🌳 Free public event: Yeats in Bedford Park talk + poetry reading, with Cahal Dallat and Anne-Marie Fyfe, introduced by Fr. Kevin Morris 🌳 (And apologies if you've already received this, those of you who donated to both strands of our crowdfund campaign) 🌳 All finally coming together, thanks to your support, the dazzling new Yeats in Bedford Park artwork plus wraparound total arts/educational/heritage poetry-places experience. First chance to hear more about Yeats's importance to Bedford Park and vice versa next Wednesday in the first free public lecture since our campaign began last year! 🌳 What did WB Yeats ever do for Bedford Park (and vice versa)? 🌳 Wed April 20th, 7:30pm at St. Michael and All Angels, Bedford Park Who was WB Yeats? What makes him unique in twentieth-century world literature? And unique among so many Bedford Park writers & artists?  And how does Conrad Shawcross RA's Yeats-inspired #EnwroughtLight, to be unveiled this summer, symbolise and celebrate progressive, aesthetic, multi-cultural, 19c Arts-&-Crafts Bedford-Park's fostering of a Chiswick schoolboy from an Irish migrant family – a fostering that led to some of the world's best-loved poems, to a Nobel Prize, and to Yeats's status as Ireland's national poet! WB Yeats Bedford Park project leader, Cahal Dallat, conjures up the Bohemian/Utopian atmosphere that made Yeats a poet, explores the meanings of Shawcross's dazzling Yeats/Bedford-Park vision and its significance at the gateway to Yeats's boyhood London neighbourhood, and describes the visitor experience currently under development which will share Bedford Park's unique history and Yeats's poetry with the local community, future generations, and poetry/arts-lovers worldwide. With readings from Yeats's poems (and life) by poet Anne-Marie Fyfe. With music. Introduced by Fr. Kevin Morris.   🌳 Free public event. No booking required.  🌳 Venue: St. Michael & All Angels Church, opp. Turnham Grn Tube, Bath Rd Chiswick London W4 1TX 🌳Cahal Dallat, poet, musician, critic (b. Ballycastle, Co. Antrim) and founder/organiser of WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project, has lectured on Bedford Park and WB Yeats for the Bedford Park Festival, Poetry Society, Somerset House, Yeats Society (Sligo) and Yeats societies and academic conferences here and in the US; regular BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review contributor; 2019 joint Writer-in-Residence (with Anne-Marie Fyfe), Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory NC; 2018 Harry Ransom Center Research Fellow, University of Texas, Austin TX; 2017 Charles Causley Centenary Writer-in-Residence, Launceston, Cornwall. Latest poetry collection, Beautiful Lofty Things (Salmon Poetry, April 2022). www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.comwww.cahaldallat.com 🌳Anne-Marie Fyfe has published five books of poetry & a literary/travel/personal memoir, No Far Shore, Charting Unknown Waters (Seren Books, 2019). Born in Cushendall, County Antrim, she lives in London where she runs Coffee-House Poetry's readings & classes, organises the annual Troubadour International Poetry Prize, is a Poetry Co-ordinator for the John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh, is former Chair of the Poetry Society, and was 2019 Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina. www.coffeehousepoetry.org www.annemariefyfe.com 🌳 Fr. Kevin Morris is Vicar of St. Michael and All Angels Church, a centre for the arts at the heart of the Bedford Park/Chiswick community, and the Yeats family's parish church from 1879. The WB Yeats Bedford Park Project www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.com  @YeatsBedfordPk Organiser: Cahal Dallat, Patrons: Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSW), Martin Enright (Former President, The Yeats Society, Sligo),  Fergal Keane, Marie Heaney, Ciarán Hinds, Committee: Fr. Kevin Morris (Trustee, Chair), Polly Devlin OBE (Trustee), Cahal Dallat (Trustee, Hon.Sec.), Gerald McGregor (Hon.Treas.), Matthew Fay, Torin Douglas, Hon.Advisor, Shevaun Wilder, Registered Charity:#1172224

