As we get towards what we hope will be the end of over a year of lockdown, I will endeavour to let you know what is back to normal, what is changing and when there will be events ... walks, talks and exhibitions.
The jointly run, Friends and KDAS Community Art space, ARTworks in the Newlands centre is now opening regularly again, Friday, Saturday and Sunday (10 til 4 on those days) and you are very welcome to come down and browse a continually changing exhibition of affordable works of art by local artists (often of local themes).
The Gallery, Library and Museum, as you will know, are shut for the rest of the year for a major redevelopment.
This year's KDAS annual exhibition will therefore be in ARTworks. Details to follow.
The Friends of Kettering Art Gallery and Museum have been running a successful series of Zoom talks to keep in touch with members over the lockdown, with speakers as varied as the writer of this modest blog to Rembrandt expert, art historian and academic, Dr Sophie Oosterwijk, from Amsterdam. Talks would give way over the Summer anyway, so June will see a walk, and July, a visit to Delapre Abbey, the Eleanor Cross and Northampton battlefield. Talks will resume in the Autumn. At least some will be 'live', assuming a new strain or variant hasn't shut everything down again. Details to follow.
(ARTworks: the home of creative objects, fine art and arts and crafts)
As well as the main exhibition displays, ARTworks also hosts community displays, and a table of items on local history from the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society who publish their own guides at £10 a copy - you can pick one up while you are looking around the exhibitions.
(some of the local history publications from the county's Battlefields Society)