Stroud Arts Festival presents
La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast)

SVA Thursday 1 December 8pm
Tickets: £3 on the door

Jean Cocteau made this iconic film in 1946. It is regarded by critics as being variously: ‘Pure Magic’, ‘A visual Masterpiece’ and by Cocteau himself as ‘…. the true mirror reflecting the flesh and blood of my dreams.” The plot of Cocteau’s film revolves around Belle’s father who is sentenced to death for picking a rose from Beast’s garden. Belle offers to go back to the Beast in her father’s place. Beast falls in love with her and proposes marriage on a nightly basis which she refuses. Belle eventually becomes more drawn to Beast, who tests her by letting her return home to her family telling her that if she doesn’t return to him within a week, he will die of grief.

The Performance Exchange

SVA Friday 2 December 7.30pm
Tickets: £3 on the door

Exploring performative practices, an evening of performance video and time-based work, followed by a discussion with the artists. Tactile Bosch is an artist led studio space in Cardiff open to performance and experimental art forms.A curious night of collaboration, do come along and enjoy the work in the deep dark crevices of SVA.

CJB’s Funk Club
Prof CJBparrrt too: more Brown inc. 52% solid James Brown

Saturday 3 Dec 8.30pm-1am.
Tickets: £5 advanced or £6 on the door

Prof CJB returns to deliver more pure solid funk on The One with an emphasis on the undisputed creator of funk: Mister James Brown. This vinyl only session will focus on his heaviest outputs including unedited album tracks and dance classics, specialising in the period with Bootsy Collins on bass and the gamut of ‘The Godfather of Soul’ and ‘The Minister of New New Super Heavy Funk’ 70s grooves. The Brown sets will be complimented by period gut bucket funk selections. Whistles & sweat essential.

Advanced tickets from Trading Post

Mezz#15 Jem Finer

SVA Wednesday 7 December 7.30pm
Tickets: £4.50 on the door

At the time of writing, Jem Finer’s composition Longplayer has been running for 12 years in a Docklands lighthouse. Designed to continue for a 1,000 years without repeating, Longplayer brings together Finer’s interest in technological systems and time... however all these numbers overlook the simple beauty of the composition itself. Trained in computer science, a founder member of the Pogues, and more recently winner of the prestigious PRS New Music Award for his Score for a Hole in the Ground. Finer’s ambitious artworks oscillate between the lure of technology and the physicality of the natural world: the sounds produced by Score … (pictured above) depending solely upon the play of water on metal underground which is then amplified by a large horn extending up into the surrounding King’s Wood in Kent. His most recent piece, Spiegelei which was recently sited at Compton Verney, continues his interest in technology, revisiting and updating the camera obscura. For Mezz#15 Jem will be talking about these and other projects. This promises to be a wide ranging and fascinating encounter.

Stroud Jazz Sessions Christmas Jam

SVA Thursday 8 December 8.30pm-11.00pm
Tickets: £4 (£3 musicians) on the door

Stroud Jazz Sessions will be celebrating the end of a riotously fun and successful year with a Christmas jam featuring all the greats from the Stroud Valleys area in a yule-filled hootenanay of jazz antics! Stroud Jazz Sessions is every 2nd Thursday of the month at SVA. Each night features a special guest soloist performance, eclectic jazz records, and a stonkingly energetic jam set, and acts as a hub for those interested in listening or performing jazz to come together.

THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST POETRY SLAM!

Friday 9th December. 7.30pm

A head-spinning night of bardic bravado and virtuoso verse as a glamorous array of gorgeous performance poets aim to woo your hearts and hearing parts in a cut-and-thrust contest of perfect proportions. Heavenly hosts Sara-Jane Arbury and Marcus Moore keep order as random judges mark the quality of the writing, the performances and response from the applaudience. Who will score a beauty and become Stroud’s super model Slammer? Whose poetry will be too beastly? The first round is on the theme of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – after that, anything goes…

For further information, or to enter the slam, please contact Marcus on 01285 640470 or email john.marcus.moore@gmail.com

Mockers presents “Beauty and the Beat”

SVA Saturday 10 December 9pm til 3am
Tickets: £5 on the door

Mockers presents “Beauty and the Beat” in conjunction with Stroud Arts Festival’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ programme. Dress code: Shades. Have you ever noticed the world behind a pair of dark sunglasses? Everything is the same yet everything is different. “You wait 6 months for a mockers and then along comes two”

EVERYBODY DIES BUT ME + short
Thursday 15 December, 8pm (screening starts 8.30pm)

