We are planning to hold a ‘Chartist Festival’ on May 17/18 as a fundraiser for the Heavens and the Trinity Rooms.
As many readers know, in 1839, the last armed insurrection on British soil took place: the Newport Rising of 5,000 Chartists, led by John Frost. He had been selected earlier in the year to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Chartists in Stroud at a meeting on Rodborough Common.
Each November, a torchlit procession at the cathedral in Newport commemorates the uprising and aftermath.
We in Stroud have done much to commemorate the mass meetings of Chartists in the Stroud area in 1839. There has been a community film. I received a commission from Newport to write a booklet and the textual piece has been performed both in Stroud and in the cathedral and a pub in Newport.
The links do not stop there: the Stroud Red Band were part of the Newport procession in November 2024 – and that visit has led me to the proposal below. A joint fundraiser for the Trinity Rooms and the Heavens.
An exhibition/festival starting with a morning walk to and along Selsley Common to commemorate the May 1839 Chartist meeting held there, attended by 5,000 people. Katie McCue to read up there in situ.
In the afternoon up The Prince Albert: the community film running continuously (people dropping in as and when).
Posters and photographs and words around the walls to contextualise, inform, educate and entertain. The Big Red Band.
An evening performance – poems and song before the main event: The commissioned Newport-Stroud performance piece.
Invitations have been and will be sent out to Newport and Bristol to build further links too.
We imagine, at the moment, that entry will be donations/pay what you can rather than ticketed.
Sunday will feature Chinese Burn and The Forgetting Curve: both have recorded songs about the Selsley Hill meeting (Chinese Burn in situ) and both will, no doubt, include these in their sets. Their two Chartist songs were based on original Chartist songs and hymns.
More to come as time’s winged chariot does its usual job.