Wimbledon on The Big Screen

The Big Screen in Guildhall Square will be showing live Wimbledon coverage and highlights of the action (where possible). To ensure that you don’t miss a single serve, have a look at the times below:

Tuesday 22nd June, 12pm – 8pm
Wednesday 23rd June, 12pm – 8pm
Thursday 24th June, 12pm – 8pm
Friday 25th June, 2pm – 8pm
Saturday 26th June, 12pm – 8pm
Sunday 27th June, 5pm – 8pm
Monday 28th June, 12pm – 8pm
Tuesday 29th June, 12pm – 8pm
Wednesday 30th July, 12pm – 8pm
Thursday 1st July, 12pm – 8pm
Friday 2nd July, 12pm – 8pm
Saturday 3rd July, 6pm – 8pm
Sunday 4th July, 12pm – 8pm

To celebrate the final week of Wimbledon 2010, tennis taster and skills sessions will also be held in Guildhall Square where there will be 4 courts for local schoolchildren (Monday 28th June – Thursday 1st July) and members of the public (Friday 2nd July) to have a go on. The skills sessions will feature racket and balls skills. Portsmouth Indoor Tennis Centre will be providing all the tennis equipment and coaches. Sessions will take place between 12-2pm. It is free to take part.

Strawberries and cream
Throughout Wimbledon light refreshments including strawberries and cream will be available to purchase from the Coffee Cup located in Guildhall Square.

Further information
Contact the Big Screen 02392 834109 or email bigscreen@portsmouthcc.gov.uk.

Sifer Design – Alien Invasion Installation

Portsmouth design agency Sifer Design have unveiled their new vinyls at Mountbatten Gallery, Guildhall to advertise the new Alien Invasion exhibition which opens at Portsmouth Museum on 26 June 2010. Incredible work from Carl, Dan and Luke.

This is the first in a series of vinyls that will be displayed by them over the coming year.

Chesney Hawkes

What with the Portsmouth game being cancelled I think that the record attempt was a close run thing, pity about the weather too. Looked like fun though and hopefully it’s helped raise money for the New Theatre Royal. The event even made it on to the BBC News website!

(Video by Dan Smyth)

Guildhall After WWII

On 10th January 1941 during a heavy bombing attack on Portsmouth the Guildhall was hit by several incendiary bombs which heavily damaged the structure and the resulting fires quickly spread throughout the whole building, turning it in to just a shell. It took almost 15 years to rebuild the Guildhall in to what we have today, which was officially reopened by the Queen on the 8th June 1959. This photo from Stan Webb from a collection of photos collected by Portsmouth College shows how totally destroyed the building was, leaving just some of the frontage and most of the tower.

Skating Portsmouth in 1994

Found some old footage of Isle of Wight skater John Cattle skating in Portsmouth back in 1994. Backside flip on the Lawcourts is really rather amazing.

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

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