Culture and Regular Events
The town's small traditional theatre and cinema, the Savoy Theatre, on Church Street, is believed to be the oldest working theatre in Wales. Monmouth is also home to the Blake Theatre, which opened in 2004. Local performance groups include the Off Centre Theatre Company, Monmouth Operatic Society, Monmouth Choral Society, and the Merlin Society, one of the largest music societies in the country. Presently, it is the only town within the region not to have some form of nightclub or predominant music venue.
The Monmouthshire Show (formerly the Monmouth Show) has been held each year, traditionally on the last Thursday of August, since 1919, though its history can be traced back to 1857. Prior to that there had been an agricultural society in the town dating back to the 1790s, which held ploughing competitions. The show is now the largest one-day agricultural show in Wales, with over 350 trade stands.
The Monmouth Festival, a free nine day music festival, has been running every year since 1982 and is one of the largest free music festivals in Europe. The town also holds the Rockfield Country Music Festival and the Monmouth Women's Festival each year. An annual regatta is held, each May, and a raft race takes place each year for the St David's Foundation.
The Monmouth Museum, formerly the Nelson Museum, is home to one of the largest collections of Nelson material, bequeathed to the town by Lady Llangattock, mother of Charles Rolls. It also displays the only known example of an original Monmouth cap, dating from the 16th century. A small Regimental Museum established in 1989 is housed in Great Castle House, a former town house built on the site of part of Monmouth Castle.
Monmouth is twinned with the French town of Carbonne, and Waldbronn in Germany.
The Shire Hall and surrounding area were used as a location for the 2008 Doctor Who Christmas special and in 2011 The Interactives graphic novel.
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Famous quotes containing the words culture and, culture, regular and/or events:
“Asia is rich in people, rich in culture and rich in resources. It is also rich in trouble.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
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““I couldn’t afford to learn it,” said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. “I only took the regular course.”
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“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
“I never heard of ‘Uglification,’” Alice ventured to say.”
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“One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape ... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.”
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