We had our second celebration event last week at Cradley Heath Library where we shared some of the lovely work produced as part of the project. This included a performance of Yamlet by Little Earthquake Theatre, a performance of new work about local dialect by poet Heather Wastie, and a film with local voices and images produced by Geoff Broadway.  You can read more below.

Our second big celebratory event took place at Cradley Heath Library. It was full to bursting with only standing room only at the back. You can see some of the images below from the night.

Geoff Broadway’s new film features the voices of 10 local participants who talk about dialect and the Black Country, sharing their own interpretations and stories about particular words and phrases. The film is a mix of new film and photographs produced by Geoff Broadway and Kate Jackson, and incorporates some wonderful archival imagery from some of the family albums of participants and local collectors. You can see the film in full below.

Heather Wastie performed lots of new material. Some of this will be on the website soon, and some of it will feature in the upcoming shiny new Our Spake book, but in the meantime here is a lovely short poem by Heather:

Day
I thought the sun would shine today
burrit day
I thought I’d have more time today
burrah day
I thought they’d wipe out crime today
but they day
I thought I’d write one more line today

© Heather Wastie
April 2016

Little Earthquake took Yamlet to the streets of Cradley Heath and were intercepted by the BBC who reviewed some of what they are doing on the evening newscast of Midlands Today. You can see the news item below.