URN

The Hockley Village in the City Centre is a unique and incredibly diverse area of Nottingham. Many people are unaware of its existence, or have strolled through without fully realising what’s around them.
The Culture Show decided to take to the streets of Hockley to discover this area for ourselves.

A major part of our trip was sampling food from many different cafés and tea shops! We visited ‘Homemade’, a delicious and independent café which serves fresh food daily. The café can be hired out for special occasions, as well as make made-to-order cakes!
Amazing cakes from Homemade

‘Lee Rosy’s Tea Room’ is situated right opposite the Broadway Cinema and serves many different types of tea, many sourced directly from the seller. The café can also be hired out for many different events, and was even used by The Nottingham New Theatre’s Uncut Season as a space for one of their plays.
Lee Rosy's Tea Room

The ‘Jam Café’ is a multi-purpose venue and moves from being a fantastic restaurant during the day, to a haven for new bands in the evening. The café hosts live gigs almost every night.
Jam Cafe

To celebrate the European premiere of the play of The Kite Runner coming to the Nottingham Playhouse, the Culture Show was given the opportunity to give away tickets to see the play. If you didn't win, don't worry! You can listen again to our discussion of The Kite Runner novel, the film adaptation, and our reviews of the new production at The Playhouse Theatre.
The Kite Runner, courtesy of The Nottingham Playhouse
Background on the writer of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

Jemima tells us all about the novel, The Kite Runner

Anna talks about The Kite Runner film

Hannah reviews the new Playhouse production

The Kite Runner play runs until the 18th May 2013 at The Nottingham Playhouse- check out their website for tickets.

Make sure you listen next Sunday to the Culture Show between 4-6pm, when we will be reviewing the latest play to come to The Theatre Royal, Noises Off, which runs till Saturday. 4th May 2013

On last Sunday’s show, we aired our Dance Special, focusing on events from Nottdance 2013, and NUDance. Both of these organisations are focused on getting either members of the public or University of Nottingham students involved in many different forms and genres of dance.

Nottdance 2013 is a dance festival which has been running in Nottingham for 23 years. The festival happens every year, and this year it is running from 7-17th March. Many different venues in Nottingham are hosting the festival, from The Playhouse, to The Lakeside on campus, so it is very easy to get tickets to the different events. Their tag line is ‘Are You Dancing?’, and earlier in the week the Culture Show spoke to Claire Hicks, who is a producer for Nottdance 2013. Click the link below to hear what Claire has to say about the festival this year, and how Nottdance has changed over the past 23 years.

Courtesy of NottDance 2013

The Connect 10 competition is a nation-wide competition set up by Culture24, and aims to bring local artists back to their roots, with their work being exhibited in local galleries. Backlit Gallery in Nottingham is one of these lucky local galleries nominated to bring back Mat Collishaw, who was born in Nottingham, and attended Trent University. He is part of the Young British Artists group—a group of artists including Tracy Emin and Damien Hurst. To vote for Backlit Gallery to be able to show Mat Collishaw’s art, listen to our chat with Matthew Chesney, founder and director of the gallery, and check out Backlit Gallery’s website.

Courtesy of Backlit Gallery

Episode 2013 is organised by the Nottingham-based Dance4 Company who promote local youth dance groups. The event will take place on Saturday, 23rd February, at the Nottingham Playhouse. The competition sees 12 local dance groups battling it out to move through to the Midlands Youth Dance Festival on 20th April. If selected, the youth dance groups will be given the chance to perform at the national U.Dance final in Leeds from 18th-21st July.
The Culture Show spoke to Stuart Allen, the assistant-producer for Episodes, earlier in the week.

We love an award on the Culture Show and the Brits has been one of my personal favourites since I was really young. Put the date in your diary now for the show- Wednesday 20th February. Last week Nick Grimshaw (who is literally everywhere at the moment) hosted the Brits launch where the nominations were announced.

Here’s a quick round up of the ones everyone is most interested in.

British Male Solo Artist- Calvin Harris, Olly Murs, Ben Howard, Richard Hawley and Plan B.
These guys are all lovely! With Calvin’s album 18 months being a collection of some of the best collaborations EVER, Ben Howard’s gorgeous album which I can’t stop listening to and Olly Murs for being unbelievably cute, it’s hard to decide who deserves it.

British Female Solo Artist- Amy Winehouse, Emeli Sandé, Bat for Lashes, Jessie Ware and Paloma Faith.
Emeli Sandé is hardly ever off our screens at the moment and she was all over the Olympics. It will be very emotional if Amy Winehouse does win.

British Breakthrough Act- Alt-J, Jake Bugg, Rita Ora, Jessie Ware and Ben Howard
Alt-J won the Mercury Music Prize last year so my bet is on them. However on the Culture Show we hold a torch for Nottingham’s own Jake Bugg!

British Group- Alt-J, One Direction, Muse, The xx and Mumford and Sons.