A brief update - as you all know the story, having given generously to fund Conrad Shawcross's #EnwroughtLight which will honour WB Yeats in Bedford Park... And which will be, if our new "Discover..." campaign is a success, the focal point of the Google-routed smartphone Yeats trail with Ciarán Hinds readings of great Yeats poems as part of a total arts/education/heritage #visitor experience which will bring arts/poetry-lovers worldwide to Yeats's boyhood London neighbourhood. We've already fundraised 91% of our new £24.5K final-phase target but we need another £1,950 in the next 7 hours to be able to collect the £22.5K already pledged. Thanks again to all of you for your support, and thanks particularly to those who have already pledged to this new and final project phase. If you haven't already, your pledge, large or small, on https://www.spacehive.com/discover-bedford-park-with-wb-yeats could make all the difference! Be part of this unique and innovative project helping make poetry happen for so many people, local and international, bringing poetry to the local community and local school groups, providing a new arts/educational activity around London's "dazzling" latest literary landmark and engaging a whole new generation more used to accessing their arts via smartphones/personal-devices than, say, signing up to literary walks, attending architectural lectures or visiting writers' museums! All best wishes,

Close to deadline (4dys2go!) + closer to target🎯🎯 Latest updates: 🌟£2,400 pledge from Galway poet Joan McBreen bringing her total contribution to £5,000 🌟Takes us to 88% of target with 118 backers 🌟Just £2,900 more needed by Tuesday to enable us to collect the £21.5K already pledged 🌟Thanks again for your pledge last summer to see Conrad Shawcross's #EnwroughtLight artwork celebrate WB Yeats in Bedford Park 🌟 And thanks to those who've also pledged to our total arts/education/heritage poetry-places #visitorexperience "Discover Bedford Park with WB Yeats" 🌟If you haven't yet, do take a moment this weekend to click on our final-phase crowdfund page www.spacehive.com/discover-bedford-park-with-wb-yeats, watch the video on our innovative campaign to take poetry onto the streets 24/7 and inspire visitors, cultural tourists, the local community and whole future generations of potential Nobel-Prize-winners 🌟And be part of this unique final tier on what's proved to be a super and superbly supported project (500+ fellow donors over the two crowdfund strands). Your £10/£20/£+ now will get us there! 🌟And finally, fingers crossed for Ciarán Hinds at Sunday night's Oscars where - as well as inspiring Conrad Shawcross's artwork with his reading of Yeats's "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", and now providing the Yeats readings for our smart-phone/Google-guided Yeats trail and social-media promo video - he's been nominated for an Oscar for his role in Kenneth Branagh's "Belfast"! All best wishes, Cahal www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.com

