(Nicola Hicks - Inishturkbeg Artists’ Week)

For those who don’t know - Inishturkbeg is a private island off the West Coast of Ireland.  Last year they held their first annual Inishturkbeg Artists’ Week.
This February 2010, the pieces will beo n display in a London gallery and one piece from each artist will be donated to the island for future visitors to enjoy.

The artists selected for the inaugural Inishturkbeg Artist’s week are Nicola Hicks, Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Kay Harwood, Shoichi Sakurai, Peter Jaques, Laura Brennan and Darren Edwards.

The artists have each been chosen for their experience and skill with different media and their istinctive relationship with the environment. They were invited to spend a week living on Inishturkbeg in what is hoped to become an important event in the art calendar. They will create a piece of work in response to this unique environment, communicating the island’s philosophy of ‘Life Vividly Lived’.

The event is being co-ordinated by Jim Edwards of the Michael Hoppen Gallery and Sara Johnson, managing director of Inishturkbeg.

Event Details: 9th-14th February 2010 / Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ / For more information, e-mail sara@inishturkbeg.com, visit the event page on facebook or www.inishturkbeg.com

More About Inishturkbeg: It is situated in Clew Bay, County Mayo, a remarkably beautiful part of Ireland which is rich in historic tales of pirates, traders and seafarers. A fascination with islands led owner, Nadim Sadek, to wish to share the beauty of Inishturkbeg and the island is now available for rental.

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7 – time Tour De France winner Lance Armstrong decided to invite the people of Scotland on a bike ride around Paisley yesterday via Twitter. Armstrong, placed tweets on his page the days leading up to yesterday and then he stopped traffic in the little town just north of Glasgow! He mentioned that he was actually in Glasgow to come and watch U2 and confirmed that he was going to compete in Ireland later in the year. Click the image for the full story:

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A haggis recipe was published in an English book almost two hundred years before any evidence of the dish existed in Scotland, a historian has claimed. Not only are the Dutch and Japanese claiming that they invented Golf instead of the Scots, but now it is being shown that the culinarily challenged English created Haggis!

Historian Catherine Brown said she found references to the dish inside a 1615 book called ‘The English Hus-Wife’. The title would pre-date Robert Burns’ poem ‘To A Haggis’ (which brought fame to the delicacy) by at least 171 years. Former world champion haggis maker Robert Patrick however insisted: “Nobody’s going to believe it.”

‘Popular in England’
Ms Brown said the book by Gervase Markham indicated haggis was first eaten in England and subsequently popularised by the Scots. The first mention she could find of Scottish haggis was in 1747. She said: “It was popular in England until the middle of the 18th Century. Whatever happened in that period, the English decided they didn’t like it and the Scots decided they did. “We had Robert Burns come along who saw in it a very practical dish using up the odds and ends and making something good out of them. “Obviously the English turned up their noses at it and ate their roast beef, and the Scots for 350 years have been making it their own.”

‘Scottish product’
Mr Patrick said the idea haggis originated in England was akin to claims by the Dutch and Chinese to have invented golf.
He added: “Anything that’s to do with Scotland, everybody wants to get a part of.”We’ve nurtured the thing for all these years, we’ve developed it, so I think very much it is a Scottish product.

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We’ve had a special guest in the office today. Our latest edition to the Splendid family, the very glamorous Lulu in her cotton all in one number, dropped by with Emma to visit us all. Apparently she’s quite fond of late night shenanigans so I’m sure she’ll fit in to the Splendid team.

Lulu joins us from the uber trendy hot north London spot Club Womb where she’s already orchestrated her own all nighters with proud parents Emma & Ashley at the decks, we’re hoping her newly found nightlife credentials will translate to coverage opportunities to a few of our clients (DMC permitting)!

Thanks for dropping by Lulu!

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We’re fans of all things music and movies here at Splendid, so when those two worlds collided back in March with the oh-so-perfect news that Daft Punk (http://www.myspace.com/daftpunk) had signed on to soundtrack Disney’s Tron ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/) sequel, we were very excited indeed.

For those in the dark (i.e. without bits of blue glowing piping stuck all over them), the sequel was announced last year with footage of a digitally rejuvenated Jeff Bridges returning as the original film’s hero Kevin Flynn. Daft Punk were subsequently announced as composers of the score and the blogosphere promptly exploded in a massive fit of geek. Disney FTW indeed.

Now news reaches us from this weekend’s Comic-Con (http://www.comic-con.org) in San Diego where the newly named Tron Legacy’s director Joseph Kosinski revealed that “…there would definitely be Daft Punk Tron-themed events on the horizon.” The film is two years away from release so this declaration should be taken with a pinch of salt, but were the mooted tour (which would only be the duo’s third in 14 years) to go ahead, Splendid may have to add a new section to the website next to ‘Splendid Loves’ entitled ‘Splendid would sell it’s granny to go to this’!

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Today we spent some great quality time with our clients at Kickers Shoes. We were brainstorming and having a fine old creative time when someone noticed a particularly fresh and fruity masterpiece made by Mark from Kickers (what were you thinking Mark!?)

Mere moments later, Splendid staffers Laura and Hannah were spotted in the wild loaded with Kickers clobber for some lucky recipients

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Online music jukebox We7 is inviting people to create a playlist that defines their life as a fun viral way to learn about how to access legal music sites.

Me7 – 7 songs that define Me is a month-long competition offering up £7,000 worth of prizes. The competition runs for four weeks from this Friday: the more users share their playlist via Twitter, emails and social networks, the more chance they have of winning prizes. www.we7.com

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@ewebber London Shop Fronts: hot n’ Tender, Hoxton Street N1 http://tinyurl.com/lp7445

Emily captures images of interesting London shop fronts, every day. Wonderfully relaxing and a somehow tender examination of the ephemeral faces of the street furniture that are shop fronts.

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What a week. Andy got a new baby, America got a new president…there’s a lot of love in the air and we’re feeling good on this fine Friday.

Throughout the week, we keep a kind of cool hunter mini-blog on the Splendid website of things we love.

Here’s a roundup of what Splendid Loves this week:

Bucket drumming – as seen on Miami Beach (Nick)

Gather a load of pots, pans and garbage, sit on the street and bash hell out if until it sounds as good as this.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYGBCg-qgFI&hl=en&fs=1] 

This Is Where We Live (Liz)

Imagine a world made with books. This little stop-motion film for 4th Estate Publishers’ 25th Anniversary, does just that. A nice idea from the guys at Apt Studio and Asylum Films.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

GirlTalk (Lucy)

DJ from the States who mixes bits from the tracks we’re embarrassed to love. Also mixes stuff you wouldn’t dream of putting together - Jackson 5 and Queen. One for a car journey. The more you listen, the more you’ll like it.

www.myspace.com/girltalk

Check out the rest of our Splendid Loves weekly on www.splendidcomms.com.

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Coming in at 8 pounds, the beautiful Baby Bellass was born at 3.10am on Tuesday 20 January. We predict she’ll break a few hearts some day.

Congratulations, Team Bellass!

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