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Check out details of this trip that an old college friend of mine is organising to Vietnam. Details.

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I received this email from a friend today and thought I would share it. If you live in or near Sheffield then it will be of interest.

Dear All,

I’m writing to you because either you live here in Sheffield or you have an interest in Sheffield’s cultural wellbeing.

As you may have heard Museums Sheffield (who run Millennium Gallery, Graves Gallery and Weston Park Museum) have been dealt a devastating funding blow this week when they failed to get Renaissance funding from the Arts Council, you can read about it in the Guardian here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/culture-cuts-blog/2012/jan/24/museums-arts-funding

Not getting this funding means a 30% cut in Museums Sheffield’s annual budget which in turn means redundancies, a reduction of learning activity and none of the high profile collaborations with Tate, V&A and the British Museum which have resulted in a first class exhibition programme over the last few years rather than the sort of stymied municipal displays you can often find in regional museums and galleries.

Clearly it's a major blow to Sheffield if our museums service degenerates in this way and will have a damaging ripple effect on the rest of the cultural scene.

If you feel moved to, it would be great if you could register your displeasure at this decision and persuade the powers that be to think about other means of supporting Museums Sheffield:
http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/blog/2012/1/help-us-make-the-case-for-culture-in-sheffield

This amounts to interrogating the Arts Council on their decision:

Email ACE Yorkshire at enquires@artscouncil.org.uk marking it for the attention of the Yorkshire Office.

You can also email Alan Davey the head of the Arts Council chief.executive@artscouncil.org.uk

I’m sure you can compose your own email but salient points might be:
o Museums Sheffield provides an excellent and museums service which will now be compromised – you might want to include your favourite exhibitions of the past few years.
o Museums Sheffield serves a diverse and large audience – ‘Great Art for Everyone’ in the words of the Arts Council.
o A decimated museums service will have a degenerative effect on the wider arts scene in Sheffield.
o Why were York and Leeds chosen over Sheffield when both cities have a stronger tourist economy, more robust arts infrastructure and greater investment from the Arts Council already – surely Sheffield needs this support most.
o ACE’s allocation of Renaissance funding is unbalanced – central England inc. Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester all unsuccessful in their bids. London, Oxford and Cambridge all successful – rich cities and services getting richer and poor ones getting poorer.
o Finally a call to reverse the decision/ find other ways of supporting Museums Sheffield.


If you’re a Sheffield resident its also worth contacting your local councillors and MPs imploring for local government to support Museums Sheffield in the absence of Arts Council funding.

You can find contact the relevant contacts here:
https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/your-city-council/mps-and-meps.html
http://councillors.sheffield.gov.uk/index.asp?pgid=215818#end

Salient points might be:

o Museums Sheffield provides an excellent and museums service which will now be compromised – you might want to include your favourite exhibitions of the past few years.
o The people who will suffer from this are Sheffield residents from all areas and backgrounds.
o A decimated museums service will have a degenerative effect on the wider arts scene in Sheffield.
o Despite difficult budgeting decisions it’s time for Sheffield City Council to invest in culture in Sheffield in order to enjoy economic and social returns.
o Finally entreat them to protest at the Arts Councils decision and support Museums Sheffield via local government funding.

Thanks for standing up for Culture in Sheffield!

Please pass the message round friends and colleagues you think would be interested.

Best wishes,
Sarah

--
Louise Hawson
Partner
SustainableBalance
www.sustainablebalance.co.uk

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The Nick Estcourt Award for 2012 has been awarded to Talung North Pillar (Gavin Pike, James Clapham and Dave Searle). The Award will be £1500 and the Trustees wish them every success with their plans. 2011 saw a record breaking 10 applications which made a big change for the trustees.

Trustee Sir Chris Bonington said: “It was a very difficult decision, but in the end Talung got the vote as it so nearly fits ALL our criteria. It really is a superb line. The team has a good mix of technical ability and experience in the Alps and Alaska but this will be a good first Himalayan trip. This is exactly the sort of expedition that the NEA was set up to support.”

All applications were better prepared and largely on time than in previous years (possibly in response to this Blog posting by award administrator Matt Heason?)

http://www.heason.net/News_&_Blog/Blog/2011/01/13/Tardy_Mountaineers/

Note the closing date for future applications has changed from 31st December to 31st January to bring the award in line with the Mount Everest Foundation and the British Mountaineering Council.

http://www.nickestcourtaward.org/index.htm

For more details please contact Matt Heason on 01433 529 219 or 07966 529 219

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The North Face Superlight Sleeping Bag

Kozi Kids Softshell Jacket 

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Late on Tuesday evening we posted the 2012 ShAFF trailer to Youtube. It’s a cracking film, edited by award winning filmmaker Al Lee of Posing Productions. Al was juggling editing and packing for an imminent trip to Venezuela (another film project so watch this space…). When I saw the video on Wednesday morning it had received a few hundred hits overnight. I was pleased enough with this. Then something strange happened. Despite the Youtube hit counter sticking on 300 and something all day long Twitter was indicating that rather a lot of people were enjoying the trailer. A quick Google uncovered the fact that Youtube are fairly hot on spammers posting videos multiple times on auto-repeat to boost numbers, so they are slow to show the true count whilst they check out the authenticity of the hits. Clever stuff. Anyway, by the end of the day the hit counter suddenly jumped from 300 to 5,000. We were blown away. And then we went to bed. And that means that America and Canada wake up! The following morning it had more than doubled to 12,000. Crazy. Last year’s trailer had 28,000 hits in a whole year. Well last night, exactly 48 hours after launch, we matched last year’s total, and this morning we’re up to 34,000.

So has it ‘gone viral’?

I did a quick search this morning and found a few definition. Here’s one:

“Viral means becoming extremely popular in a very short amount of time.”

Here’s another:

“According to Wikipedia viral means, an object or pattern that is able to induce some agents to replicate it, resulting in many copies being produced and spread around. So basically if you have something (like a video) and you share (or give) it to your online friends, there’s two ways to make something go viral. You can ask your friends to share it with their online community, or your video can be so good that they automatically share it and those people share it, and so forth. The latter would be a perfect example of something “going viral.””

I guess it’s more a question of scale. When some guy accidentally allowed his dog to chase some deer in Richmond Park recently and his son filmed the ensuing panic on his mobile and then uploaded it to Youtube it did something very similar to the above, but on a vastly different scale with millions of hits instead of thousands. Still, we’re excited to have produced a video that’s captured people’s imagination within our world of adventure and extreme sport. Thanks Al for a sterling edit, and thanks also to Hey Sholay, a Sheffield Band who kindly let us use their one of their tracks for the score.

Here's the video:

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