Shany Hagan is a Celebrity Charity Artist and she has just finished her painting of Harry Gration MBE, who sadly died suddenly last Friday at the age of 71. She said that Harry loved his coffee in the morning with his family and so decided to use coffee as the medium for her painting.

It is now one year since I wrote a blog entry about the possibility of setting up a web-based poetry bank to help plug a publication gap for poets who write for children.

Singer songwriter Brooke Law recently released her new song We All Need Saving within Mental Health Awareness Week (9-15 May 2022), writing about how our mental health was affected during the pandemic lockdown. As she starts to build towards live shows, we caught up with her to find out what inspired her to write the release.

Sometimes an idea can seem so obvious you think why has someone not thought of it before. One such is using The Piece Hall in Halifax for outdoor concerts. With a wide open space ranking alongside some of the most historic outdoor venues in Europe it is rather perfect. This year's run of Summer concerts is well under way with a series of top performers appearing at the venue.

Never underestimate the simple pleasure of contemplative quiet. Several visitors to Dovetailing - a collaboration of artwork, installation, music and word, which was exhibited at the Quaker Meeting House of Farfield near Addingham in the Summer of 2021- were moved to feelings of ‘calm and wellbeing’.

Every June thousands of rock music fans gather at Castle Donington for what is unquestionably the rock event of the year - the Download Festival. Held over three days alongside the famous racing track the festival attracts the biggest names in rock music.

The cover photograph from the series of ‘Scattered Dreams’ by Susannah Baker-Smith sums up the spirit of this album. Hahn’s beautifully evocative and delectable miniatures are ethereal which Pavel Kolesnikov conveys so brilliantly.

Has Panto season come early? No, it's the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain who graced the stage at York's Theatre Royal last night to a rapturous reception from the locals. And we were treated to a new joke! Yes, the band had clearly not wasted their lockdowns.

The shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2022, presented by Harrogate International Festivals, has been announced today, with six bestselling authors competing to win the UK’s most prestigious crime writing prize.

A paradox lies at the heart of Clare Shaw’s shattering new collection: striving, almost childlike, to order love in an anxiety of intractable images, her disclosure of unease is counter-intuitively strident. For performance is one of Shaw’s strongest suits and the banging of a resounding drum is a sincere means of attempting to negotiate a passage towards self-understanding.

Our roving theatre reviewers Emilie Moon and Claire Haddleton had a riotous time in the STUDIO at York Theatre Royal Alexis Gregory’s Riot Act was nothing short of outstanding. We were lucky enough to catch this show in the intimate Studio theatre at the York Theatre Royal, sitting just metres from the actor himself.

The moment at which all other considerations melted away, towards the end of Saturday night’s shimmering concert at Skipton Town Hall, was pivotal: collectively bearing the symbolic weight of a blue and yellow national flag, the ladies of the Voices of Craven joined with their male colleagues to deliver an emotionally-charged rendering of a Prayer for Ukraine.

Whether an opera lover or not, you probably have an opinion about Richard Wagner. Wasn’t he the favourite composer of Adolf Hitler? Yes he was. Wasn’t he that paranoid anti-Semite? Yes he was. Didn’t critics in his own time describe his music as ‘immoral’, ‘poisonous’ and ‘degenerate’? Yes they did. However, wasn’t he also one of the greatest musical theorists of the European tradition?

Peter Donohoe has chosen a lovely selection of Grieg's Lyric Pieces on this first volume. Starting his recital with Klokkeklang, he immediately sets the scene for what is to follow, delicate, expressive playing with well-controlled crescendos and diminuendos. Donohoe’s playing has an aura of warmth is immensely lyrical and intimate.

Colm Tóibín is both present and not present at moments of immense significance to the teeming protagonists of his poems. As otherwise invisible as the bronzed figure of Icarus in ‘In Los Angeles’, as seemingly extraneous as the boy who falls into the sea in Auden’s ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, the novelist contrives an invaluable detachment in his first poetry collection.

Simon Rattle and his band of musicians certainly seem to have enjoyed performing this toe tapping, finger clicking, fun infused repertoire that traverses jazz and classical music.

Nestled amongst my collection of often tenebrific Russian classics, the works of Turgenev seem to pulse as soft lucent beacons. His novels do not scar the retina of the reader with the blinding, dramatic lightning of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, but instead offer us the altogether more subtle tones and hues of a literary sonata.