News
16th July 2010
Earlier this month we had some great news! Read the BBC coverage of Dorset County Council’s support of the MEMO project.
5th June 2010
Our roach-cast bell is going to the UN in New York for the 22nd September 2010, when heads of state are discussing biodiversity. Read the CBD press release about MEMO.
1st June 2010
We had a great event on Portland on May 22nd, International day of Biodiversity, and a hugely positive meeting attended by Tim Smit, Iain Prance, and people from the local authorities. Watch this video to get a flavour of the day. We have a lot of people to thank… including all the participants in the fun run (who raised over £200 for the Mountain Bongo!), our long-time supporters at Stone Firms, Albion Stone for helping out at the eleventh hour, everyone at Royal Manor School, the Portland Gas Trust for sponsorship, Callum Shone and Simon Reid for filming, Sally Butters from Weymouth College for publicity, Peter van Allen at the Borough Council for graphic design, Ben Heath and Helen for organising the fun run, Hannah and Paul from the PSQT for hosting the play, Katherine Dutton for the food, Paul Hyland for Impossible magic, Brian Oldridge for haulage, Steve South of SGS Plant Hire, and stonemasons Paul Lister, Darren Lang, Tom Kenrick, Shaun Hawker, Andy Whittle and Chris Daniels. Lastly, (but by no means leastly!), we should like to thank Mike and Wendy Kelly for endless enthusiasm and support.
May 10th 2010
Come and join in the upcoming events on Portland this month.
Don’t miss HANGING HOOKE, the brilliant one man show about Robert Hooke by Take The Space Theatre Company, on its return to Portland for one night only on 21st May at 7pm at The Drill Hall, by kind permission of PQST
May 4th 2010
What a great week-end at the fossil festival! So many people, young and old, came and carved their initials to show their support for the project, and the forerunner bell was constantly ringing, as well as Marcus’s wonderful maquettes for the big bell. Two more stunning images were seen emerging from pieces of Portland stone under the chisels of Harry Brockway and Tim Lees. Pictures to follow soon…
ANOTHER MUST FOR THE DIARY is the 22nd May at Royal Manor Arts College Portland. This year we are marking International Day of Biodiversity by beginning the carving of the roach stone mould for the big Hooke bell that will become part of the monument. It is to be a “mould twin” to Great Paul at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and will be almost 10 feet in diameter. Come to Royal Manor Arts College, see the masons at work on the mould and see the big bell take shape.
Also coming up very soon, on Wednesday 12th May, we have arranged a PUBLIC MEETING ABOUT THE MEMO PROJECT at Royal Manor Arts College at 7pm. Please do come along, learn all about the project and let us know your thoughts and ideas. ALL WELCOME
Programme of events for May 22nd:
10am - 6pm - Stonemasons carving the bell mould.
12 noon - The Race Against Extinction - Sponsored fun-run in aid of the Kenyan conservation efforts to bring the Mountain Bongo back from the brink of extinction.
1pm - Food available and magic from Paul Hyland, The Art of the Impossible.
3.30pm - Tim Smit from the Eden Project speaking about MEMO.
4 - 6pm - Music from Pavlov.
April 28th 2010
This week end MEMO is once again on the beach at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. Today the carvings from last year’s MEMO festival are being collected from London Zoo, where they have been on exhibition, and taken to Lyme. MEMO will be at Lyme all week end - come and pick up a chisel and have a go, while watching the professionals do their stuff. The extraordinary bell we cast in a stone mould on Portland last year will also be on show, together with 28 (ringable) maquette-bells and, for its first outing, the final design for the big bell. It is the best part of ten feet in diameter. The aim is to get it cast in this, the International Year of Biodiversity…
Hear Ban Ki Moon’s call to the world here.
November 24th 2009
Today marks the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. This morning our patron E.O. Wilson will deliver a lecture as part of a debate entitled Darwin,The Origin, and the Future of Biology at the Royal Institution in London. His lecture is being made available as a podcast by the Open University from 1 o’clock today.
Read the views of E.O. Wilson and Darwin’s great great grandson Randal Keynes on the global biodiversity crisis in Friday’s Guardian.
If you didn’t get to see the MEMO carvings whilst they were at St. Paul’s, never fear! You can now see them at London Zoo, at the entrance to the Amphitheatre.
We are delighted that Gavin Shelton is acting as our Director of Development.
