Calderdale Community Samba

Holme Street Arts Centre, Hebden Bridge

Samba Rhythms and Dance Workshop 12 noon to 2.00pm

Costume and Processional Arts Workshop 3.00pm to 5.00pm

Each workshop £5 (£3)

Calderdale Community Samba Band plays Brazilian carnival and street rhythms and warmly invites you to feel the spirit of carnival – join them in making carnival costumes, dancing sambas and banging out monster beats! Both workshops will lead to a full costumed carnival performance in St George’s Square the following day.

Book Weekend at Little Theatre

Holme Street, Hebden Bridge

7.30pm (to 9.30pm approx)
£5 (£4)

Light refreshments and drinks will be available from 12.30pm to 5.30pm both days. A wide range of books will be on sale supplied by Bookcase.

Amanda Dalton and Tobias Hill

1.30pm to 2.30pm
£5

Two poets from The Observer’s Next Generation read and discuss their work. Amanda Dalton was born in Coventry, worked in Leicestershire comprehensive schools and organised Arvon Foundation courses at Lumb Bank, Hebden Bridge. She is now Education Director at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester and lives in Hebden Bridge. Her first full-length
collection of poems How to Disappear is published by Bloodaxe. Tobias Hill lived for some time in Japan as the Sunday Telegraph's rock critic and served tenure as Poet in Residence at London Zoo. He is author of three award-winning collections of poetry and three novels. "...he is one of the two or three most interesting novelists working in Britain today..." (A.S. Byatt, The Guardian)

Ann and Anthony Thwaite

Little Theatre, Holme Street, Hebden Bridge

3.30pm to 4.30pm
£5

Respectively, biographer and poet – they have worked as writers through the fifty years of their marriage. Anthony will read from his latest book A Move in the Weather and from his previous poetry collections. He was a literary editor and BBC radio producer for many years, and has taught and lectured all over the world. Ann will talk about her writing life, how she moved from children’s books to writing biographies. A.A. Milne: His Life won the Whitbread prize for the Biography of the Year in 1990. Her other subjects have been Frances Hodgson Burnett, the Gosses (father and son) and Emily Tennyson, the poet’s wife. Their friend, Stephen Platten, the Bishop of Wakefield, will chair the session.

Andrew Martin

Little Theatre, Holme Street, Hebden Bridge

5.30pm to 6.30pm
£5

Novelist and New Statesman columnist reads and discusses his work. His latest novel Blackpool Highflyer (successor to The Necropolis Railway) tells of railwayman Jim Stringer’s assignment to drive millworkers from Halifax to Blackpool in the long hot summer of 1905.

His dreams of beer and women are destroyed when the train meets a huge millstone on the line. Jim investigates the sabotage and discovers a murky world of dandies, fraudsters, ventriloquists, shifty revolutionaries and textile magnates. Set in Halifax and Blackpool with a terrific chase in Hardcastle Crags, this novel is a superb picture of this area at the turn of the 20th century.

“Often amusing, always intriguing, this is a terrific read”
(The Observer)

Hepton Singers

Heptonstall Parish Church

8.00pm (to 10.00pm approx)
£7 (£4) children and full time students £1

More than 30 local musicians sing with this chamber choir which has been performing in Heptonstall for more than three decades. Directed by Roger Scaife and Alison West, the eclectic programme includes English 16th century Latin church music and traditional African folk songs.

In Concert: Tom McConville and Pauline Cato with Dave Wood

Mytholmroyd Community Centre

8.00pm (to 10.30pm approx)
£8 (£6)

Pauline Cato (Northumbrian pipes) and Tom McConville (fiddle) are two of the best known and respected performers on the English folk scene.

Since their debut together at the Shetland Festival in 1995, they have toured extensively throughout the UK, Europe, the USA and New Zealand. They blend effortlessly together to produce a unique and full sound and specialise in both dynamic unison playing and beautifully arranged harmonies. They are delighted
to be joined by guitarist Dave Wood who adds a new dimension to the music of this popular and successful duo.