
Gwent's weekend packed with events for every age group
Organised by The Riverfront, the annual festival is expected to draw thousands to the city, with a line-up of live music, street theatre, dance performances, workshops, and family-friendly activities.
Big Splash returns to Newport this weekend (Image: Newport Live) The event is free and open to people of all ages.
It has been described as "a slice of Covent Garden in Newport."
They will play classics from the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, and other 80s favourites.
The Place on Bridge Street will be running a Silent Disco City Tour on Saturday, July 19.
(Image: Supplied)
This family-friendly activity involves donning headsets and exploring the city and Big Splash Festival in a unique way.
The tours will be held from 1pm to 1.30pm and from 2pm to 2.30pm, but booking is essential.
Tredegar House will also be hosting a "Summer of Play" starting from Saturday, July 19.
Tredegar House's 'Summer of Play' launches this weekend (Image: Supplied) This is an Edwardian-inspired event with a giant sand pit, colourful beach huts, and sensory tents filled with sea sounds and textures, aimed at neurodivergent visitors.
The event is sponsored by Starling Bank and is designed for all ages.
Children can enjoy building sandcastles, dressing up in Edwardian seaside fashion, and make-believe play.
Visitors can even pose in a traditional seaside cut-out or take a family photo on a giant deckchair.
There are also 90 acres of grounds to explore, with shady picnic spots for enjoying an ice cream.
No pre-booking is required for the Summer of Play.
Normal admission charges apply, but National Trust members can enjoy free entry and parking.
The National Trust Cymru has promised a "joyful day out" for families at the event.
They said: "Whether you're chasing that classic holiday feeling close to home or looking for a fun day out with the family, Tredegar House promises an adventure that will last all summer long."
For more information, visit the National Trust website.
With such a variety of events on offer, Newport promises a weekend full of fun and excitement for all ages.
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Daily Mirror
4 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
National Trust launches its Summer of Play events for the kids' school holidays
If you're looking for fun activities to get your children outside this summer holidays, National Trust's Summer of Play lets them try everything from nature walks to arts and crafts With the kids set to break up for their school holidays any day now, it's time to start planning how you're going to keep them active and engaged for the next six weeks. Lots of time outdoors is always a winner, which is why National Trust's newly-launched Summer of Play events are ideal. The events will take place at locations all over the country at various National Trust locations, and you'll get everything from pop up sports days and nature walks to arts and crafts and mini theatres for budding performers. This is now the third year that the Summer of Play events have run at the National Trust sites, making them a well-established way for the kids to pass the time during the school holidays. Whilst the Summer of Play events are completely free of charge, you will need to pay the standard admission fee to access the Trust's sites where they're held. All National Trust sites are free to under fives, carers and National Trust members, but older children and adults will need to pay admission to the sites. You can opt to pay a one off admission fee to the site you're wanting to visit, or you could always purchase an annual membership for the family which lets you access all of the UK's National Trust sites and saves you money in the process. Not to mention this gives you access to Summer of Play events across the country – perfect if you're planning a staycation or trip to visit family in other cities. If you don't want to commit to a full year's membership, you could also check out the National Trust Explorer Pass which is great if you're not a member but plan on visiting regularly over the summer months. Giving you access to most of the sites for all the family for four, eight or 14 days, it's priced between £36 for four days and a single adult, up to £108 for 14 days for a family of four with two adults and two children. There are also plenty of other ideas to keep your kids occupied this summer, with Visit Britain also offering passes to everything from historical sites and castles to theme parks and zoos. Red Letter Days is also great for kids of all ages (not to mention adults too), getting you discounts and easy-to-book activities ranging from safari parks to staycations and cinema tickets. However if you want to make the most of National Trust's Summer of Play events, you can visit the website now for more information on what's happening and sites near you.


