Ken talks to Elaine Midgley, Part 2 — Big Plans, Kempston's River & Bedford's Moment

After the break, Elaine reveals what's coming next for Bedford Creative Arts — including a theatre group for refugees, a children's pop-up Museum of Small and Overlooked Things, and an ambitious collaboration with Wayne Hemingway's design agency celebrating Bedford's wartime BBC connection. There's exciting news for Kempston too, with public art planned near the mill and a creative trail using wood salvaged from the old Queensbridge. Elaine rounds off with her favourite local spots, making the case that Bedford — multicultural, inventive and quietly world-class — deserves far more recognition.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

We are going to be able to do that. We're going to talk a little bit about what's coming up for the Bedford. I kind of throw into the pot just I think we can celebrate. It's the Bedford Podcast, but it's all about the surrounding areas, better for you know. And we have got some amazing venues where they are creative, and if I think of some of the pubs, the clubs, coffee shops that have got art in them and different things, we are really lucky. We've got the Bedford Park concerts, we've got villages that put on some amazing annual shows, often free. Blandham Music Festival I went to last year, you do have to pay for that. But it was a whole day of music and entertainment, not just it wasn't just bands on stage, cover bands, there was tribute bands, they had a comedy tent there as well. And you know, we were entertained for the whole day for about 20 quid. And you know, what more can you ask? The one thing that does uh frustrate and I'd like to see it develop is that Kempston, since we lost the Fun Day, we've got one of the biggest parks outside of Bedford. We've got an amazing forecourt at Sainsbury's, which goes to waste other than for the market. So if I could leave something again in your subconscious, it would be if anyone ever mentions shall we do something in Kempston, just say yes and we'll work it from there. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

It is very good. And it's funny that you mentioned Kempston actually because we've been doing some work there, uh largely with a river theme in the past, actually. We did a project called River Flow Connect.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

And was there some art stuff along the river path? We didn't. That's right behind my house. I really am down there.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Oh, lovely, fantastic. Yeah, that that kind of escalated into like a kind of dusk walk that we did at the time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so that was part of a project where we were keen to explore with some local residents that we'd met around there. Uh just how wonderful the river is along Kempston. Yeah. Because it's so accessible, it goes for stage stages. Yeah, but you know, and often you only really see sort of dog walkers and runners down there, but it's so beautiful. And again, Covid inspired so many of us to say, well, if you don't have National Trust membership or whatever, where can you go and have an amazing walk? Well, Kempston was one of those places, so yeah. We've put together a little steering group and have been talking to them about ways to celebrate the river, and now it's growing and it's expanding to celebrating everything Kempston has to offer. So along that line, we are hoping to commission a piece of public art by the mill, which will have a multiple purposes. It will act partly as something beautiful to look at, it will act partly as planting space for gardening, uh, it will also act somewhere to sit, and it will also act a little bit like a little bandstand and have a little performance. Possibly historical or um maybe little nods to a few things. It's been co-created with people in the community who helped us design it and an artist called Sam Williams, who's a public arts specialist. So, but that was one of many things which is about us exploring how can we get more people using the river. So the light walk was something we did where we were just like we just want people to just walk down to the river. It's winter, it's a shame people aren't out more. Should we just do something anyway? And we just put some little installations out. Some uh we had a musician, we had uh storytellers, and just kind of made a nice walking environment for people. But those are the kinds of things that we would love to support the steering group in that area to commission more of and do more of those exactly those kind of family fun days, events that you know we try it once you learn a lot. Maybe we can make it an annual thing, that sort of thing. So we're currently talking to them about whether we might do something like that again next February. Should we do something around that time of year? Um, we're also going to do a celebration in September, which is very much about celebrating the river, and we've been working with lots of different groups. The Goudwara, we've been working with uh, you know, a women's refuge group, we've been working with children and young people to kind of think about what they would like the river to be protected with. So you know, like a conservation charter if you like. What's special about the river? What do you want to preserve and how might we use art to just shine a spotlight on it?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

