Bell House Winter 2023 Newsletter

 

Welcome to the fourth of our seasonal newsletters. In this Winter edition, you’ll find a selection of recent news and updates from Bell House, which we hope you will enjoy!

The Illusioneer at Bell House

12 years ago Barrie Westwall was tempted by a local businessman to take over a small shop, tucked away at the bottom of Half Moon Lane in Herne Hill. It became ‘The Illusioneer Little Theatre and Studio’ - you may have visited it - but sadly it’s now closed. Nowadays Barrie hosts a wealth of events both private and public. He’ll be performing at Bell House this Christmas - Barrie is The Illusioneer!

Barrie’s speciality is getting the audience participating, inviting them into the illusion and leaving them pondering: “how did he do that?”

Barrie has a career in media and his particular expertise is helping organisations communicate better - both with clients and with their own people. But how is this pertinent to Puzzles, Illusions, Minds and Magic? 

“Well magic goes back to ancient Egypt, if not further, when priests and shamans used illusions to establish their power behind the throne." he says.

He uses his skills as an illusioneer to illustrate how to stop people in their tracks, encourage them to question their views and as a result help them see another way forward.

Barrie says: “Magic has always been used as a source of influence, but also at another level, in street markets to gather crowds and sell stuff. That’s a big intellectual range.”

As a dyslexic he was labeled lazy, even slow at school. Thankfully attitudes have improved in recent years but there is still a lot of work before the true value of dyslexics is understood. As Barrie knows, dyslexics think about things differently and this has helped his life as an illusioneer.

He has a long association with Bell House, in fact when it was a private residence, he performed at a Victorian Evening with a cellist, an opera singer and his wife, Annie, the Bell House beekeeper.

You might be wondering who was the businessman that tempted him 12 years ago? Angus Hanton and as many know Angus and Fabienne are behind the magic of Bell House and all that goes on within.

So what about this year’s Bell House The Illusioneer Family Christmas show?

Well it’s just that! It aims to entertain adults and children alike with puzzlements and conundrums and inject a healthy dose of Christmas Magic to set us up for this festive season.

Come along and be confounded!

A first for Bell House - an Artist in Residence

Bell House is excited to announce painter and sculptor Atalanta Xanthe as their very first Artist in Residence.

Atalanta’s role at Bell House will be twofold: as a teacher, running fortnightly art classes, and as a studio artist, producing a series of paintings at Bell House, inspired by the Bell House garden and the nearby Dulwich Picture Gallery - these works will be exhibited at the end of her residency.

She will help to promote Bell House as a place to come, learn and experiment, encouraging independent production of individual art. 

Having taught a range of people, from Masters Art students, to children aged 5, to adults who haven’t picked up a pencil since they were 5, Atalanta is excited to bring her experience to the Bell House community. She’s particularly excited to run classes targeted at young people: “Having access to inexpensive life drawing classes as a teenager was a game-changer for me. Not only was it the first environment where I felt taken seriously as an artist, but seeing so many body types in a non-judgemental context gave me a healthy relationship with my own body-image”. As a dyslexic, she didn’t learn to read until she was 7 and so she understands the power of creativity to help express yourself when struggling with the 3R’s.

Xanthe is an internationally exhibited painter, whose most recent show comprised layered, fantastical paintings which she makes based on large cardboard theatre sets she builds in her studio. Her background in painting at Oxford, Sculpture at the New York Academy of Art, and a decade of life-drawing practice have given her a wide-ranging technical skill-set she’s excited to share with the Bell House community. 

She’ll be opening her studio, in the Barclay’s room, every Thursday, so stop by if you’d like to get a glimpse of her process. 

All in all, Atalanta is the perfect ‘afflatus’ for Bell House - the perfect creative inspiration.

Follow the links below to learn about Atalanta and view more of her work:

“It was the woodlouse that started it.”

Annie McGeoch, better known as the bee lady here at Bell house, tells us about a school enrichment day last September.

“It all started when a little boy wanted to hold a woodlouse. I was walking around Bell House woodland garden with a group of 18 children. We found a woodlouse instead of a hedgehog on our nature walk and picked it up to have a look. There were several children who had grandparents with gardens and were clearly articulate and knowledgeable about insects. The children were excited but in the large group of 18, not everyone could get close.

For example there was one boy at the back of the group who was desperate to look. He wanted to hold the woodlouse and had never seen one before. I explained that they were alive in the dinosaurs’ era and he was amazed to be able to hold this tiny insect.”