The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Look how well-read I am!' How ‘books by the metre' add the final touch to your home
People have always used books to assert their sophistication and affluence. You need only visit the library of a National Trust property to see that. The novelist F Scott Fitzgerald famously critiqued the shallowness of the super-rich via his character, Jay Gatsby, who lined his shelves with books in order to project a cultured image of himself – yet they were 'uncut' and had never been read. To one guest at Gatsby's party, that doesn't matter – he describes the shelves (that he had at first assumed to be cardboard facades of books) as 'a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too – didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?' A century on from The Great Gatsby's publication, it is once again fashionable to decorate using books – and to question the motives of those who do so. In Vincenzo Latronico's International Booker-shortlisted Perfection, a novel that highlights the hollowness of chasing a 'cool', 'curated' life, Anna and Tom's self-consciously chic flat features 'floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with paperbacks and graphic novels … interspersed with illustrated coffee-table books – monographs on Noorda and Warhol, Tufte's series on infographics, the Taschen history of typefaces, and another Taschen on the entryways of Milan,' carefully arranged with 'succulents in cement plant pots,' and 'a waist-level camera' in the place of bookends. Through their home, Latronico writes, the couple has created a picture of a life that is 'clear and purposeful' – whether or not that is actually the case. In an age of constant scrolling, there is social capital to be gained by simply looking as if you are a cultured person who listens to music on vinyl and reads lots of books. And creating an aesthetically pleasing bookshelf is now easier than ever, thanks to an increase in booksellers who trade in 'books by the metre'. Vintage volumes are particularly popular, as they offer an instant way to create the effect of a long-established library made up of books collected over many years. 'My bookshelf is now complete,' reads one customer review on an eBay listing for a metre's worth of 'randomly selected' antique titles, available for £50. Dayna Isom Johnson, a trend expert at Etsy, another website where some sellers offer books by the metre, says the company has 'seen a 19,616% increase in searches for book-lover decor' over the past three months, compared with the same time last year. If you're willing to pay a bit more, sellers will offer a more bespoke service: for example, for £98, the online shop Country House Library will sell you a metre of assorted vintage books that all have orange covers. Madeleine Ovenden is head of non-traditional sales at the publisher Thames & Hudson, which specialises in what might be referred to as 'coffee-table books'. She has seen an increase in interior designers wanting to bulk-buy books with spines in similar colours, 'to fit a room theme'. The company now sells bundles of coffee-table books that all fit a certain colour or aesthetic – a stack of lemon-yellow Thames & Hudson books, for instance, could be yours for £119.90. Customers will also come to the publisher directly, Ovenden says, with 'requests by the metre for certain shelf sizes'. The rise in such requests can be attributed to the popularity of the 'bookshelf wealth' interior design trend on TikTok – an extension of the 'quiet luxury' and 'stealth wealth' aesthetic. A bookshelf that looks like an heirloom family collection, complete with art and ornaments, suggests you care about literature and art – and have time and money to spend on these things. Philip Blackwell curates bookshelves for a living via his company, Ultimate Library, which is used by hotels, businesses and homeowners who want to outsource the task of filling up their bookshelves. Though he is critical of the 'books by the metre' trend – Ultimate Library's selling point is that a knowledgable team will work with the client to select books they might actually read – he acknowledges that, if you're trying to build a library from scratch, you will almost inevitably have a certain amount of space to fill. I'm speaking to Blackwell at 40 Leadenhall, a newly developed office building in the City of London, where his company was commissioned to create a library for workers to use. 'That panel there is 14 linear metres multiplied by 33.' So he and his colleagues have to find 462 metres of books to fill that space, though most will be chosen for more than just their age, size or colour, and will be available to borrow. 'Creating a book collection, certainly for a private client, is all about having a discussion, going on a voyage to discover it, and it should be really good fun,' Blackwell says. He likes to quote Cicero: 'A room without books is like a body without a soul.' Services like his, then, manufacture that 'soul' in places such as offices and hotels that might otherwise be pretty soulless. Blackwell's service might be less superficial than simply using books for wall-dressing, but its appeal is still partly down to clients liking the way that books look. Michael Wood, who works for M&G Real Estate, which owns 40 Leadenhall, says M&G approached Ultimate Library partly because 'we've got a big space in this ground floor to fill and books are a great way to do that'. Aesthetically, the books make the building's lobby look less stark – and the higher shelves, which feature older books arranged by colour, are wholly ornamental. 'As a decorative element, books are great because they add a lot of texture,' says New York-based interior designer Tommy Landen Huerter. 'They add colour in places where it wouldn't be easy to otherwise integrate it. They just make a home look a lot more lived-in.' There have 'definitely been clients I have bought books for that will probably never be opened', who want full bookshelves 'just for the aesthetic', he says. He has been asked, for example, to style books on high shelves that homeowners will 'never be able to reach'. That is partly because books look good, but also because of their value as status symbols, Landen Huerter thinks. 