Indoor Record Fayre @ LJR Saturday May 1st

Why not roll out of bed on Saturday and spend some of you hard earned cash at the LJR Indoor Record Fayre with Edgeworld. Brightons Edgeworld is a tiny, fiercely independent record store specialising in alternative, emergent,interesting music that just happens to be predominantly VINYL and they will have plenty Rock/Rap/Jazz/Punk/Hip Hop/Indie/Metal/Dance/Soul and more to fulfill your junkie needs. Followed by We Supply Movement in the evening with residents RED INDIE Free before 9pm//£2 9 – 11pm//£3 after

Free Entry Midday til 5pm

For the perfect holiday…

Based on an old 1950s British Railway poster here’s a little sneak peek of one of the new tee designs for Bored of Southsea that I was lucky enough to work on for Gaz and Tom as part of the latest Bored shop tee range.

Coming soon to a skateboard store near you.

1000+ Strong Island Posts!

We missed it a few posts ago but Strong Island broke the 1000 posts barrier yesterday, not bad considering we are still four months away from our second birthday! Lots of things have changed in Portsmouth and Southsea since we started back in August 2008 and we will be unveiling very soon some big changes to Strong Island for the future. We’ll keep you posted as things develop.

Transport No. 2: The Hovercraft

Southsea seafront has iconic and familiar structures and views but ever since the mid 60s we also have the familiar sound of the hovercraft engines as it repeatedly arrives and leaves for Ryde. This hovercraft route itself was the first Hovercraft passenger service in the world and Hovertravel Limited, founded in 1965, is the world’s longest established commercial hovercraft operator. The first hovercraft was first developed on the Isle of Wight in 1955 when inventor Sir Christopher Cockerell tested out his idea for a floating/flying craft by putting a cat food tin inside a coffee tin. After fine-tuning his designs, Sir Christopher Cockerell secured funding to build a hovercraft. Saunders Roe, the flying boat firm in Cowes on the Isle of Wight was given the contract. The commercial success of hovercraft was initially huge but subsequently suffered from rapid rises in fuel prices during the late 1960s and 1970s. Since the channel routes abandoned hovercraft the United Kingdom’s only public hovercraft service is now our one operating from Southsea.

In 1972 Hovertravel’s SR-N6 012 overturned off of Southsea with a loss of five lives. This was the world’s first fatal accident involving a commercially operated hovercraft. Apart from this one incident the service has an incredible safety record and is used day in day out to transfer up to 100,000 passengers a year.

The hovercraft is a wonderful and now unique form of local transport and something to celebrate and also to actively enjoy with a trip. Booking and travel information is available at the Hovertravel website.

To discover more about hovercraft we are lucky to have the Hovercraft Museum just down the road in Lee-On-Solent which houses the world’s largest library of documents, publications, film, video, photographs and drawings on hovercraft and a collection of actual hovercraft too including the last two remaining SR.N4 craft, the world’s largest civil hovercraft. › Continue reading

Student Summer Passes at Badger Press

As University workshops and college classrooms shut over summer, Badger Press have decided to throw their doors open and provide refuge for all those printmakers, designers and illustrators that would still like to get into the studio.

Passes cost £50 and provide open access to the facilities at Badger Press. The Pass is valid between 1st June and 30th September and holders can use the facilities for an unlimited number of sessions, subject to availability. The pass is valid for a full or half day. Costs for consumables (paper, inks and screen emulsion) are additional.

Come and get a pass at Love Your Bike Day, and enter a draw for an immediate refund!

For more information visit here or email: summer@badgerpress.org.

Portsmouth Through a Lens

Are you legendary with a lens? Think you’ve got the photo factor? Portsmouth City Council are looking for eye-catching and good quality photos that sum up the city’s culturally diverse mix, and the best will be used in the council’s websites, publications and online media store. PCC want you to explore what makes Portsmouth so special in three different categories; People and events; Urban and green spaces and What I love about Portsmouth is…

The overall winning entry will receive an Apple iPod. All submissions can be entered in to the Portsmouth Through a Lens Flickr group.

