Dragon Radio

4th of November 2013 The Dragon Café celebrates the news that we have secured funding for another year, and Sarah explains that we will reopen in February 2014, to allow time for some necessary strategic planning for the long term future of the Café. Birthday celebrations and a paean from Stephen and Tim who, after a bit of Bangra, also tell us about a missing cat flap. We compare and contrast the Art World as represented by Grayson Perry’s lecture with art world of the Dragon café and we dance with David.

courtesy of Kevin McClean John Constable wishes The Dragon Café a happy first birthday aided by Norman and David debuts his new Southwark Walks song. Eleanor Longden's TED talk introduces the subject of 'hearing voices', one we'll certainly be revisiting in the future, a snippet from Sue and Joe's amazing film, Southwark Tale (hopefully screening on this site soon!), Moonlight Sonata from Blue, The Dragons parade with samba from Bloco Maluco, and finally, voices from 'We Need To Talk About…Hope and Meaning in Recovery' (You can hear the whole of this here).

19th of August 2013 In this weeks show we speak to D Rosier who tells us about the highly recommended blog, SLam TWIG: Operations (http://slamtwigops.wordpress.com),  Barbara questions whether "life is just a bowl of cherries" in her poem 'The Turning Tide' and D shares with us the graphs and charts of her artwork. (You can see it at http://drosier.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/graphs-and-charts-illustrated-talks-and-q-as-at-dragon-cafe-19th-august/, where you can also listen to her whole talk.)

This was the day of the confluence of a didgeridoo, Lancashire clogs, a tongue drum, a darbuka, amulets and talismans, Kindred Minds at the Dragon Café, a trusty trowel and bucket not to mention gremlins….I said don't mention the gremlins!

3rd of June 2013 Biscuit citizens tell their tale, as the Bandorians play. Behind the scenes at Resonance we go. With poems on the air, in our dear Dragon Café Bubbles, my head, and counsel to go slow. Liz Atkins talks about her compulsive skin-picking and the art she makes, in prose. Then back to our poetic world and month we go.

Aside from the lovely 4-handed piano duetting of Elena Riu and Peter Bridges, this week’s DC podcast is really an assemblage of film soundtrack lucky enough to escape the cutting-room floor, all garnered from the Cafe on the day  Declan’s film month gets off to a lively start. Action!

In this episode our intrepid reporter, Mick, guides us around the tables at the Mental Well-Being Market Place, hosted by dragon Café. In theses days of change as personal budgets come in, it was good to see so many stallholders representing local creative, recreational and mental health groups, and to get news from Southwark Council about day services, personalisation and reablement. We also hear extracts from presentations by The Confucius Institute, Vivien’s singing group, Amanda’s Sonnet group, Thomas Tobias singing Caritas Abundat and the sound of samba from Bloco Maluco, outroduced by Agueda and Monica.

Transitions is the theme of this programme and we start with a saunter around Tania’s drama group, Vivien’s singing group, Mestre Mags’ samba bash and Latin Dance with Ariella  and Renzo, then an interview with Sarah, Maiuko and Marianne and David about the Transitions writing project.   Sarah reads part of her piece for Transitions 2, John Constable sings Spark In The Dark with a little help from the Hawklords and we meet Jennifer who tells us bout the Dragon Café quilt and we end with the sublime Maiuko.

You may wonder what it is that is rocking Sarah's boat so much at the beginning of this Valentine's programme - listen to the end to find out! Sarah and The Eurythmics explore the theme of love in all its forms, artist Simba talks about his graffiti writing, Raga responds to Ken and Paul's homelessness drama. Sally Scantlebury reads us a poem rather than a menu and Martin chunters on about the new Dragon Café computer and, before Sarah takes us out with Ode To A Nightingale, the Rude Mechanicals give us a song.

This week starts with a collage of sounds from our new singing group led by Vivien Ellis followed by Simba telling us about his exhibition of paintings which you can see for just one more week at the Café. A sonnet from Amanda, a 'Bit' from MrH and MfH and part of Paul and Ken's exploration of the issue of homelessness and TAKALAKA!  - samba with Mestre Mags and Handel with Tomas Tobias. (You can hear the whole of this talk by clicking here.)