Summer Art Exhibition 2025
St. Mary's Arts Centre Strand Street, SandwichA Celebration of Art, Creativity & Community This August, immerse yourself in a captivating showcase of artistic talent at The Summer Art Exhibition 2025. Hosted at the historic St Mary’s Art Centre in Sandwich, this three-day...
Amy Lin – A Village in Heaven – Stanley Spencer’s Cookham
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichFew artists are as rooted in a place as Stanley Spencer and his beloved home village of Cookham. This Thames-side village was not only his birthplace, his home for most of his life, and...
Denise Heywood – Legend and Lustre – Jim Thompson and Thai silk
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichJim Thompson arrived in Bangkok as a US army officer in 1945, fell in love with it and stayed. Captivated by the beauty of Thai silk, an ancient craft in decline, he resuscitated it...
Timothy Walker – Paradise Lost and Found – 400 years of garden design
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichThe history of garden design through the lens of the Oxford Botanic garden.
Sandy Burnett – Christmas in Bach’s Leipzig
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichHow Bach brings the Christmas story alive in his Christmas Oratorio, written for Lutheran congregations in 1730's Leipzig
Balenciaga, Dior and Fath: Haute Couture’s Holy Trinity with Scott Schiavone
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichHaute Couture is an art form, inseparable from fashion, that achieved some of its finest momentsduring the years following World War II. During this period, Paris reaffirmed its position as theCapital of Fashion and...
The British Crown Jewels: Every stone tells a story with Laurie Wickwire
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichThe British Crown Jewels are an unchanging jewelled anchor, whilst all around us changes.Delve into the history & beauty of the Crowns, Sceptre, Orb and other royal jewels used duringthe coronation ceremony. Diamond industry...
Greek Vase painting with Stephen Kershaw
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichAncient Greek painted pottery is greatly admired, and with good reason. This talk, lavishly illustrated with both slides and video, will attempt to make the beauty of Greek ceramics more readily accessible and comprehensible....
The Renaissance Portrait from Van Eyck to Titian with Paula Nuttall
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichPortraiture is a quintessentially renaissance art form which evolved in response to new ideas about realism, likeness and posterity. This lecture looks at its development in Italy and the north, across a variety of...
The History of Colour: Blue with Alice White
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichLoaded with symbolism, the colour blue creates meaning, provokes emotion and ignites memory on a personal, and a cultural level, throughout the world. From the scared shade of Ultramarine, to the ancient roots of...
The Bayeux Tapestry: International relations then and now with Hilary Williams
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichWhat is the Bayeux Tapestry really all about? A power struggle, dynastic rivalries, broken promises, diplomatic relations in peril, military prowess and the building of a super power? How was this amazing document in...
The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A story of survival and music with Anne Sebba
Guests are always welcome at our lectures. Just come along and pay £7 on the door. No reservation required. Guildhall, SandwichIn 1943, the German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Forty-seven women and girls were drafted into a hurriedly-assembled band that would play...