Granite and Gesso

This exhibition runs until the 12th April 2026 Although I am don't consider myself especially religious, I am someone who has beliefs in something bigger.  I just don't particularly want to be part of an organised religious group.  I think it's a holdover from childhood at a very Christian school and Sunday church.  I still enjoy religious art though, from a variety of religions.   I also believe that places like Truro Cathedral are important community hubs and do important community work and provide considerable support to individuals.  They also house a considerable wealth of history  and art.  For me, it is important to support them as they are a large part of my heritage. I went to see this exhibition because the paintings are beautiful and convey considerable emotion.  Judith produces great paintings and it is worth having a look here .  A cathedral is absolutely the right place to display her work.  I would however happily tak...

In any museum, there are generally both temporary and permanent exhibitions.  Even the permanent exhibitions are not always entirely permanent.  Museums have many more items than they can display at one time and in order to keep things interesting, they often rotate things.  This is often a slow rotation, so each month, a few paintings might change or an extra display case might appear.  Sometimes it's hard to tell if you missed something on a previous visit or things have changed.  There is just so much to see in any museum. The art gallery is one of these permanent exhibitions.  It is situated on the first floor and is very literally a gallery, as it is a balcony space allowing you to walk right around a double height room.  It is a lovely space, with a grand ceiling.  On my last visit, there was a small display case of buttons but on this visit I noticed two display cases of jewellery.  I really like jewellery.  It's amazing how creat...

This exhibition runs until the 28th March 2026 This is a smaller display consisting of a number of boards, each one telling something of the story of a group or person working for change.  It's worth reading about these things here .  It's always good to focus on how we can make the world better, how people are making the world better.  Positivity is a strong force.  When we believe. Some of the stories where ones I had heard of, such as the project to reintroduce beavers to Cornwall in a controlled way with the Cornwall Beaver Project.  Farmer Chris Jones introduced the first beavers to Cornwall following flooding to Ladock and this has been so successful that this project is seeking to find other places that would benefit from the reintroduction of beavers. Others were stories I expected to see, but had not heard of specifically, such as the beach cleans of the Three Bays Wildlife Group.  Covering St Austell, Mevagissey and Veryan Bays, they have a reacti...

This exhibition was a pop up exhibition which ran until the 21st February 2026. United Response is a charity that works to give support to people with a range of needs such as learning disabilities, mental health and autism.   This may include supported housing, assistance in living independently in your own home as well as help to access education, jobs and community events.  The help given will depend on what someone needs and wants.  They also offer advice to people and communities, such as to landlords, so they can better support people. The Our Stories project aims to give people a voice so that their stories may be heard by those who would not normally hear them.  It's clear that many of these people have suffered from loneliness or feeling separate, invisible.  People are not always kind or inclusive.  Interviews were recorded from a number of people supported by United Response, with interviewers receiving specific training.  These intervi...

This exhibition runs until the 30yh August 2026 I really enjoyed the art shown in this exhibition which was all inspired by Cornwall's landscape.  It featured work by ten different female contemporary artists, each of which portrayed Cornwall quite differently. Cornwall has a gloriously varied landscape which with the added influence of the weather and ocean, is constantly changing.  We all know that Cornwall's weather changes at the drop of a hat and with that, the light changes completely.  I don't know how many times we have sat and looked across at St Michael's Mount for instance and every time it is different, constantly changing. An exhibition like this really makes it clear that even with the same muse (Cornwall), we do not all see the same and we don't all focus on the same things.  It goes beyond the types of materials artists use, but of course this has a huge impact too.  There were three sculptors included in the exhibition and of course, their works...

While this show is no longer on at the Hall for Cornwall, it continues to tour the UK and I would definitely recommend it.  Basically, if you like the film, you will like this show. It's a well known story with the Bodyguard film first released in 1992.  I think the age of the film meant that it mostly appealed to the age group who remembered it's release.  It would still appeal to younger people though, as long as they liked Whitney Houston's music. The music was absolutely key to the show and it was great to see even more Whitney tracks in the musical than in the film.  The musical also has a longer run time, so the songs were also given more time.  Sidonie Smith was great as Rachel and she has an amazing voice, as does Sasha Monique as Nicki.  We all know that Whitney is not easy to sing!  Adam Garcia as Frank Farmer demonstrated this very well in the karaoke scene... Adam is a great actor and it was lovely to see such a big name in the production....

There are a few parts of the museum you can look at without paying or booking.  There is a collection of old scientific instruments you can look at including some used by Copernicus. Copernicus was a Polish Astronomer who realised that the earth revolved around the sun, and not the sun around the earth.  This was a revolutionary theory at the time and one that the church was not very happy about, although it was not initially controversial.  70 years later Galileo was ordered to drop his support of the theory and then placed on house arrest for the rest of his life for heresy. It was lovely to see these pieces of history preserved and on display.  It's a good reminder of how creative they were in studying the skies to begin with.  It's easy to forget we just have to look when all the new advances come from such advanced technology. The other thing we saw was a giant sun dial.  This was visible from the glass lift to the planetarium and would be lovely to vi...

The Planetarium is in the same building as the science museum at Silesia Park.  It is on the second floor and can be reached by lift or stairs. Planetariums are a really lovely thing.  They are cinemas where a film is projected on to a dome like ceiling and are often used to show films of the sky.  I have been lucky enough to go to a couple before, one in London as a child, another in Tromso, Norway where we saw a lovely film of the Norther Lights.  This was our first time visiting the Planetarium in Silesia Park. The Planetarium has seats to three sides and they are comfortable and recline a little, to make viewing the ceiling easier.  We were able to get headsets in English that worked well with the film we watched.  Just below the domed screen there was a lovely 360 degree silhouette of the local skyline with different buildings, some with windows lit up.  This silhouette was not lit up once the film started. There is a rotating calendar of films sh...

At 535Ha, Silesia Park is one of the larger public urban parks in Europe and it is a glorious venue , full of public amenities. It's creation began in the 50s when land was designated for the creation of the park.  75% of the land was post-industrial and included mining wasteland, sinkholes and swamps.  3.5 million m3 of humus soils and peat were imported to improve the poor soils.  3.5 million trees were planted and woodland covers around 260Ha.  Investment continued throughout the 50s and 60s and a number of attractions were added to the park. You can easily get to the park from Katowice and Chorzow with trams running alongside the park.  You can also drive around the park.  There are barriers at the entrances and you can then take a ticket and you will then pay as you exit the park.  Navigating the park by car is not necessarily simple though, many routes are blocked off and a bridge was closed during this last visit. There are many trails across th...

I decided that as a Cornwall based museum lover, that if I could include visits to museums in Devon, why couldn't I include visits to museums in other countries? The easiest way to get to Poland is to fly.  We flew Ryanair from Bristol Airport to Krakow but there are plenty of other options across the UK.  You can fly to Katowice from some of the London airports, which means less of a transfer at the other end. It is about an hours drive from Krakow to Katowice / Chorzow. Poland has very good transport links however, including buses, trains and trams. Polish is very hard to pronounce correctly for me.  I find it hard to read as there are so many different accents above the letters that alter the sounds.  Google translate is so helpful though and I have spent a lot of time showing Polish people my phone.  Many of the younger generation speak Polish and so many people you speak to know someone who lives in the UK and / or have visited the UK themselves. When in di...