'It's like: 'Look how well-read I am because I have the time to read and I'm educated enough to know these topics.'' The designer himself has 'a weird insecurity' over the fact that visitors to his own home wouldn't know he reads, since he does so exclusively on an e-reader and therefore doesn't have any physical books on display. Through your home, 'you want to show your interests' he says – but you can also show what you would like people to think your interests are, which is the impulse behind clients asking him to buy books in bulk for ornamental purposes. 'I can understand why people would say: 'I haven't read 100 books in the last year, but I would like to have.'' Just as they do via social media or through clothing choices, people are often trying to present the version of themselves that they would like to be true, rather than what actually is. Presenting the image of being a book lover has never been easier – part of the reason that buying books by length has become a trend is that books can be bought very cheaply, says Matt Hubbard, owner of secondhand bookshop Halcyon Books in south-east London. In the UK and the US at least (the market is slightly less populated in continental Europe), books are published in huge quantities: 'We're definitely spoiled for having a hell of a lot of books around.' Hubbard says he could easily take on more books than he would be able to sell, and some 'tatty paperbacks' have such a low value that they end up getting recycled. There is a 'sort of a rag trade side of the book business', where books are bought by weight and sold on 'very cheaply' by retailers such as Amazon, eBay and World of Books. This has 'hugely depressed the prices' of a lot of secondhand books, he says. Selling books by the metre, then, is a savvy way for retailers to get rid of large numbers of titles that would otherwise be difficult to shift. It's not without its downsides, though. 'It promotes this overconsumption of things that don't really have meaning, that are just for the aesthetic,' says Landen Huerter. The interior designer worries about the rise of 'fast-fashion trends' in home decor, similar to what has happened in the clothing industry. When people start to feel they need to follow new trends and constantly change their homes, it creates 'a new level of waste and overconsumption', which 'gets away from the whole idea of having a collected and curated space of things that represent yourself, your story and your interests,' he says. Buying books by length allows people to create a kind of 'knock-off' version of a richly filled bookshelf put together over years of reading for people who 'can't be bothered to choose the books and read them,' Hubbard says – or who can't afford a service like Blackwell's, perhaps. It is easy to be snobby about people who fill their bookshelves in this way – but 'we've all got lots of books on our shelves that we haven't read,' Hubbard points out. In Japan, they even have a word – tsundoku – for acquiring books with the best of intentions but letting them pile up without reading them. Though it's obviously frustrating for true bibliophiles when someone has bought a random selection of books in bulk to decorate their home, the fact there are books in their home at all is a good thing, Blackwell thinks. Having books around means that, at the very least, the opportunity to read one is there. 'In my experience', he says, 'there is always the right time and the right place to read a book.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.


BBC News
8 hours ago
- BBC News
Sutton Hoo's Edith Pretty suitcase gives insight into her life
A suitcase belonging to the landowner who played a prime role in the discovery of the Sutton Hoo burial ship gives an insight into her "status and character as a woman in Edwardian England".Sutton Hoo, in Suffolk, is famous for the excavation that revealed the Anglo-Saxon ship in 1939, considered to be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all travel case belonged to Sutton Hoo's former landowner, Edith Pretty, who commissioned the dig, and her family donated the case to the current landowners, the National Trust, in is now on display at Sutton Hoo and collections and house officer, Jack Clark, said it was "something of a time capsule". Mrs Pretty lived at Sutton Hoo between 1929 and 1942. A film version of the excavation, called The Dig, was made by Netflix starring Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty and Ralph Fiennes as archaeologist Basil teams do not know how extensively the case was used, it is believed she took it to Egypt in 1904, South America in 1905 and Scandinavia in 1906, as well as many other trips. National Trust also believed the case may have accompanied her to France in 1917 where she served as a nurse with the Red Cross during World War travelled with her family, which was considered unusual for a woman at that to Pompeii, the Egyptian Pyramids and Greece were said to have inspired her interest in archaeology. About 100 items were found in the case including a pack of playing cards, a first aid kit and handheld Mrs Pretty's death, the case passed down the generations of her family before her granddaughter donated has been restored and is on permanent display underneath a portrait of Mrs Pretty insider her former home at Tranmer House. "The travel case really is something of a time capsule, revealing important details about Edith's status and character as a woman in Edwardian England," said Mr Clark. "As a trained nurse, Edith was very well prepared for adventures all over the world."The well-used sewing kit, with most of the contents now missing, shows Edith's resourcefulness, and the manicure set, along with various combs and brushes, is fairly typical of a woman's belongings at the time."Mr Clark added that returning the case to Tranmer House, where she lived at Sutton Hoo, was a "big moment" and he thanked the Pretty family for their donation. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.