That is brilliant. I uh a few years ago uh I did a charity run um from Whitehaven to Sunder, where we pedaled it and we run it. And along a big chunk of that is um it's not a river, it was an old disused railway line, so you just run along it. And for mile after mile after mile, there was bits of art that represented uh connections with the area. So it was obviously there was uh there was lots of um quarrying went on in mine, so there's old machinery there and it and it was just wonderful to see it. So somewhat like that, so I know the big example, but somewhat like that in Kempston would be amazing. So we are you talking about somewhere near the Kemp the Mill Bridge, the old Kempson. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

So we we've kind of been looking particularly at from the mill down to where Queensbridge should be.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Currently missing an action. Come on, Council, get on with building that bridge. I'll tell you a little secret there. Um we have persuaded them to give us the wood from the old bridge, and we are working with a local artist, Anne Marie Abbott, to see if we could repurpose that wood in artistic forms that could make a trail down there, which again is just one of those lovely, charming ways of trying to reuse that is brilliant because there's a lot of wood. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

There's a lot of wood.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

But it's quite nice, actually, my understanding is it's quite high quality wood. Uh so it would be a shame if it all just got through in a heap somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

And do you know what? And they heard it here first. Fantastic, thank you for that. That's brilliant. That's absolutely brilliant. That area of Kempston Mill, again, the Mill Bridge is understated, it's a real hub for people coming from Great Denham, coming from Bedford, coming from Kempston. And I think someone is missing a trick there not to have a coffee van, coffee shop, something there.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

It's so funny that you say that because we've done a couple of pop-up events there, and every time we have, we've we've bought a concessionaire down who's been serving coffee, and it's been unbelievably popular every time. We even did it down the other end by the slide, and what was hilarious was the day we decided to set up this pop-up event, so we were gonna have just a bit of music, coffee, um, some arts and crafts, a bit of a picnic feel, really just to start to talk to residents about what they'd like to see. As soon as we started setting up, someone came down and accused us of fly tipping, yeah, and just said, Well, we can't leave that there, so why not? We're gonna we're gonna do an event. They went, Well, here, and I and I thought, oh that's sort of heartbreaking, really. Because actually, once we'd set it up, people were doing double takes and going, Oh, it's quite nice place here to sit and have a coffee. And you go, Yeah, yeah, it really could be, but shall we talk about what we'd like to do? So I think sometimes that's exactly what our projects do. People might say to us, Why on earth is an arts charity doing conservation or talking about the bridge or whatever? And you go, Well, it's it's just because we're trying to shine a light on something, and it we might get lucky. I mean, we're putting pressure on the council at the moment by saying if you're if you're rebuilding the bridge because you have to, why can't you improve the accessibility down to the river or down that end at the same time? Yeah, yeah. And I think hopefully it's us putting pressure on them that you might see more than just art happening.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. And any any other big project, any big project, any different projects that are coming up? We've got loads of different projects.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah, I'll I'll talk to briefly about a couple of other things we've got going. We're working with uh refugees and asylum seekers at the moment to create a new theatre group for Bedford because theatre's a great way for people who are new to the area to make friends. If you've got language barriers, then you don't necessarily need to be able to speak if you do physical theatre and things. So we're getting that up and running, and we're hoping to have our first ever performance at the Plays Theatre in the autumn of that little group that's coming together. Uh so if anyone knows any refugees and asylum seekers that you know who are keen to have a play, it's all free, let us know. Um, we're working with four schools in the autumn on a project called the Museum of Small and Overlooked Things.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Now that that sounds amazing. That's probably, yeah, I think there's some jokes there, but we won't do it because my I I get overlooked quite often by my wife, but I won't be in a museum. Tell us a bit about that, that sounds fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

We're working with two of our favourite artists, Andy Third and Becky Darlington, and they are great at listening to the voices of young people. And we're gonna invite children who are sort of year four and five to think about the objects that are special to them but they think adults overlook. And what they're going to do is tell us why they think they're special, why they think adults should take notice. And then we're going to get 15 of them to curate the best of these into a little pop-up museum, and it's going to pop up in the Harper Centre in the autumn, and adults can come and look at it, but only if they promise to take the objects very seriously and show them lots of respect.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