That’s when Annie decided to commit to holding sessions for the non-assertive children. She is having meetings with the head of school and several teachers and they are busy identifying children who they say need nurturing .

Annie learnt another valuable lesson when she was working with the School Food Matters charity at the apiary at Battersea Park Zoo. She takes small groups of five children, suitably dressed in bee suits to see honey bees in their hive. She tells us: “We take a frame from the hive and the children get to hold the comb of honey and look at the bees close up. I talk about how the life-cycle goes in the colony and the children ask lots of very good questions. They leave buzzing with knowledge and a small jar of honey.”

In one of these sessions, a teacher came to her and said she had been surprised by one of her pupils. The teacher knew the child spoke to her parents at home but hadn’t spoken in school since lock-down - and yet this pupil had asked a question. Annie says: “I can only assume my more relaxed approach and everything being so different from a usual classroom lesson, the child felt brave enough to speak.”

The Bell House School Enrichment Programme plans to work more with children who deserve to come to a safe place where they can be brave and ask questions and find things out they didn’t know before. A centre for wider learning. The team want these sessions to steer right away from school subjects and activities and be about finding out and looking and talking. Bell House is not school and is not home - it is a safe place - especially for children who are struggling.

As Annie say: “If you live on the 20th floor behind Kings College Hospital there are no woodlice or snails and certainly no hedgehogs!”

And what sort of fun info do the children learn on one of our days? Well a woodlouse has some cute nicknames - Bible bugs, Cheesy bugs, Coffin-cutters and Tiggyhogs to name just a few.

Grow a Pair ….. of Ears!

The following article was written by Russ Kane OA - Dulwich College 1962 -1971.

In 1962, a time so far back now that it might as well be 1932, I was packed off to boarding school. This was particularly galling as my parents only lived in North London! The boarding house was, unsurprisingly, Bell House. 

It has now been restored to its rightful former glory and my visit in January 2023 was a revelation. It also laid to rest some ghastly ghosts and that day I felt an extraordinary seismic shift in my mental well-being. Now there were just beautiful rooms. The atmosphere was one of charm, elegance and care. Which leads me neatly to my point – the dire state of Men’s Mental Health in the UK.

In 2019 I was reviewing the day’s newspapers for BBC Radio. The main stories could have been anything, but they happened to be a report on the suicide statistics of men in the UK. I was astounded. 80% of suicides were men. The main cause, as stated in every paper, was that ‘men don’t talk’. Within 48 hours I met up with my two business partners, and we formed Men’s Radio Station, a year after the formation of the sister station, Women’s Radio Station.

Our goal was to create a non-judgemental space for men to discuss matters that affected them deeply, Fascinatingly, 50% of our global audience are women – a wonderful bonus. We are on-air globally 24/7 and are now the recipient of dozens of awards, attracting some of the greatest minds of the day to come on-air.

Positive Mental Health is a passion of mine. There is much to say and even more to achieve. Waiting lists to seek professional help are unacceptable and too many people are falling through the cracks. When I was invited to give a talk on the subject at Bell House I jumped at the opportunity. It’s planned for Spring 2024. In it, I’ll explore what has led to this crisis, how we can help on a practical level and how reaching out can be life changing. The message is ‘You Are Not Alone’.

The world of 2023/4 is unrecognisable to 1962 - and it’s accelerating. One thing that has remained unchanged, however, are the challenges that poor mental health and negative well-being can bring to absolutely anyone.

© 2023 Russ Kane

This comes with a Bell House health warning!

Anthony Harding, who lived at Bell House in the first half of the 19th century, opened the world’s first department store but during his lifetime his main claim to fame was as a ‘six bottle man’.

It was normal for rich men to drink two bottles of alcohol a night; three bottle men like Harding’s son-in-law were common and Pitt the Younger was known as a five bottle man. Six bottle men however were something else.

Not surprisingly Harding lost the use of his legs after drinking that much and had a special dining chair made so his footmen could carry him safely up to bed. One of our volunteers has made a model of the chair – look out for it in our Cabinet of Curiosities next time you are at Bell House.

Alcohol didn’t shorten Harding’s life though; he was 90 when he died in 1851. His coffin was ready and waiting: it had been made years before and kept propped against the wall behind his chair in the dining room.

And what of his son-in-law and Pitt? Alcohol certainly didn’t treat them so kindly - they both died aged 47.