June 15th
Tragically Antony (aka Hank) Denman was killed in a motorbike accident on June 4th. Antony was an old friend. He was enthusiastic about MEMO from day one, and was straight in as a volunteer, teaching at last year’s festival with Chris Daniels, Paul Lister and Roy Pepperell. This year, still as a volunteer, he took on task after task. He had bankers made, he had sculpture bases made, he fetched and carried stones to and from Portland and Lyme Regis and other places besides, and at the eleventh hour he arranged for a specialist haulier to set up the exhibition at St. Paul’s. Somewhere in the midst of all that he also managed four days’ teaching, always with his gentle charm and his big laugh. This year’s events wouldn’t have happened without him.
It will be no surprise to anyone who knew him that the church was nowhere near big enough to hold all those who came to his funeral today. He was a great big man. We are thinking of Katie and the children.
Read our MEMO Project booklet
MEMO festival 2009 - click here for more information about our programme of events.
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June 4th Listen again to Sebastian, project director, talking to Libby Purves on Radio 4’s Midweek yesterday. Read Miranda Richardson backs Portland Memorial scheme article in the Dorset Echo.
June 3rd Click here to see the new MEMO bell coming out of its limestone mould.
See this Virgin News item about Miranda Richardson ringing the MEMO bell outside St.Paul’s.
Sebastian has been at the Hay Festival this week, spreading the word about MEMO and carving Spix’s Macaw (see below).
MEMO’s presence at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival last week-end was extremely popular and we had loads of people carving, as well as some beautiful new images taking shape at the hands of the professionals. Gorgeous weather too!
May 22nd - International Day of Biodiversity.
Miranda Richardson rang the MEMO bell outside St. Paul’s today, together with Professor Sir Ghillean Prance, and Bow Bell tolled for extinction at the same time. People also rang bells in Brazil and the U.S. to remember extinct species.
See this video of a MEMO supporter ringing a bell today to commemorate the world’s extinct species outside the United Nations building - another Portland stone icon!!!
May 20th Exhibition of MEMO carvings and bells being set up at St. Paul’s today. You can see carving work being done at the exhibition on Mondays and Tuesdays up to and including 16th June.
May 19th Last weekend 16th and 17th May was amazing! What a great start to this year’s festival. Members of the public watched the images of extinct creatures come to life at the hands of professional carvers, and were able to try their hand at carving simple forms. The view of Chesil beach and Lyme Bay from Bower’s Quarry was amazing, the weather bright and sunny, (unlike the rest of the county…), and the paella delicious!
The bronze pour was a great success. We believe this is the first time a bell has been cast in a limestone mould! The stone mould cracked, but held together. We will keep you posted as soon as the bell is revealed.
Further events coming up this week and into June at Hay-on-Wye (21st - 31st May), St. Paul’s Cathedral (21st May - 19th June) and Lyme Regis (23 and 24th May).
The new images being carved this year are of: Wellington’s Solitary Coral, the Rocky Mountain Locust, Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus Monkey, the Kawekaweau (a lizard from New Zealand) and the Syrian Wild Ass.
It was whilst researching for the design of a stone for the Memorial Arts Charity that Sebastian first had the idea for MEMO. The memorial was to be to Spix’s Macaw, extinct in the wild since 2000. (It will in fact be this very stone that you can see Sebastian carving at the Hay festival.) But the news about Spix’s is not all bad. Read more here…
May 14th Read more about the record number of bird species under threat .
May 11th We are privileged to have Tim Smit as our principal advisor. Here he outlines his support for the project:
April 18th Design team meets on Portland. David Adjaye, Glynn Williams, Peter Randall-Page and Marcus Vergette visit the two sites offered for MEMO.
March 5th 2009 What a marvellous evening!
Around 70 people gathered at the Royal Society for the fundraising launch of the MEMO project. Project Director Sebastian Brooke spoke movingly about Spix’s Macaw - whose story was the original inspiration for the idea of MEMO - and demonstrated his passion for the project with great simplicity. Chairman, Professor Sir Ghillean Prance described some poignant illustrations first hand from his work in Brazil and Hawaii of the plight of some of the world’s species. He spoke of MEMO as an educational resource with great power to inspire support for conservation projects around the world. And then Tim Smit ignited the room with his heartfelt exhortation to us all to put our shoulders to the wheel in whatever way we could to make MEMO a reality. He was inspiring in his description of MEMO as an essential symbolic monument for our times, through which we can demonstrate our human capacity to bear witness to the events that surround us at this crucial point in Earth’s history.
Also present at the event were David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates and Glynn Williams, Head of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, both members of the MEMO design team, as well as MEMO patrons Sir Crispin Tickell and Philip Pullman.
Since the event Sebastian and a team of MEMO supporters have been tirelessly spreading the news, galvanizing all those excited about the project into lending their support, financial or otherwise. £10,000 has been raised in the 2 weeks following the event. Further significant discussions continue. Many fantastic volunteers are working on the project, and particularly helping to prepare for upcoming events in May.