That sounds brilliant. That's amazing, yeah. It's cute. I will keep my eye out for that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

So but bigger stuff, I contend to some bigger stuff. So we we for some time we've been thinking as a charity about come on, this is Bedford's moment, isn't it? Really? We've got Universal Studios around the corner, we've got East West Rail, we've got the world coming to our doorstep. Uh there's loads of great stuff going on, as you're saying, but actually beyond Bedford, some people still think of Bedford as just I don't know, just somewhere in England. And so we've been sort of thinking, well, maybe it's time to do a project which is big and ambitious, all about arts and culture, and celebrating Bedford. And we're collaborating with a national agency. It's not often that we bring in a big national agency, but we felt maybe for this one it would help us open some doors. So we're working with an agency called Hemingway Design, made famous because of Wayne Hemingway, who some people may remember as the fashion designer behind Red or Dead, but he's also trained in urban design, and he's very his agency are great at doing the play shaping events. So he has been coming to Bedford and talking to us about ways in which we can celebrate different aspects of Bedford. We're very much playing on the relationship between Bedford and the BBC in the 1940s when the BBC came to Bedford in the war because it had to evacuate out of London, and they broadcast from the Corn Exchange, from St. Paul's, and of course they would have said in those broadcasts, this is the BBC broadcasting to you for somewhere in England. And we like the idea that actually in that moment the town that was standing in for the whole country was Bedford. We didn't know it, but it was there standing in for everybody, representing everything that was great about England. And actually that feels for me one of the key themes about Bedford. There are products made here that you know your car wouldn't run if you didn't have them in. You know, there's semiconductors in your you know, chips in your phone that have been built here, all these things, and yet we don't know, we go on about our lives without you know giving two hoots. There are buildings all over the country that are built made out of bread for bricks. Yeah, yeah. So we literally rebuilt England after the war. So it feels like a great opportunity to celebrate that, but also to celebrate our beautiful multiculturalism. The fact that actually so many languages are spoken here, so many communities live here, and they're here really peacefully, crack in on, and we're really good at making people feel welcome. And actually, with the world coming to our door through Universal, well they can all come back to ours, I think. I think they can come back to ours for a cup of tea, and we'll show them Bitford.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

And we can show them all these murals that we're gonna have painted all around, celebrating our history and all the the brickworks and all the different nationalities. And the people and the people that come from other countries over here after the war to to help us say rebuild the country, but um but re- rebuild Bedford and uh and the place it's amazing. And we should be celebrating it now. I think we should be celebrating it, absolutely. Um we're gonna bring it back to uh right back to you and Bedford, and where do you like to go with your family, be it coffee shops, be it for a meal, hidden gems where you like to walk. Um what what where would you point people and say this is a great place? It isn't about uh we're not doing this just to promote business or what have you, it's places that mean something to you that then might mean something to other people.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Ah, well, I mean one of my favourite places is the Higgins. You might expect me to say that. Um but they're great colleagues, but it is a lovely, lovely museum and art gallery, and they have got some really remarkable connections that are kind of nationally significant, you know. Like actually, there's some great stuff in there, and it's an absolute treasure chove. So I've taken my kids there several times, and we've probably still not actually done all the galleries justice because there's so many of them.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Does it cost money to go to a free?

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Free, absolutely free. You're wondering.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

What are people waiting for? Get your children, take them to the but not just to but take your older relatives as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

