Watch Live Online
You'll be able to watch the event live on this page below, directly on Youtube or on our Facebook page. You can watch using a laptop, tablet, mobile or other internet device. We encourage you to make and enjoy your own cream tea at the interval, and email photos of you watching from home to info@artsreach.co.uk so that we can share them on social media.
How much does watching online cost?
Artsreach is making the live-streaming of this event freely available or viewers to watch and enjoy online. Please consider making a donation to our charity if you are able.
Download the Programme
About this Annual Dorset Celebration
Join us online for our annual celebration of poet William Barnes, who was born in Bagber near Sturminster Newton on 22 February 1801. A scholar, linguist, artist, priest and inventor, Barnes wrote over 800 poems in the Dorset dialect. Barnes also relished the country dances, folksongs and carols of Dorset, and often wrote about community celebrations, where music was a key part of the proceedings.
Alongside a delicious cream tea, The Ridgeway Singers and Band, led by Phil Humphries and Tim Laycock, present a carefully curated programme that will include folksongs and dance tunes collected from across Dorset at the turn of the 20th century. This year’s programme includes I Live not Where I Love, collected in 1906 by the Hammond brothers from Robert Barratt of Puddletown, Hark, Hark! from Marnhull, and Major Malleys Reel and Tink a Tink from the Hardy family music books. The afternoon will also include several new pieces - a setting of William Barnes' poem 'Rustic Childhood', and two contrasting instrumental pieces by Nick Dunckley, Skekler's Waltz and the Fiddleford Polka. Recitals of some of Barnes' much-loved poems will keep alive the rich dialect of Dorset.