Hope you've all heard this week's amazing news – that Oscar-nominated Ciarán Hinds is to be the voice reading favourite Yeats poems at ten locations on our smartphone @YeatsBedfordPark trail (along with images, short info-talks, Google directions etc) available free 24/7 in perpetuity for everyone visiting Yeats's boyhood London neighbourhood and the dazzling literary landmark, #EnwroughtLight, that 375 of you helped to fund and that's now a real-live work-in-progress at Conrad Shawcross Studios. As long as we hit our project target (we're three-quarters of the way to final £24K so your £10 in next 12 vital days really will get us there) Ciarán will record his Yeats selections and narrate our promo-video this spring so the whole arts/educational/heritage poetry-places visitor experience will "go-live" to coincide with the unveiling of #EnwroughtLight, Conrad Shawcross's dazzling artwork honouring the only Nobel-Prize-winning poet to grow up in England, and inspired by Ciarán's reading  of He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven at our London Irish Embassy project launch! Ciarán (Translations, The Night Alive, Rome, Game of Thrones... plus founder patron of, and donor to, our project) is nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his role with Judi Dench in Kenneth Branagh's Belfast Your £10 or more – on www.spacehive.com/discover-bedford-park-with-wb-yeats in next 12 da– will ensure we can collect on the £18K+ already pledged and kick off development of "Discover Bedford Park with Irish poet WB Yeats" including: **our "open-air museum", the smartphone/personal-device tour of Yeats's Bedford Park, with Ciaran Hinds's readings, which will take Yeats's poetry and Bedford Park's Utopian history to cultural tourists, the local community, families and a whole generation more used to iPhones than to formal poetry readings, architecture lectures or writers' museums... **Yeats/BedfordPark poetry workbooks for local schools and visiting schoolgroups with selected Yeats poems for children to learn, understand, and respond to themes with their own creative writing **public lecture on how Bohemian Bedford Park's arty and egalitarian ambience nurtured Yeats's poetic powers **celebrity/gala Yeats readings to mark the artwork's unveilingpromotional video for social-media platforms/channels to bring the world to the roadway and the pavements grey of the world's best-loved poem of exile, Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree. **all in time for the unveiling of Conrad Shawcross RA's dazzling creation on WBY's birthday, 13th June 2022, at the entrance to Bedford Park (by Turnham Green Tube) in the middle of this year's Bedford Park Festival. Many thanks again and, if you do choose to help us again, thanks in advance! All best wishes, Cahal The WB Yeats Bedford Park Project www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.com  @YeatsBedfordPk Organiser: Cahal Dallat, Patrons: Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSW), Martin Enright (Former President, The Yeats Society, Sligo),  Fergal Keane, Marie Heaney, Ciarán Hinds, Committee: Fr. Kevin Morris (Trustee, Chair), Polly Devlin OBE (Trustee), Cahal Dallat (Trustee, Hon.Sec.), Gerald McGregor (Hon.Treas.), Matthew Fay, Torin Douglas, Hon.Advisor, Shevaun Wilder, Registered Charity:#1172224

"Discover Bedford Park with Irish Nobel-Prize poet WB Yeats" Delighted with super pledge from Bedford Park Society (www.bedfordpark.org.uk, first patron #poetlaureate John Betjeman) taking us over 2/3 of our "Discover" project target, publicising our new outreach/inclusivity project's crowdfund in BPS newsletter, and offering help/adv/info on our Yeats #poetryplaces from their archives. With just nine days to our Yeats-anniversary/ 28th-Jan deadline we're appealing for a tenner pledge on https://www.spacehive.com/discover-bedford-park-with-wb-yeats from all our supporters, which will enable us to hit our £24,503 target (currently at £16,469 with 77 backers) to collect on all those pledges to create "Discover Bedford Park with WB Yeats", the wraparound permanent-legacy "total arts/educational/heritage Yeats-in-Bedford-Park poetry-places visitor experience incl. ‘smartphone’ guided walk, school-groups' creative workbooks, lecture, community-groups launch/reception, + promo-video!"... ...which you can read about here https://tinyurl.com/nine-days. Many thanks to all of you for your support so far! Cahal ===== The WB Yeats Bedford Park Project www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.com  @YeatsBedfordPk Organiser: Cahal Dallat, Patrons: Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSW), Martin Enright (Former President, The Yeats Society, Sligo),  Fergal Keane, Marie Heaney, Ciarán Hinds, Committee: Fr. Kevin Morris (Trustee, Chair), Polly Devlin OBE (Trustee), Cahal Dallat (Trustee, Hon.Sec.), Gerald McGregor (Hon.Treas.), Matthew Fay, Torin Douglas, Hon.Advisor, Shevaun Wilder, Registered Charity:#1172224