And you know, uh the good thing about free galleries is you know, you don't have to do the whole thing. I think we're a bit trained as British people, aren't we, to kind of go, I'm here now, I'm gonna do the whole thing. You start from the beginning, get the going, but work your way up, and then you get exhausted. Just do just do one gallery and then go and get a coffee or something. And I think um, you know, there's some great bedford celebrated in that gallery as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Um the ones that are gonna be on our murals in years to come. It's absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Um so that's funny, and then I really like Castle Mound as well because that has it has a bit of a source blue playing type feel about it when you get up to the top. Yeah, there's something kind of intriguing about that. We've always said we would love to do some kind of installations up there or you know, put lights in the um in the ice house at the bottom or something. It just feels like you know, there's some something waiting to happen there. So uh we definitely do that. Um on the high street, gosh, I mean, unsurprisingly, again, due to the name, spend a lot of time and coffee with Ark uh and the Ark, you know, they're really supportive. Good for them for commissioning the octopus, you know, after after the floodgates were opened, and we've finally got some murals, we've got a massive octopus. We've long since been saying we must create the legend of the great Bedford octopus that feels like it needs to go with the octopus, really. Right, right. But I have to invent one. Okay. But uh, yeah, those are that and then Kempston, as I say, I I do really like it, you know, it's a long ish walk to do it all, but you can do a lovely loop when the bridge is in place between Kempston Mill down to Queensbridge, across over to Queen's Park, and round again. And that actually, if you're into your running or walking and you like doing a loop, you you can use different markers to give you a sense, and both sides of that river have a very different feel, you know, one's quite landscaped on the orchard park, you know, the park side by the Queen's Park Mindy Orchard, but you've also got you know the kind of more wildy bits on the on the Kempston side.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

And and you probably I'm old enough just to remember pre-hill grounds this day. And we used to play up at Sonald Park as kids, and then we went uh mum and dad, we wouldn't they'd never know this, but we'd then go over um down over the fields down to the river at the bottom. Um and there's no houses, nothing. There was uh a few allotments, and uh at Kempston uh Kempston Rovers Football Ground, there's still a sort of Anglin water um sort of facility there where they and that used to be there when we were kids, but obviously it's a bit different there. But yeah, I can remember all that all across them fields there, totally different, completely, no houses, nothing.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

It's really interesting actually, because we've heard quite a few stories about that. One of my favourites is that there used to be bathing huts on the Queen's Park side down there. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Right, yes. So, uh tell you a bit of useless information. Prevent Street Bridge, if you stand and look off the Pre Bend Street Bridge towards town, towards the side north, there's a strip of land and then the river again. In the bit of a strip of land in the middle. There used to be a bridge across to that and a lock gate. The bathing huts were on that strip of land. And that strip of land, where the an otter now lives, yeah, is man-made. That's my understanding. So that bit, the other between that bit of the an island, if you like, and the rowing club, yeah, that's where the bathing used to be. Yeah. And he used to go across the bridge.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

And the little island, didn't it get it's called Monkey Island because there was a thing. Yeah, they there was a rumour that someone had released monkeys there at some point, which I don't know if it was ever true, but no monkeys now, but definitely an otter.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Definitely an otter. If you sit outside the rowing club line, you'll see it. I've seen it too.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Beautiful. I like I like the idea of recreating that. I know there's a lot of people in Bedford campaigning to make the water cleaner, make it get bathing status and that kind of thing. And I like the fact that actually, I think, am I right in saying Bedford's the furthest away from the sea that you can get anywhere in the UK or something?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

I kind of think you're just about you're about right there.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

There is something about there's something about actually it's very far to get to the sea, and I like the idea that you can, you know, just just use the river and you know, just paddle in or sit alongside the water and beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

And just just one more thing on the hill, or the hill grounds in the back of Queen's Park, Honey Hill used to call it, and there's also a little island there, and there was a bit of there was swimming there as well. Not when I was a kid, as in my dad's time. So yeah, there's there was bathing there as well. Of course, it was. So uh yeah. So um well, we've we've covered a lot, haven't we? We have. So um Elaine, I want to say a big thank you because uh it's what the podcast is all about, it's celebrating uh people that quietly help you make Bedford more creative, uh connected and inspiring place for people to live. Um a huge thank you to you for joining us and sharing uh not just the work behind sort of creative arts but your bit of your passion and your belief uh in what makes this a great place. So um thank you very much. And if we've inspired one person to go to Higgins or something to do with the creative arts, we've done our job.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yeah, absolutely. No, thank you very much. Have enjoyed chatting.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Thank you very much.