2024 main Festival events
now completed
see below for details
WASP TALK
6.30 pm talk at 7 pm on the 9th June 2023 At the Curtis auditorium, Newcastle University
EVENTBRITE LINK FOR FREE TICKETS
Professor Seirian Sumner will bring us the latest information about that much maligned species on which we depend for pollination and ecosystem balancing, and talk about her fascinating new book and why we should love wasps. With support from the Natural History Society Northumbria
Some reviews
‘A funny and beautifully written welcome to the enigmatic, weird and wonderful world of wasps’ DAVE GOULSON, author of SILENT EARTH
There may be no insect with a worse reputation than the wasp, and none guarding so many undiscovered wonders.
Where bees and ants have long been the darlings of the insect world, wasps are much older, cleverer and more diverse. They are the bee’s evolutionary ancestors – flying 100 million years earlier – and today they are just as essential for the survival of our environment. A bee, ecologist Professor Seirian Sumner argues, is just a wasp that has forgotten how to hunt.
For readers of Entangled Life, Other Minds and The Gospel of Eels, this is a book to upturn your expectations about one overlooked animal and the wider architecture of our natural world.
With endless surprises, this book might teach you about the wasps that spend their entire lives sealed inside a fig, about stinging wasps, about parasitic wasps, about wasps that turn cockroaches into living zombies, about how wasps taught us to make paper.
It offers up a maligned insect in all its diverse, unexpected splendour; as both predator and pollinator, the wasp is an essential pest controller worldwide. Inside their sophisticated social worlds is the best model we have for the earth’s major evolutionary transitions. In their understudied biology are clues to progressing medicine, including a possible cure for cancer.
The closer you look at these spurned, winged insects – both custodians and bouncers of our planet – the more you see. Their secrets have so far gone mostly untapped, but the potential of the wasp is endless.
Summerhill ABC23 Festival
10th June 12 am-4 pm
Sat 10th June 12 am-4pm Summerhill Pavilion, Winchester terrace
12.00 Insectibition opening 2 Melissa Bateson
North American Bee paintings and other local artists
Detailed timings pending for The following participants
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Storiella choir
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The 10th Avenue Band
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Turkish Crazy breakdancing
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Sitar Gordon Sharp
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Neighbourhood Watch Stilts iIternational
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Meet giant butterflies dance with bees.
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Science panels and discussion
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Earthlings cafe catering
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Chris o Connor trees
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Plant stalls
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Children's art and craft activities and family entertainments
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Giant family jigsaw
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Environmental charity stalls
3.00pm Public Pollinator planting in Summerhill Park.
4.0 Break
7.30 ABC23 Festival Dance Party in the Summerhill Pavilion with Soznak and guests.
ABC23 Art and Biodiversity Celebration at The Bike garden Sun 11th June 12-3pm
11 open
12. Giant Butterfly Ant dance and walk about.
12.30 Planting the pollinator strip, Biodiversity stalls Chis o Connor Trees; The Northumbria Wildlife trust, Planet action street arts science insect information and discussion, Community participation games, Bug crafts, insect face painting, family size jigsaw.
1.10 The waggle dance participatory dance of the bees, wasp and ant.
140 Planting the pollinator strip, Biodiversity stalls Chis o Connor Trees; The Northumbria Wildlife trust, Planet action street arts science insect information and discussion, Community participation games, Bug crafts, insect face painting, family size jigsaw..
2.30 The dance of the insects’ Giant Butterflies bees and wasp ant et all
3.00 end
The ABC Art and Biodiversity Festival 2023
Newcastle Upon Tyne Central Library Concourse Princess Square
Wed 31st May 11-4 ABC23 Festival
Come and, learn how wasps look after us, dance the waggle dance with bees and musical ants, meet giant butterflies and hear what they have to say. Join in a mass planting floraissance and fill the library forecourt with colour, scent, and music as we gather people power to create a Noahs’ Ark and a BiodiverseCITY of optimism and start to reverse the UK’s 60% loss of insects. Giant jigsaw for all the family. Crafty insect workshops and much much more.
Urban Oasis Art and Biodiversity Celebration for everyone and all ages
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Meet giant butterflies.
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Do the waggle dance with giant bees.
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Dance with a musical ant
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Learn about everything insects do for us.
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Help us plant flowers and create a green library for a green city
Program
11 Insectibition opening event inside the library featuring Melissa Bateson bee art plus sculpture Regina Blachford Artrep Avordnp.
1130 concourse Music sitar ensemble Gordon Sharp
Biodiversity stalls Chis o Connor Trees; Tom Feltham Garden Design elderandfern.com;
James Comman urban biodiversity Natural History Society of Northumbria , The Northumbria Wildlife trust, Planet action street arts insect information and discussion, Community participation games, Bug crafts family size jigsaw.
12. Giant Butterfly Ant dance and walk about.
12.30 Biodiversity stalls Chis o Connor Trees; Tom Feltham Garden Design elderandfern.com;
James Comman, urban biodiversity Natural History Society of Northumbria , The Northumbria Wildlife trust, Planet action street arts insect information and discussion, Community participation games, Bug crafts family size jigsaw.
1.10 The waggle dance participatory dance of the bees and wasp and ant.
140-2.40 Ant Music and bee dance
3.00 3.40 Organised planting with music
340-The dance of the insects’ Giant Butterflies bees and wasp Musical ant et all
4.00 end
