Review of the Artists Houses Open Day

The last Newlyn Archive Open Day of 2015, the two-day event ‘Where the artists lived in Newlyn and Lamorna’, was a great success. It was open on Friday 2/10/2015 from 2pm-7pm at Trinity Centre when there were 105 visitors. Visitors included pupils from Newlyn School shown in the picture above. They did a quiz organised by Friend of the Archive Margaret Follows which involved some serious searching of the display folders and interrogation of the display boards; they also helped to create a ’tissue’ stained glass window which referenced some of the Newlyn Artists’ paintings suggesting ‘hope’ like TC Gotch’s Alleluia. Other Friday visitors included members of the Lamorna Society, as the open day coincided with their annual meeting in Lamorna. On Friday evening the Wheal Betsy room was full (39+ people) for a lecture given by honorary archivist Pam Lomax to complement the exhibition. On Saturday 3/10/2015 a further 117 visitors came to the exhibition. As well as local Friends of the Archive, there were visitors from much further afield who enjoyed the display of photographs and documents from the archive and stayed longer than usual to explore the archive display books and folders made available to peruse. Committee members and Friends of the Archive were available to help with the organisation of the event and to field enquiries about local history in Newlyn and Lamorna. Alongside the regular archive displays, the fund-raising was particularly successful with Jean Lodge doing well with the raffle and sale of posters and Andrew Gordon making record sales of second-hand books.

Do keep an eye on the website as we will be pasting information about next years open days shortly.