Previously hailed for her raw youth documentaries, Russian filmmaker Valeriya Guy Germanika’s 2008 drama about a group of teenagers in the Moscow suburbs preparing for what they believe will be the event of their young lives – a Saturday night school disco – is a heartfelt and emotionally gripping portrait of teenage angst. Winner of the 2008 Special Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Tickets on the door: £4 (non-members)/£3 (members)

Keith Allen presents

SVA Friday 16 December 8.30pm-1am
Tickets: £8 advanced £10 on the door

Keith Allen presents a special christamas knees up with special guests food and frolics.
Past events have included John Cooper Clark, Son of Dave, Mik Artistik, John Otway, Ed Tudor Pole, Howard Marks... Plus Eatonsquare with Matt Eaton and Keith Allen who will be performing the first of their monthly
operas. Watch press for more details.

Advanced tickets from Trading Post

Christmas Sucks

SVA Saturday 17 December 9pm-3am
Tickets: £5 advanced or £6 on the door

Disco Sucks is returning to the SVA for a special Christmas edition with a night of 110% underground disco. No re-edits or CDs, just dirty ole vinyl played over the well loved Black Box soundsystem. Disco, funk and early electronic music from the club scene of 70s and 80s New York via the car boot sales of the UK. Plus lights, smoke and science fiction films on the projector. DJs on the night to include Tim Telling, Rossmatic, Deano and B Man.

Advanced tickets from Trading Post

SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS + short

Thursday 22 December, 8pm (screening starts 8.30pm)

One of the great Hollywood comedies, a cautionary - and hilarious - fairytale directed by the late, great Preston Sturges. Following the picaresque misadventures of a director who disguises himself as a tramp and sets out across America to find the true meaning of poverty for his new project, O Brother Where Art Thou, the film has proved an inspiration to later generations of filmmakers – not least the Coen Brothers.

Tickets on the door: £4 (non-members)/£3 (members)

Groove Lounge

SVA Friday 23 December 9pm-3am
Tickets: £5 advanced or £6 on the door

Groove Lounge, from Cornwall has spent the last 8 yrs delivering a non riged music policy. A deep funkness with added latin, mod hammond and northern soul. Resident Dj Richard Ballinger with his huge expansive knowledge of soul music. Has shared company with the likes of Dom Servini, Mark Murphy and Jazzman Gerald. Originally from Stroud Richard has always tried to shift the boundries, experimenting with 60`s R and B and Rock n Roll with the likes of Pav Vinyl. Now were back on the Funk and Soul Trail with future dates at the famous Penzance, Arts Club and the fantastic and experimental SVA.
Advanced tickets from Trading Post

Stroud Jazz Sessions
SVA Thursday 12 January 8.30pm-11.00pm
Tickets: £4 (£3 musicians) on the door

This Thursday the elementally epic sax player Kevin Figes, from Bristol, will be special guest for the opening Stroud Jazz Session of the year. Kevin is fast-swinging, inventive, and melodically soulful, and has had a highly successful 2011, so it’s a delight to have him here. Kevin’s performance will be followed by an open jam for all to sing and play. Do come and listen or participate - Rick Spence will be organising this month’s. Kevin will also be leading a workshop for musicians from mid-afternoon. This guarantees to create an excellent atmosphere for the evening. To take part please contact Rick Spence at RSpence@webtechcorp.com if he hasn’t already been in touch. SJS is every 2nd Thurs of the month at Stroud Valleys Artspace.

Negative Space presents Gallivant
SVA Thursday 19 January
Doors open 8pm; screening starts at 8.30pm
Tickets: £4 (non-members) /£3 (members) on the door

Delightful 1996 debut feature by artist-filmmaker Andrew Kötting, a quirky road movie in which the director, his 85 year-old grandmother and seven year-old daughter, Eden, who suffers from Jouberts syndrome and can only "talk" through sign language, journey around the coastline of Britain and into each other's worlds. “A warm, enlightening and often very funny look at Britain and what it means to be British.” - Time Out

Burns Night
The Weaving Shed, 29 High Street, Stroud
Wednesday 25 January 7pm
Please confirm attendance through SVA 01453 751440, office@sva.org.uk

‘The Weaving Shed’ has been be set up in an empty shop in the High Street as a reconstruction from 1931, with looms, shuttles, fleece dye plants. Sally Hampson continues to ‘fulfill her dream of being a village weaver’ as SVA's resident artist will weave cloth from Kitty Lake’s travel journals from the Outer Hebrides. The Weaving shed continues through to spring. Check venue and SVA for opening times.

