Friday, October 19, 2012

Me and Arthur Seaton


When the Sillitoe Committee won a prestigious Arts Council/BBC grant earlier this year to develop a mobile phone app providing a tour of Alan Sillitoe’s Nottingham, based on five key locations in the novel ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, part of the remit was to build an online repository of material around this theme for the BBC’s flagship arts website The Space.

Being the cheeky boggers we are, we decided to resurrect Arthur Seaton and have him pass comment, in properly sardonic style, on The Space content. Arthur being Arthur, he says what he thinks and pulls no punches. The mobile phone app is launched a week tomorrow – Saturday 27 October – as part of Sillitoe Day 2012, a day-long event at the Nottingham Contemporary.

With content on The Space reaching its conclusion, Arthur – voiced by Jason Williamson (that’s him on the right, the guy whose pint you wouldn’t spill), lead singer of the Sleaford Mods – gives a rebellious overview of the project so far.

The piece was scripted by myself and James K Walker and Jason freakin’ nails it. Seriously, I want this guy to record every piece of prose I write from now on! Go here to listen and explore some of the other stuff on The Space.

Go here to listen to the Sleaford Mods at their attitudinous best on Soundcloud.

And go here to book tickets for Sillitoe Day. Jason’s performance will be broadcast, there’ll be talks, film screenings and a parade of Nottingham’s finest, including Derrick Buttress, Ann Featherstone, Al Needham, Frank Abbot, Michael Eaton and screenwriter William Ivory in conversation with yours truly.

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