News from producers around Derbyshire

Buxton International Festival has one of the best Friends organisations in the music world, their new Patron Wyn Davies believes.  

Wyn, who takes on the role from the Friends’ first patron Donald Maxwell, is an internationally renowned conductor who first appeared at the Buxton Festival in 1983 when he conducted the children’s opera James and the Giant Peach.

His work has taken him from New York to New Zealand, and although there are friends groups supporting music events across the globe, nobody does it like they do in Buxton.

£19,623 (full time / 35 hrs. per week / flexi time) with supplementary payments for any additional weekend and unsociable hours worked.

Horticulture and Arboriculture students at Derby College’s Broomfield Hall in Morley have brought an outdoor area at Cotmanhay Junior School back to life for the benefit of local children.

The students have surveyed and cleared the overgrown area behind the schools and created a woodland walk to an outdoor reading and study area as well as creating a series of willow sculptures.

More than 100 Derbyshire loos have been reviewed through a new TripAdvisor-style app.

Brand new app Cleen, allows hygiene-conscious users to review washrooms and toilet facilities in venues and businesses and so far, Derbyshire has seen reviews in a number of venues including leisure centres, restaurants and bars.

The app which is free to download has seen positive feedback with just over 60% of the reviews with comments ranging from;

“Lovely clean toilets nice hand wash and hand cream” to “very clean facilities, in an old brick building but kept beautifully.”

The first St Peters Quarter Live event of 2018 will be held at the Spot on Saturday April 14 with a line-up of rousing music performed by three local choirs.

Acts on April 14 between 11am and 3pm include Derby’s Rebel Women's Choir, who are based at Derby Women’s Centre and have a repertoire of inspiring songs of sisterhood, women's protest and women's rebellion. 

Derby’s Cathedral Quarter, which launched its new five-year Business Improvement District (BID) programme last month, has announced a new calendar of free street entertainment for the coming months.

CQ Saturdays is part of the BID’s aim to continue to develop the great Cathedral Quarter lifestyle experience for visitors and people working in the area to enjoy.

Starting on Saturday May 12 and then every second Saturday of the month through to September, CQ Saturdays Street Circus will return to the Waterfall stage in the Market Place.

Family-owned G Wathall & Son Ltd, the city’s longest established independent funeral directors, have delivered more than 200 Easter eggs to Sure Start Rosehill for distribution to local families.

Wathall’s, which celebrates its 160^th anniversary this year, launched its annual Easter appeal recently and collected chocolate eggs donated by members of the public, local businesses, staff, family and friends at its branches in Macklin Street, Derby; Ashbourne, Borrowash and Alvaston.

On 13^th March 2018, The Derby Conference Centre played host to iRail, a showcase event designed to educate students from across the region, about the great heritage of the rail industry in the city of Derby, and the technological and engineering opportunities available within rail. This was a free event which took place between 9am and 3pm.

The co-owner of one of Derbyshire’s most popular farm shops has been appointed to the board of directors of FARMA, the trade association supporting farm retail.

Kay Croot, who runs Croots Farm Shop near Duffield with husband Steve, was voted into the position at the association’s annual conference held at The Forest Pines Hotel and Golf Resort in North Lincolnshire.

Kay hopes that her appointment will give a stronger voice to small and medium-sized farm shops across the country.

A 12 day post to run July to September 2018 as coordinator for Wirksworth Festival’s Art & Architecture Trail, a key event of the two-week arts festival.