Culture
The New Vic Theatre was Europe’s first purpose-built theatre in the round. It is just outside the town centre and offers a full programme of entertainment, including modern or classic plays and concert performances.
The Borough Museum and Art Gallery depicts the civic history of the Borough of Newcastle under Lyme and an authentic, life-size Victorian street-scene whilst the art gallery hosts work by local and national artists as well as ‘travelling’ exhibitions. Until 2005, there was an annual carnival held on the Spring Bank Holiday but this has been cancelled due to rising policing costs.
Notable residents who contributed to the arts and entertainment include Philip Astley, founder of the ‘modern’ circus. Jackie Trent, the singer and songwriter, was born in the town. Arnold Bennett, the novelist, playwright, and essayist, completed his schooling at the Middle School and called the town Oldcastle in his Clayhanger trilogy of novels. Dinah Maria Mulock, who wrote under her married name of Mrs. Craik, lived in the town (in Lower Street and Mount Pleasant) and attended Brampton House Academy. E S Turner, the social commentator, was educated in the town.
Historically, the city had a strong tradition of festivities marking the start of a new municipal year.
Read more about this topic: Newcastle-under-Lyme
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
“... we’ve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventy—all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics—many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)