Saturday 8 February 2014

Eltham Arts

Are you interested in the arts in Eltham?

Well, I've been very remiss in not writing much earlier about about an exciting new organisation in Eltham. Eltham Arts is a new initiative started over a year ago, by the enterprising and enthusiastic Gaynor Wingham, encouraged by the Eltham Town Centre Partnership and now supported by others, including Amy Duffin, SEnine reporter and @NewElthamWoman on Twitter. 

Eltham Arts aims to celebrate and encourage Eltham's creativity and talent, for people of all ages and backgrounds. Its activities got off to a strong start with a poetry competition last year, 'Eltham in Verse' with a splendid book published as a result. I bought my copy when I bumped into Gaynor at the library in Eltham....

And now Eltham Arts are running a short story competition, 'Tales of Eltham', with entries to be in by 21 February 2014.

There'll be a celebratory event on 23 April 2014 when the winners of the short story competition will be announced at the World book Night celebrations, to be held at the Eltham Centre. There are plans for a book too containing some of the short stories. So why not have a go? See here for more details.

Eltham Arts have a rich vein of arts to mine, and to develop further - in Eltham we already have the Bob Hope Theatre, the Priory Players, the Eltham Choral Society, the Greenwich Soul Choir and Edith Nesbitt's writing heritage and much more. 

In fact, there's so much going on that Gaynor Wingham from Eltham Arts is now writing a column in Greenwich Visitor, a monthly local newspaper - see its website www.TheGreenwichVisitor.com

There's lots more planned, including a series of talks,' Eltham Entertains' at the Eltham Leisure Centre (2 Archery Rd, Eltham SE9 1HA), with the first of these taking place on 12 February, 7-9pm.

So, a belated and warm welcome to Eltham Arts!