Hollywood Comes To East Grinstead!

Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead

Saint Hill International Arts Festival hosted by Hollywood celebrities, this year includes a UK premiere film screening

East Grinstead - Now in its 26^th year, the Saint Hill International Arts Festival takes place from Sunday 30^th July to Sunday 6^th August 2017 at Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead.

This year, the Festival is hosted by Hollywood actor, comedian and master impressionist, Jim Meskimen; his actress wife, Tamra Meskimen; producer, writer, director, Cass Warner (granddaughter of Harry Warner, President and Founder of the Warner Bros. Studios); and a team of local artists.

Tom Hardy and The Blaze Ensemble

The Festival opens with performances of Beethoven’s “Septet for Wind and Strings” and Carl Nielsen’s “Serenata In Vano” by bassoonist Tom Hardy and the 25-piece The Blaze Ensemble. At some point during the concert, Sheila Gaiman, the Festival's Executive Producer, will continue her tradition of presenting one of the artists at the Festival with a Lifetime of Creativity Award. Previous winners include artist Carl-W. Röhrig and bassoonist Tom Hardy.

Highlights of the rest of the week include workshops on creativity, poetry, singing, selling your art, stage manners and drawing, with evening performances every day and even an arts quiz.

Jim and Tamra Meskimen

Jim and Tamra Meskimen will also deliver a daily series of acting workshops, based on the techniques of The Acting Center, a renowned Los Angeles acting school which Tamra founded. The Acting Center school’s techniques have provided invaluable grounding for numerous actors now rising through the ranks of the movie industry.  They are great fun and provide solid grounding for beginners and professionals alike, without the criticism and harsh evaluation of other schools. The classes will be split each day between Acting and Improvisational Acting. (These workshops are not appropriate for anyone under the age of 13.)

Cass Warner's "The Brothers Warner"

On Monday night, Cass Warner will introduce the UK premiere of her film, “The Brothers Warner” which she wrote, directed and produced. It is an intimate portrait of the four film pioneers who founded and ran Warner Bros. Studios for over 50 years. Cass will also hold an open forum the following morning where attendees can meet her and ask her about her life in Hollywood.

The Festival closes with the Summertime Swing 2017 hosted by the world’s favourite swing band, East Grinstead’s very own The Jive Aces in the grounds of Saint Hill Manor.

Sheila Gaiman said about this year's Festival: "We're extremely lucky to have such talented artists attend our Festival from all over the world every year, artists who understand the importance of art and who are so willing to help others with their art. We are very grateful to international artists Jim Meskimen, Tamra Meskimen and Cass Warner and local artists Gill Bustamante, Mira Reichl, Jane Moore, Kevin Tyson, Evelyne Herbin and Brian King who are all so generously donating their time at this year's Festival."

The Saint Hill International Arts Festival was inspired by Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, who strongly encouraged cultural revitalisation through the arts.

Prices:  Ticket for the week £80, per day including workshops and evening concerts etc £20, or £10 per workshop only.

About Saint Hill Manor

Saint Hill Manor, the former home of L. Ron Hubbard and host of the annual Saint Hill International Arts Festival, located just outside East Grinstead, is a fine 18th-century sandstone building. Concerts, plays, conferences and other events regularly take place here and it is also one of the few historical attractions to remain open to the public throughout the year. Saint Hill Manor is also the headquarters of the Church of Scientology in the UK.

Address: Saint Hill Manor, Saint Hill Green, East Grinstead, West Sussex RH19 4JY www.arts-festival.org

For more information and a full program, please contact sthillartsfestival@gmail.com

Media Enquiries: John Wood on +44 (0)7771 520001 or jw@worldwidepr.net

The Saint Hill International Arts Festival 2014, now in its 23rd Year

Pablo Carl Röhrig with his Saint Hill International Festival Lifetime Achievement Award 2014. Photo by Mark McQuade.

East Grinstead - From the 31st July to 10th August, the Saint Hill International Festival (www.arts-festival.org) attracted local and international artists from all walks of life.

The Saint Hill International Arts Festival was inspired by Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard who stressed the importance of the role that art plays in society and he strongly encouraged artistic creativity in all its forms. The purpose of the Festival is to inspire artists into greater productivity. Saint Hill Manor was L. Ron Hubbard's family home from 1959-1967.

The Festival’s main event, The Art Garden, included participation from the world-renowned German naturalism fantasy painter, Pablo Carl Röhrig (www.roehrigart.com), and from local painters Jane Indigo Moore, Gil Bustamante, Mira Reichl, Susanne Lawrence, Kitty Atkinson-Guy, Katherine Khann and Rory O’Neill.

Whilst the painters painted, musicians entertained both painters and visitors to the Art Garden alike. The musicians were Hungarian violinist Judit Szabo, Italian guitarist and singer Francesco Andrianni, Australian singer songwriter Neil Lemon with performances by Jane Billing and Angie Lemon.

The Festival included a poetry workshop, an arts quiz and the Jive Aces' Summertime Swing on 3rd August which was a roaring success!