Terms and conditions:

- The closing date for entries is Friday 2 July at midday.
- Selected photographs may be used in the council’s websites, publications and online media store.
- Entrants warrant and undertake that photos submitted will not infringe intellectual property, privacy or any other rights of any third party. Entrants must ensure that any person or persons whose image is used in an entry has given valid consent for the use of their image or has waived any rights they may have in the image submitted. Where such person is under 16, the consent of that person’s parent or guardian must be obtained.
- The competition is not open to employees of Portsmouth City Council.

They know who they are…

Outrageous barbeque burns on Southsea Common. A picture says a thousand words.

Photo : Claire Sambrook

Portsmouth & District Angling Society

For those keen anglers amongst you the time has come to dig out your tackle box for the freshwater season.  Portsmouth & District Angling Association have been operating since 1948 and have control over 13 different sites in and around the Portsmouth area.  As well as having an Environment Agency Rod License you can pay an annual membership fee to the P&DAS to fish at one of their rivers, lakes or ponds.  The membership fee is worth every penny as it all goes back into protecting the environment and the wildlife at each fishing spot, making it more enjoyable for everyone concerned.

If fishing is something that interests you but you’re not quite experienced to start paying membership fees etc., don’t forget we are situated on one of the prime bits of coastline and fishing in the Solent is absolutely free either from the beach or by boat.

Created Local – Dan Tonkin, Adayin Design

Local cycle machine and all round nice guy Dan Tonkin recently updated his website under the design pseudonym Adayin Design. Dan has been on the local scene since forever as a skater, photographer, web/graphic deisgner and keen cyclist with a heavily growing portfolio of work. A very multi talented individual that will leave you standing in a bike race.

Check out www.adayin.co.uk and aslo Dan’s Flickr stream. Sorry I can’t make The Randonnee this Sunday mate. Really quite gutted to be honest.

The Gruffalo Live at New Theatre Royal

Following its third sell-out season in London’s West End, The Gruffalo is back on tour and coming to the New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth on Tuesday 18 and Wednesday 19 May (Tue at 1.30pm, Wed at 10.30am & 1.30pm). EXTRA PERFORMANCE DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND on Tuesday at 11am.

Premiered in 2006, this smash hit production has delighted thousands of youngsters worldwide; touring across England, Scotland and Wales – to as far as Poland, North America and beyond!

Join Mouse on an adventurous journey through the deep dark wood in this magical, musical adaptation of the best-selling children’s book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler; recently named No.1 bedtime story by BBC Radio 2.

Mouse can scare hungry animals away with tall stories of the terrifying Gruffalo, but what happens when he comes face to face with the very creature he imagined? Meet a wheeler-dealer Fox, an eccentric old Owl, a maraca-shaking, party-mad Snake… and, of course, The Gruffalo!

Tickets cost £10 (£8 concessions) from the box office on 023 9264 9000 or online at www.newtheatreroyal.com

PRIMARY – A Phoneography Exhibition by Strong Island – Call for entries

This coming new year we will be proud to announce our latest exhibition PRIMARY, a Phoneography exhibition by Strong Island and we are even happier to announce that it’s open to you, the readers.

With the continuing increase in impressive camera technology in mobile phones and the ability to alter, tweak, post process and upload the photos to social media networks and websites like Instagram, the popularity of Phoneography has never been greater.

The ‘of the moment’ ability to take a photo at almost any time and any place by most people has really driven the fact that the camera does not make the photographer. By which I mean, you don’t need an expensive camera to take outstanding photos.

Agreed, the quality of the physical image may not stand up to the big guns, but new learnings in composition, style and aesthetic by a new generation of camera users via online media has really driven this popularity, and encourage people to go beyond a ‘quick shot’.

PRIMARY invites you to get out and about around Portsea with your mobile phone camera and take photos of anything and everything based around the three primary colours red, yellow and blue. What you photograph is entirely up to you, but submissions will only be accepted if they stick to the theme.

The call for entires has now begun and the deadline is the 31st of January 2012 with the exhibition being held in March of 2012. Photos can be taken on any mobile phone model and we ask that a maximum of 3 photos per applicant are sent in to primary@strong-island.co.uk.

Please submit along with your photographs your name, photo title, phone model, location of photo on the island and any post process apps you used, if any, to achieve the final shot.

We look forward to seeing all the entries, and the final installation will be something special using every photo submitted in a slightly different fashion from your average photographic exhibition. CLICK HERE TO PRINT YOUR OWN POSTER

Poster by Tristan Savage & Photo by Paul Gonella

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage