Art & music, needed more than ever

March is the month we welcome back the Frome Independent, our massively popular monthly market for all things independently produced, whether they're to be eaten, drunk, worn, played with, or looked at admiringly. This first-Sunday-of-the-month initiative really is a great day out, even on a very cold one, with all the central streets of town crammed with stalls of amazing produce and a wonderful atmosphere.  Here's the main street with the busking stage and eatables: there's also craft on the hill and snack stalls everywhere. After the long months of home confinement, this Independent felt like a massive party.

As we shift slowly from winter to spring, the Silk Mill has an exhibition with a focus on Transient Phases. This features eleven artists who all work at the Bruce Munro studio at Long Knoll, and interpretations are fascinatingly varied: here's Louis Neale who curated the show, a 'forage' artist whose themes are always seasonal: his real passion is fungi, but during winter months the land offers only  bits of crockery thrown up after the harvesting - this is one of his recent works.

Still with visual art, there's a new exhibition in the Black Swan Long Gallery: A Duet of Lines features the very different linear art of Guy Watts and Daniel McGirr.  Guy is well known in Frome for his pen & ink images on prints & postcards, each taking months to complete: this one is 'The oldest Chinese tree in the world', an imagined bonsai designed to create a sense of tranquility. Daniel, from Bristol, works on a massive scale - this piece Late Lights fills a wall - and aims to change perceptions of art. 

Art going viral now: this was the weekend Window Wanderland took over the town for the fifth year, with scores of houses across the town creating illuminated window displays with coloured paper over one weekend in the darkest coldest time of the year. This 'magical walking trail to light up our streets' has become so popular there's no longer a single map of all participating buildings -you download the section of town you think you can cover in an evening! These displays are very varied and often really impressive, with many pleas for peace and love - there's a wonderful visual tribute to the artwork of Charles Rennie Mackintosh too. This incredible peacock display in a bay window in Sunnyside features blue and yellow in a wonderfully hopeful image of connection.

Music now: since restrictions on indoor performances were lifted there's been a performance renaissance in Frome's pubs but the farmyard stage of The Gugg arts centre in Stalbridge also continues to be popular. Friday's relaunch of Open Mic evenings saw diverse acts onstage, ranging from soloists to a lively septet (including me doing a bit of spoken word) Pizzas & a bar made this a great party night.

Back at the cinema again, this time for The Duke - a movie about a working-class socialist activist who pulled off a heist on the National Gallery, and holds a painting to ransom in protest at penalties on old people who can't afford a TV licence, and it's an actual true story, set in in early1960s London (my era, my stamping ground), with Jim Broadbent & Helen Mirren and to top it all, film-rating site Rotten Tomatoes critics ALL gave it the red-tomato of approval... altogether irresistible.  

The duke in question is Wellington, in a portrait by Goya for which the British Government in 1961 paid £140,000 (nearly 3 million in today's terms), a sum which incensed Kempton Bunton, a retired bus-driver & veteran who had already been imprisoned for refusing to pay for his TV licence. He tasked himself with a solo campaign on behalf of the nation's elderly, the climax of which was the theft of this portrait as a bargaining tool.  This is a gentle story; it's been likened to an Ealing comedy, but there are so many searing moments of historical reality, so much tender observation of absurdity, so much humour, and history, and brilliant acting, which all combine to make it much more than that. Check out the promo video here: Roger Michell’s final feature film was designed to make you both laugh and cry, and it will. 

I'm ending this week's 'arts' report in a town where people are free to create and connect - there was a Kindness Festival, too, this week, to "appreciate and celebrate the kindness that already exists in Frome" - at a time we've all been reminded that this is not as normal for a community as it should be, with an image that appeared on Facebook uncredited. Even in desolation, art can bring hope.