Delighted to share our knock-out New-Year news, that London Borough of Ealing have just awarded our "total visitor-experience" project £8,000 from their #FutureEaling transformation programme, recognising the Yeats/BedfordPark story's importance for local community and future generations of Nobel-Prize winners(!), for schools with Yeats poetry workbooks, for a smartphone-savvy/device-dependent generation with our Google-directions/poetry-reading/info-talking ten-spot trail of Yeats's "roadways" and his "pavements grey", for London-Irish, migrant and migrant-heritage families in sharing for the first time with London and the wider world via video on social-media platforms, channels etc, , Bedford Park's progressive, egalitarian, multi-cultural heritage and its impact on the world of ideas and – through Yeats – on Irish culture and politics and on English and international literature. To top off today's excitement, Irish author and Bedford Park resident, Polly Devlin, just pledged another £2,000 (on top of a £3,000 donation to the £135K artwork fund last year) so we've achieved over 61% of our final £24,704 programme cost (mobile-phone trail, school workpacks, lectures, talks, launch event, readings etc) in 3 weeks, with 3 weeks left to Yeats's anniversary, 28th Jan, in which to raise the remaining £9K. Major thanks due not just to Ealing, and Polly, but to 52 of you donors who've pledged £5K+ since 10th Dec, convincing Ealing of the project's popular support locally and internationally. And as it's the start of 2022, thanks to all those who contributed £135K between March and July 2021 so that we'll see Conrad Shawcross's dazzling Yeatsian vision, #EnwroughtLight, the literary-landmark centrepiece of the Yeats visitor experience, unveiled by Yeats's 2022 birthday on 13th June. There's always an ask, of course, so, as we're at the final hurdle on the last lap, if all who've already given (375 of you in the last crowdfund!) and who aren't in the 52 who've pledged in December, could spare another £5 via www.spacehive.com/discover-bedford-park-with-wb-yeats we'd be past the winning post in no time... ...and the next you'd hear from us would be news of our June 2022 unveiling, smartphone-tour "go-live" and major media celebration of Irish literary genius fostered in a fascinatingly out-of-the-ordinary Victorian London suburb! Many thanks again for all who have helped so far and for those who are about to, thanks in advance! All best wishes, Cahal The WB Yeats Bedford Park Project www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.com @YeatsBedfordPk Organiser: Cahal Dallat, Patrons: Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSW), Martin Enright (Former President, The Yeats Society, Sligo), Fergal Keane, Marie Heaney, Ciarán Hinds, Committee: Fr. Kevin Morris (Trustee, Chair), Polly Devlin OBE (Trustee), Cahal Dallat (Trustee, Hon.Sec.), Gerald McGregor (Hon.Treas.), Matthew Fay, Torin Douglas, Hon.Advisor, Shevaun Wilder, Registered Charity:#1172224 Full story on https://tinyurl.com/new-year-news

Many thanks to the first 29 of you 375 previous donors who've taken us to 18% of our £24K target since Friday. Still £20K to go, but if just 21 more of you could possibly pledge £5/£10/+ before New Year's Eve, hitting 50 backers would unlock up to 50% of that gap in funds as a grant from #FutureEaling... ...allowing us to create a great @YeatsBedfordPk total arts/education/heritage visitor experience with smartphone Yeats walk, school-groups' poetry workbooks, talks, events, readings, all in time for the 2002 launch (on Yeats's birthday, 13th June) of the dazzling #EnwroughtLight artwork to which you've already contributed. Check out the full story on www.spacehive.com/discover-bedford-park-with-wb-yeats, watch the video, + click on [Back this Project]. Your £5 now could be worth thousands to our Yeats poetry-places project by 1st Jan! All best wishes for Christmas + the New Year Cahal The WB Yeats Bedford Park Project www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.com @YeatsBedfordPk Registered Charity: #1172224

Latest news! Just hit 15% of target, £4K donated since Fri 10 Dec with £20K to go, but need 50 backers by Fri 31 Dec to secure up to 50% grant from #FutureEaling for "Discover Bedford Park with WB Yeats", the major arts/education/heritage poetry-place wraparound we're planning to go live by our #EnwroughtLight artwork launch celebrations on Yeats's birthday next June (full story on https://tinyurl.com/back-us-by-Friday). And as the world starts to slow down for Christmas after this weekend it would be really brilliant if you could be one of the backers who helps us reach critical mass by this Fri 17 Dec: £5 (or more) pledged here (https://www.spacehive.com/discover-bedford-park-with-wb-yeats) right now could be worth thousands to the campaign! Thanks to all those who pitched in so readily over the weekend. And all best wishes for Christmas and New Year, Cahal

