Today's events in Rochdale

The borough’s Macmillan and Specialist Palliative Care Team are taking part in a ground-breaking week to talk to the public about death and dying.

The Dying Matters Awareness Week will run from 15th to 21st March to raise awareness of the delicate issues surrounding death and bereavement. Staff from Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Community Healthcare, Springhill Hospice, Rochdale Adult Care Services and Rochdale Multi-Faith Partnership will be holding a community event on 17th March at Morrisons, Heywood from 10am to 3pm and on 18th March on The Butts, Rochdale Town Centre, from 10am to 3pm.

Janice Sedgwick, Lead Cancer and Palliative Care Nurse, commented: “We will be available to help anyone who wants advice, information and support about how to start those difficult conversations about dying. We can also offer practical advice about making decisions on healthcare and end of life care planning.”

A national survey conducted for the first Dying Matters awareness week found that less than a third (29%) of people have discussed their wishes around dying and only 4% have written advance care plans, despite the fact that more than two thirds (68%) of people questioned say they are comfortable talking about death. This conundrum really matters, as 70% of us also say we want to die at home, yet 60% currently die in hospitals.

The new Dying Matters Coalition has been set up to raise awareness and to provide the support and information needed to have these conversations with loved ones. It aims to make dying well a natural part of a good life and through this help change attitudes and behaviours towards death, dying and bereavement. This will raise the profile and improve end of life care.

Steve Garside is a Rochdale-born selftaught visual artist, poet and published writer. His landscape paintings for this exhibition have been inspired by photographs collected from people across the globe that he has met on Facebook, the social networking site.

This exhibition brings together cute and curious hand-made creatures from four leading contemporary craft makers.

Julie Arkell’s papier maché characters invoke nostalgia for a bygone age; Abigail Brown’s textile-based birds and woodland creatures are inspired by her own childhood; Samantha Bryan’s sculptures inspired by Victorian gadgetry depict the unusual everyday life of fairies and Anya Keeley makes one-off assemblages using found, reclaimed & donated vintage materials combined with wire-work.

Jack Crabtree was born in Rochdale in 1938. He studied at Rochdale College of Art before going on to St Martin’s and the Royal Academy School in London. Since then he has carved out a significant career combining teaching, including an appointment as Professor of Fine Art at the University of Ulster in Belfast, with numerous fellowships, commissions and solo exhibitions particularly in Wales, England, Germany and Ireland. His work features in the collections of institutions such as the Ulster Museum, the National Trust and the National Museum of Wales.

This exhibition shows for the first time a recent body of work which was primarily made at the artist’s late mother’s house on Overt Street in Rochdale. It captures aspects of urban life which the artist observed on his journeys from his home in France to visit his mother in Rochdale.

From folklore through to dialect writing and modern fiction, the borough of Rochdale has a unique storytelling tradition spanning hundreds of years. Using objects from the museum, archive and gallery collections this exhibition takes a look at some of the weird and wonderful stories that have become part of the heritage of the borough and highlights many of the local writers past and present.

With hands on displays, this family friendly exhibition will delight anyone interested in the history, mystery and myths of the local area.

This exhibition brings together Victorian paintings with a selection of Victorian objects and photographs from our collections.

Explore the narratives and aspects of social history captured in paint and find out more about the themes which interested artists of the time. The exhibition will include our well-known painting A Special Pleader by Charles Burton Barber alongside works by Alice Havers, Frank Holl and John Gregory amongst others.

This display of turn of the century photographs is being mounted to compliment the Art Gallery exhibition ‘Victorian Stories’. Staff from Arts & Heritage have been asked to find an evocative photograph from the Local Studies Collection and say why they chose that image. When you visit the display you can select your favourite Victorian image and your choice will be included on our Slice of Life online gallery.