Bridgwater - Arts

Arts

Nearing Bridgwater on the M5 motorway it is possible to see the Willow Man sculpture, a striding human figure constructed from willow, sometimes called the Angel of the South (see also Angel of the North). Standing 12 metres (39 ft) tall, it was created by sculptor Serena de la Hey and is the largest known sculpture in willow, a traditional local material.

The Bridgwater Arts Centre was opened on 10 October 1946, the first community arts centre opened in the UK with financial assistance from the newly established Arts Council of England. It is situated in a Grade I listed building in the architecturally protected Georgian Castle Street, designed by Benjamin Holloway for the Duke of Chandos, and built over the site of the former castle. Holloway was also the architect of the Baroque Lions building on West Quay, constructed around 1730. Bridgwater Arts Centre was the venue for the first post-war meeting of the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne in 1947.

Somerset Film (then Somerset Film & Video) opened their community media centre, The Engine Room, in March 2003. The centre allows the public to drop in and use the computers and equipment for free (on certain days) to teach themselves how to edit video, design websites or screen films at open evenings. Cameras and edit suites can also be hired and day courses on using creative software are run regularly. The founder is Phil Shepherd. Bridgwater was chosen as the location as it was in the centre of Somerset.

Castle Street was used as a location in the 1963 film Tom Jones. Horror writer and film journalist Kim Newman was educated at Dr Morgan's school in Bridgwater, and set his 1999 experimental novel Life's Lottery in a fictionalised version of the town (Sedgwater). A sailor who had sailed "from Bridgwater with bricks" and found "There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater" features in James Joyce's Ulysses (Chapter 16).