Two updates for all our donors! Firstly we've been busy with Conrad Shawcross Studios, structural engineers, groundwork & stone contractors & local authority, all on target for an unveiling on Yeats's 2022 birthday, Mon 13th June, so you'll hear more in the coming months as we celebrate Ireland's national poet in London's magical Bohemian/Utopian Arts-&-Crafts suburb! And today we launch the project's final phase which - with Conrad Shawcross's dazzling #EnwroughtLight at its centre - will create a total arts/education/heritage Yeats-in-BedfordPark visitor experience, bringing the local community & arts/poetry-lovers worldwide to explore the Yeats's boyhood neighbourhood - including: ** a web-based smartphone/android/iPad version of our much-loved 'Land of Heart's Desire' guided walk bringing a much wider range of visitors to discover - for years to come - this unique 19th-century community and its Irish literary genius, taking visitors around the Yeatses and their friends homes and Bedford Park and Chiswick places that influenced the young Yeats's artistic development (with Google directions, short info-talks and poetry readings at each Yeatsian stop along the route) ** a social-media-length promo-video to bring local and international visitors to follow in the young Irish poet's footsteps, "on the roadway, or on the pavements grey"; ** Yeats/BedfordPark poetry workbooks for local and visiting school groups to learn, and learn to love, Yeats's poetry, and follow in his artistic footsteps; ** plus lectures, talks, readings and unveiling celebrations. To cover phase#3 costs of £24.5K we've £3.5K in pledges in hand and the chance of up to 50% funding from London Borough of Ealing (Bedford Park is partly in Ealing, partly in Hounslow, and the Yeatses lived in both at different times). As you've all already given, you'll know it was those £5 and £10 donations that reached our initial target: but anything you give in the next three weeks will help persuade "Future Ealing" to suppprt the project: so your gift's worth twice as much! So do please check out www.spacehive.com/discover-bedford-park-with-wb-yeats, give us a "Like" or "Comment", and, if you can, "Back this Project" with a small donation so we end up not simply with a stunning artwork which people will wish to come and see, but a total arts/education/heritage experience! Many thanks, Cahal ---------------------------------------- The WB Yeats Bedford Park Project www.wbyeatsbedfordpark.com  @YeatsBedfordPk Organiser: Cahal Dallat, Patrons: Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSW),  Martin Enright (Former President, The Yeats Society, Sligo), Fergal Keane, Marie Heaney, Ciarán Hinds Committee: Fr. Kevin Morris (Trustee, Chair), Polly Devlin OBE (Trustee), Cahal Dallat (Trustee, Hon.Sec.),  Gerald McGregor (Hon.Treas.), Matthew Fay, Torin Douglas, Registered Charity:#1172224

Clarification re some queries we've received re Monday's GiftAid note below to UK taxpayers: 1) Thanks to all who've already replied 2) Whether your donation was £5 or £5,000 you can increase its value by 25% at no extra cost to you 3) Just email your Name, Address, and the statement ""I'm happy for The WB Yeats Bedford Park Project to claim GiftAid on my donation, which is my own money and I have paid or will pay that amount or more in UK income tax or capital gains tax this year." 4) If you pledged anonymously you can still help us by forwarding the above details which will be only be used for HMRC claim and will not appear publicly anywhere. *** Original email: Mon 02/08/2021 6:20PM Important note, now all your kind donations have been collected: if you're a UK taxpayer you can increase your gift's value to us by 25% at no extra cost to you. Applies to both large and small donations, and cumulative GiftAid claimed will really help us kick-off "Phase 3", a total arts/educational/heritage experience to wrap around the artwork's launch and future legacy, including a smartphone version of the long-running "Land of Heart's Desire" Yeats/BedfordPark literary guided tour; promotional video; Yeats/poetry workpacks for school visits; and young people's and evening poetry/arts events to celebrate the unveiling on Yeats's birthday, 13th June, 2022. Having taken us to our target with your generosity over five crowdfunding months we'd be so grateful if you'd take five minutes to help us to that extra 25% by emailing info@wbyeatsbedfordpark.com (don't simply press reply!) giving name and address and stating "I'm happy for The WB Yeats Bedford Park Project to claim GiftAid on my donation, which is my own money and I have paid or will pay that amount or more in UK income tax or capital gains tax this year." And many thanks again for your generosity.