Proceedings ended style with the annual Classical Concert presented by Tom Hardy and the Blaze Ensemble, attended by the Deputy Mayors of East Grinstead and Redbridge. The orchestra, composed entirely of wind instruments, performed works by Mozart and Gounod.

During the interval, this year's Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to painter Pablo Carl Röhrig by the Executive Producer of the Festival, Sheila Gaiman, who said: "We searched high and low for the world's very best artists to present this award to, and we are very honoured to be giving it, this year, to someone who has won many International and national awards throughout his career, including one for the best artwork of the year in Germany. This year, the Saint Hill International Festival Lifetime Achievement Award goes to the fabulous Pablo Carl Röhrig. We wonder who we will discover next year."

Click here for additional information and photos of the Festival, and here for photos of the Classical Concert.

About Saint Hill Manor

Saint Hill Manor, the former home of L. Ron Hubbard, located just outside East Grinstead, is a fine 18th century sandstone building. Concerts, plays, conferences and other events regularly take place here and it is also one of the few historical attractions to remain open to the public throughout the year. Saint Hill Manor is also the head office for the Church of Scientology, UK.

For more information, please contact:

Liz Ostermann
Saint Hill Manor
www.sainthillmanor.org.uk
info@sainthillmanor.org.uk
01342 315226

Saint Hill International Arts Festival 2013, now in its 22nd Year, was a Resounding Success

The Blaze Ensemble of London, conducted by Andrew Skirrow, performing "Serenade in A" by Brahms. Photo by Nitsan Simantov.

Artists enjoyed a packed weekend learning about artistic integrity, having fun at a masked ball, watching Indie films in a film festival and attending a classical concert. 

East Grinstead - 16 August 2013: Saint Hill Manor, once again, played host to the annual Saint Hill International Arts Festival (arts-festival.org) - now it its 22nd consecutive year - which took place last weekend. 

Artists came from the UK, Russia, South Africa, USA, Austria and Germany to attend this year's festival whose purpose is to inspire artists into greater productivity, as well as to help artists unlock their ability to earn a living from their art. The Saint Hill International Arts Festival was inspired by Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard who strongly encouraged cultural revitalisation through the arts. 

The Festival kicked off this year with a talk by East Grinstead's very own Ian Clarkson, trumpeter and vocalist of jump jive band, The Jive Aces, entitled "Keeping your Artistic Integrity" on Saturday afternoon. That night, attendees were treated to a glamorous Masked Ball.

Sunday morning saw the Saint Hill International Film Festival take place in the Great Hall of Saint Hill Castle, organised by actress Katy Newell (Dream Team, EastEnders). To celebrate Indie film making and to showcase upcoming talent as well as more established names, 20 short films were shown, including: 

• "Intercom" co-written by Aidan Lean, starring Jenny Agutter 
• "Choices" written by and starring East Grinstead-based Petroula Kaneti-Dimmer 

The film festival was also attended by actors Roxane Hayward, Orna Klement and East Grinstead child actor Alex Norman (Brodsky Books, Diamond Jubilee Tesco TV commercial) and by the multi-award-winning documentary maker Chris Dresser. 

The grand finale of the weekend was a classical concert by Blaze Ensemble of London, conducted by Andrew Skirrow, performing pieces by Mozart, Wagner, Bach and Brahms. The concert drew an audience of around 200 people, some of whom had travelled from as far away as Redbridge, Pinner and Medway to be there. Several Town Mayors attended including the Mayor of Royal Tunbridge Wells, Cllr Dr Ronen Basu who tweeted the following about the evening: 

"We had a very pleasant enjoyable evening with good music and company and were made to feel very welcome. Thank you!" 

Just before the interval of the concert, Sheila Gaiman, Executive Producer of the festival, presented the Lifetime of Creativity Award to Austrian artist Hannes Margreiter. In his speech of thanks, he credited a course that he studied many years ago by philosopher L. Ron Hubbard on communication for helping him to get his career started as an artist. 

The winner of the Lifetime of Creativity Award, artist Hannes Margreiter, with Sheila Gaiman, Arts Festival Executive Producer.  Photo by Nitsan Simantov. 

Hannes is most well known as a postage stamp designer who designs the stamps for Austria. Additionally, he designed a stamp for Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was Governor of California, as well as for the country of Germany. 

Sheila Gaiman, the festival's executive producer, said: 

"I'm very proud that East Grinstead does have its own international arts festival, now in its 22nd year, and hope that one day, it will be as well known as the Edinburgh Festival." 

About Saint Hill Manor 

Saint Hill Manor, located just outside East Grinstead, is a fine 18th century sandstone building. Concerts, plays, conferences and other events regularly take place here and it is also one of the few historical attractions to remain open to the public throughout the year. Saint Hill Manor is also the head office for the Church of Scientology, UK. 

For more information, please contact: 

Liz Ostermann 
Saint Hill Manor 
sainthillmanor.org.uk
01342 326711