Mezz#16 John Newling
SVA Thursday 26 January 7.30pm
Tickets: £4.50 on the door

When I first encountered Chatham Vines, the webcam view revealing grapes being growing hydroponically down the aisle of a deserted church lit by the yellow glow of artificial lights, I was struck by its eerie beauty, then by how John Newling’s work seems to encapsulate both the complexity and fragility of our relationship to nature. More recently, The Lemon Tree and Me, part of the 4-year Noah Laboratory project, included a moving account of his relationship to a particular tree whilst also working conceptually with the roots of the word ‘culture’ – cultivating soil from the text ‘Rights of Man’ by Thomas Payne. For Mezz#16, John will be exhibiting cannonballs of his ‘text-soil’, some of which he hopes will be planted in Stroud, and then talking about the Noah Laboratory and how it navigated a path between ethics, ecology and aesthetics in an attempt to influence “our shared responsibilites as gardeners of the public domain”. Mezzanine is a series of artists’ talks, screenings and performances organised by Louisa Fairclough and Simon Ryder. www.mezz.info

Disco Sucks 3rd Birthday Jam

SVA Saturday 28 January 9pm-3am
Tickets: £5 advanced or £6 on the door

Disco sucks is back! a bit sooner than usual and its our 3rd birthday!!! come and celebrate 3 years of our small town disco sound. Black box soundsystem, Disco sucks DJ's and a whole lot of cake. Advanced tickets from Trading Post

Disfrutar
The Museum in the Park
Stratford Park, Stroud, GL5 4AF
1st February-4th March
Tues-Fri 10am-4pm. Sat-Sun 11am-4pm

This exhibition is the culmination of a 12 month residency in which Quercus, have been working in and responding to, the Museum’s forgotten walled garden. The exhibition celebrates the garden in its current state but also examines gardens imagined and metaphorical, places of life and death, change and preservation, the fecund and the barren.

Quercus is a group of five sculptors based at SVA: Ann-Margreth Bohl, Alison Cockroft, Emily Joy, Aimee Lax and Anna Usborne. These artists work with diverse methods, materials and themes but remain united through their appreciation of hands-on craft based making skills, despite much of their work being highly conceptual and ideas-led.

Art Doc. Jazz on a Summers Day
SVA Thursday 2 February 8pm-11pm
Tickets: £3 on the door

Perhaps the greatest Jazz film even made with stunning performances by: Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt, Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington, Gerry Mulligan, Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Mahalia Jackson and others.
“As generous a dish of top jazz music as any cat could take in one gulp” New York Times
“Stunning documentary account of the 1958 Newport Jazz festival, featuring an incomparable line-up of musicians and lovingly filmed in the idyllic setting of Rhode Island on a beautiful (yes, you guessed it) summer’s day” Film4

Films are screened in lounge setting with licenced bar.
Screening starts at 8.30pm

Soundclash

SVA Friday 3 February 9pm-1am

OK. It’s Soundclash time again. Here’s the deal. Two men playing interesting records at a reasonable volume. We’re here to enjoy ourselves, so pretty much anything goes. Nice sounds for nice people. There will be sofas to sit on and cheap drinks at the bar. Entry is free and it’s a Friday night, so really there’s no excuse.

Come join us.

Keith Allen presents Barry Peters

SVA Saturday 4 February 8.30pm-1am
Tickets: £8 advanced £10 on the door

The belts are staying in the sex games drawer because i've only gone and managed to persuade the legendary 7 piece that is THE JOHNSONS .......yes ...you read it right.....THE JOHNSONS .... to step in at the last moment ....... I've never let you down .... this really is top drawer ...THE JOHNSONS....... EATONSQUARE ... .and a D.J

Country/ Folk / Psychobilly

Go to http://www.myspace.com/xthejohnsons

Stroud Jazz Sessions with Kevin Figes
SVA Thursday 9 February 8.30pm-11.00pm
Tickets: £4 (£3 musicians) on the door

The elementally epic saxophonist Kevin Figes is back to complete the second part of his winter residency at Stroud Jazz Sessions. Kevin held a workshop for the January session, and now returns to further excite our jazz taste-sensors with a full-on take-no-prisoners jam to make use of all that has been learnt and consolidated! As usual open to all comers.

