are not relevant for the here and now, poet artist Paul Conneally has been developing pieces and workshops that use pre-1914 poetry as triggers and ways to explore life and community now in the twenty first century.
Here's an excerpt from some of Paul's work in the former coal mining area of North West Leicestershire.
Mick Smith, window cleaner and former Snibston colliery worker, reads an excerpt from a William Wordsworth poem written during Wordsworth's time living at Coleorton, North West Leicestershire, just down the road from Snibston. The poem refers to and is inspired by Grace Dieu Priory where Wordsworth used to visit regularly with his family. Grace Diieu Priory is on the Transform Snibston William Wordsworth Trail.
The video and trail are part of poet artist and cultural forager, Paul Conneally work for Transform Snibston - Snibston Discovery Museum, Coalville, Leicestershire.
Here is the Wordsworth poem in full:
BENEATH yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,
Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground
Stand yet, but, Stranger! hidden from thy view,
The ivied Ruins of forlorn GRACE DIEU;
Erst a religious House, which day and night
With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite:
And when those rites had ceased, the Spot gave birth
To honourable Men of various worth:
There, on the margin of a streamlet wild,
Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child;
There, under shadow of the neighbouring rocks,
Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks;
Unconscious prelude to heroic themes,
Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams
Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage,
With which his genius shook the buskined stage.
Communities are lost, and Empires die,
And things of holy use unhallowed lie;
They perish;--but the Intellect can raise,
From airy words alone, a Pile that ne'er decays.
Queen's Head Pub Thringstone - Transform Snibston William Wordsworth Trail - Paul Conneally 2011
On Saturday 27 December 1806 the great poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes in his notebook that he went from Coleorton, where he was staying with Wordsworth and his family, to the Queen's Head at 'Stringston'.
Here, he believed, probably due to opium and brandy, that Wordsworth was in bed with his sister-in -law Sarah Hutchinson, who Coleridge had fallen in love with. Coleridge writes that it was here that he had a vision of Sarah's naked breast, a vision that he carried with him for many years, writing about it several times.
The pub was closed in 2008 and is now converted into residential housing.
This picture shows it on the 27th April 2011 as conversion was taking place.
We move together along the disused railway tracktowards the top of the Swannington Incline. "Don't look the dog in the eyes. He don't like it" one upright arm sustains the cheek come walk with me when things go wrong there's always the hedgerow Paul Conneally 2011 ------------
