Check it out at http://www.sirf.co.uk/

I’ll be there taking some photographs for Steve Thompson and the Tees Valley Community Media crew who are responsible for the live feed at the stage side screens and the behind the scenes work down at the main stage.  Photos and story to follow.

If you have a message you’d like to be displayed on the screen tweet with #ssf10

The unusual subject matter is the work of Yorkshire artist Viva Talbot (1900-1983), who created the images during the 1930s when it was almost unknown for women to be allowed access to the steelworks.

During her lifetime Viva created hundreds of woodblock prints. This exhibition, developed by Dr Joan Heggie, a Research Fellow at Teesside University, also contains personal items such as sketch books, photographs and even one of Viva’s diaries.

The exhibition can be seen from Tuesday 30 March to Sunday 18 July, at the Dorman Museum, Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough. Admission is free.

Free public lecture
Dr Joan Heggie will also give a public lecture about the exhibition at the museum on Thursday 17 June.

The chance discovery of these prints in 2006 generated a new research interest for their finder, Dr Heggie, who was initially unable to find any information about Viva Talbot.

Her name was absent from reference books and it was a mystery why and how she had gained such privileged access to the steelworks. Since then Dr Heggie has spent every spare minute piecing together the story of Viva Talbot, her life and her art.

Viva was the daughter of Benjamin Talbot (1864-1947), inventor of the Talbot tilting furnace which transformed the Open Hearth method of producing steel. Benjamin Talbot, originally from Shropshire, came to Teesside at the beginning of the 20th Century. Having spent a decade working for iron companies in America, Talbot brought new ideas back to England at a time when they were much needed.

He became involved with two companies in particular – Cargo Fleet Iron Company (Middlesbrough) and the South Durham Steel & Iron Company (Stockton) – both of which are possible locations for the steelmaking images. In 1925, he became Managing Director of both companies and Chairman of the Board in 1940.

Viva Talbot married Thomas Nussey in 1941 and within a few years she became Lady Nussey when Thomas inherited a baronetcy from his father.

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There was a Day of Cultural “Blogcasting” from Destinations in Saltburn on March 4th to tie in with European Get Online Day. A team of community media volunteers worked from a temporary studio upstairs in Destinations to put out a five hour programme of sound, video and images. A couple of clips came in from Latvia. Whilst it was a little disappointing that more content did not come in from our European partners we de get over 2000 viewers on the day and the visitor map to the right (click to enlarge) shows where our viewers were coming from. We even had Community Media students from Brighton University assigned to study our work.

The event was launched by Cllr Barry Hunt, The Mayor of Loftus and was followed by wide and varied content ranging from animations to poetry performances.

Some notable items: A live unedited walk along Skinningrove Jetty followed by Tommy Evans’ update on Otters, Marske Fishermans Choir and the East Cleveland Image Archive

You can see the whole event here or watch it in the order it was transmitted. (Just scroll down and click on “older entries” at the foot of each page. All in all a great sucess and we’ll be running more Blogcasts. If you would like to be involved in the next one as a contributor or a participant then please contact s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk

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A little while ago a small group of enthusiasts began to meet in Loftus Library where they were digitising an image collection. I set them up with a website and ran a session or two on how to upload their images and so Loftus Digital Village was born.  Over the coming weeks and months the archive grew at an amazing rate. Folks started to send images by email or bring them into the Library for scanning. Others left messages in the comments identifying people and objects in the pictures.