SJS is every 2nd Thurs of the month at SVA

The Super Funky Kids Disco Club
SVA Friday 10 February 7pm-11pm
Tickets: £4 advanced tickets only

An event aimed at all those Funky kids out there who are hungry for new fresh beats. The event, organised by Joe Arthur, Harley Kuyck-Cohen and Imogen Piper, has ambitions to give us a night full of poppin’ sounds and heavy riddim tunes. Be prepared to dance all night long (all night) at this under 18’s event. This is an alcohol free event, but don’t worry there’s plenty of badass times to go around - with a tickling cat theme that plays in your mind. Come to Super Funky Kids Disco Club, you’ll be catnip to not.

Advanced tickets from Trading Post

ALIAS Seminars
Disfrutar Seminar 1: Art and Landscape
SVA, Saturday 11 February 11am - 4pm
Talks 11-2pm. Walk and viewing of exhibition 2-4pm.
Free event. Light lunch included. For bookings contact: office@sva.org.uk 01453 751440

A discussion on art and landscape, in conjunction with the Quercus exhibition ‘Disfrutar’ at the Museum in the Park. Invited speakers are Dr Neil Armstrong (Founder and curator of Tremenheere Garden, Penzance) and Clive Adams (Director of Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, Hornton Forest Park, Exeter)

Stroud Short Stories:Love and Other Blows of Fate
SVA Sunday 12 February 8pm-11pm
Tickets: £3 on the door

Stroud Short Stories returns with ten authors reading their short stories in a special, love-themed event for Valentine’s. Expect tales of passion and tales of woe, of love lost and lust regained, of true love and false hopes (and perhaps a small sprinkling of smut). With headliner Jane Bailey, author of Tommy Glover’s Sketch of Heaven.
www.stroudshortstories.blogspot.com

Negative Space presents Werckmeister Harmonies
SVA Thursday 16 February 8pm-11pm
Tickets: £4 (non-members) /£3 (members) on the door

A mysterious and magical epic from celebrated Hungarian director Bela Tarr, in which the arrival of two bizarre circus attractions - the stuffed corpse of a huge whale and a character with magnetic powers known as The Prince - sparks unrest in a provincial town. Shot in black and white, and composed of long, often wordless takes, it’s a fascinating example of why Tarr is regarded as one of European cinema’s most original and enigmatic talents.
“Unique, mesmeric and sublime.” - The Guardian
Screening starts at 8.30pm

Mockers presents 555 (the lesser evil) with Keb Darge
SVA Friday 17 February 9pm-3am
Tickets: £5 advanced or £6 on the door

Pavinyl & Solid kick Nick’s unique mix of raucous 45s have been keeping Stroud’s music scene pounding for the past 5 years. For Mockers 5th Year Anniversary Party they are joining forces with world breaking DJ, Keb Darge who will be celebrating his 55th birthday with us. Mr. Darge has carried the torch all the way through the Acid Jazz of London’s Wag Club and Deep Funk of Madame Jo Jo’s and back to the Wigan Northern Soul scene of 70’s. He now champions the new R&B and Rockabilly sounds that rumble through the underground club scene of today. If there is one evil you need in your life make it the lesser one - 555.

Advanced tickets from Trading Post

Resound Bites
SVA Wednesday 22 February 8pm
Tickets: £3 on the door

Resound Bites is a new serries of smaller one night events spread through out the year giving us more of the same. It starts 2012 with what will be the first performances to re-draw, re-align and re-animate the lines on musical maps. We aim to profile a wide range of soundscapes, field recordings and installations. Some familiar and some new faces will be presented throughout the year, all of which will challenge, intrigue and fascinate you.

Resound is SVA's annual three day exploration of the sonic arts that includes installations, live performance, music, djs,workshops and talks. This years Resound Festival will take place at SVA on the last weekend in March.

Birds Nest
SVA Friday 24 February 8.30pm
Tickets: £5 in advance £6 on the door

Calling all fellow woodland creatures and friends! ‘The Bird’s Nest’ is back and the twigs and branches are being foraged and lain at SVA. This time, Hot Feet shall be joining forces of the forest with some good friends from Brighton and London to bring you musical magic and wonderment. Playing in the nest so far shall be.. Emily and the Woods and Hour Hands. Granduloso!

The birds are twittering, chirruping and hooting, huddled up amidst their winter, ivy-spun nests, the deer and the hares are bounding through the frozen leaves in the stark, barren thicket and the sounds of clip-clop folk, blues, roots n roll are rattling the skeletal branches and rumbling the tawny floors of the forest.

We hope to see you there sporting your finest pair of ears, your most fabulous tail, whispiest set of whiskers and preenest suit of feathers, ready to pound your hooves, shake your tambers, and howl, hoot and stomp! Cooo Kawawww.

Advanced tickets from Trading Post