Trade School celebrates practical wisdom, mutual respect and the social nature of exchange. It is an alternative, self-organised school that runs on barter. Trade School is about providing a space for the exchange of knowledge and ideas

If you have a skill or some type of specialist knowledge, you can share it with others in exchange for things that you need: home made jam, socks, drawings of dogs, you name it.

Subjects can range from big ideas, to practical skills to experiential knowledge. Previous Trade School classes in other countries have included how to make butter, portrait photography, ghosthunting and an introduction to Baudrillard.

Cardiff Trade School will be run through the Trade School website www.tradeschool.coop. Tutors can post up classes they are willing to teach, the venue and time, and what they are looking for in exchange. Students can enrol for courses and chose what they will bring in exchange for their place in the class.

Before the Trade School Cardiff page gets up and running we need to have some venues to hold classes in. Ideally venues will be in different areas of Cardiff so people from all over Cardiff have the opportunity to take part.

People from every background can get involved; everyone has something they can teach other people, everyone has something they can offer.

If you want to get involved or have a good idea for a venue, get in touch through the ThinkARK website http://www.thinkark.co.uk

Lung is 20 year old Cardiff producer recently signed to Hospital Records sister label Med School. Lung (aka James Ellaway) releases his “Why Does Anyone Ever Do Anything?” EP this April; which is another hard hitting weapon in his audio arsenal. To date James has collaborated with luminaries such as High Contrast and London Electricity, as well as being remixed by Kryptic Minds and receiving Dj support from everyone from Mary Anne Hobbs to Annie Mac.

Cardiff producer Lung

The fun will kick off at 1PM on the 21st of April, with sets from a range of local rising stars from the Cardiff area. We will also have a vast stock of the limited edition record store day releases which make this day such a special event for avid vinyl collectors.

Catapult Records is Cardiff’s only dance music specialist. Visit the shop at 3-7 Duke St Arcade, Cardiff, CF10 1AZ
www.catapult.co.uk

T-shirt printing – All your favorite rooting tooting designs ready to adorn a t-shirt of your choice!
Etching Press – Plenty of fun to have making cards or postcards for your loved ones!
Fabric Printing – Print your very own bandana, just make sure its not used for a stagecoach heist!
Kids Table – Big man Dan Mitchell will be hosting the Kids Table, Creating pretty much whatever he’s told!
Tea, Coffee & Cake – and other refreshments will be available all day.

Event – Snapped Up Market 5
Theme – Cowboys & indians
Location -The PrintHaus Workshops, 70A Llandaff Rd, Canton, Cardiff, CF11 9NL
Date – Sunday March 25th 2012
Time – 12-6pm Free entry

http://www.theprinthaus.org
http://www.theprinthaus.org/snappedupmarket.php

THE HISTORY OF THE PRINTHAUS

The PrintHaus created Snapped-Up Market to give a sales platform for the Screen printers and Makers in its membership. Since its first event in March 2011, Snapped-Up has grown from strength to strength, bringing more and more of the best designers and crafty folk that Cardiff has to offer together under one roof.

These are some of our regular stall holders that you may recognise: Ed & Flo, Spin Cycle Complete, Ben Davies Design, Knitty Kitty, Phil Morgan, Catherine Weatherhead, Recycled with Love, By Kirsty, Alternative Aesthetics, Madame Mim, Rock Steady Charms, DroneBoy Laundry, Huw Barrett & Napoleon’s Wife, Tom Kitchen plus new stall holders making appearances whenever possible.

What sets Snapped-Up from any other market in the area is its have a go activities. The majority of the stalls are dotted around the workshop’s equipment, its on these pieces of equipment that you will find the opportunity to try your hand at printing your own t-shirt from a selection of designs donated by Cardiff’s hottest design talent. Fabric Printing ranging from bag making to printing bandana’s. The etching press will give you a chance to try your hand at producing cards or postcards for loved ones. Each market has its own theme and all the activity areas reflect this theme.

Our aim is to create a fun environment for all the family and introduce a selection of printing processes to the general public that they may not have access to normally. While stall holders are offered a friendly environment to meet like minded designers to share advice and the opportunity of learning another process of making!

Visit the Jacob’s Antiques website or catch them @jacobsantique on Twitter

A council run pound, it’s home to approximately 45 dogs at any one time and about 1200 dogs a year. It’s something of a city institution for Welsh dog lovers, and has been for over 15 years. Driven by a small but passionate team of dedicated, hardworking staff, Cardiff Dog Home is a rare breed; the RSPCA Animal Welfare Award winning centre is manned 24 hours and the staff work way beyond expectations to keep the dogs healthy, happy and ready for homing. Whether they’re strays, victims of unfortunate domestic situations or both, the team treat them as well as they possibly can. And they’re not alone.

Friends Of Cardiff Dogs Home was set up in August 2011 to help raise awareness of, and much needed funds for, the city pound. A fully transparent volunteer-run organisation where every single penny raised goes directly to the home, Friends have already raised over £3000 in their short but perfectly formed history. This has been raised through meet and greets in and around the city centre, working with Team Barclays and an astonishingly successful Christmas dog show that raised over £900 in just one afternoon!

“It’s fantastic to be working with such a proactive organisation,” says Cardiff Dogs Home manager Maria Bailie. “It’s rare that you find such harmony between a council pound and volunteer group but they understand and respect our position. We’re all working towards one goal; the dogs. I’m very excited about the future and the work we can do together.”

So how can you help?

There are many ways to give a dog a bone. Here’s how…

Find out more: There are so many ways to get involved and raise awareness of the home. Joining meet and greet street groups, spreading the word on your Facebook and Twitter accounts and getting involved in fun events such as the forthcoming pub quiz. Whether you wish to join the core group itself, or just attend the events and have a lot of fun, you can find out everything here at the Friends of Cardiff Dogs Home website.

Donate: Anything you can donate to Cardiff Dogs Home is hugely appreciated. Especially by the dogs themselves! Whether it’s a toy, a plastic 40inch bed (second hand is fine as long as they’re not too chewed and bedraggled!), or just a bag of treats, everything is welcomed with open arms and paws.

Become a walker: Be part of a growing community of walkers and help the staff by taking the dogs out yourself. With two pleasant walks just nearby, you can help the dogs immeasurably by ensuring they’re kept social and well exercised. An ideal way of getting to know the Dogs Home’s friendliest furry faces, and perfect for those who are unable to have a dog… Even 20 minutes will make a massive difference, especially if you’re able to write a little description of the dog, its personality and training needs on the Friends Of Cardiff Dogs forum; it will help them find the perfect future owner!

Adopt: Obviously this is a huge responsibility and inviting a new four-legged member to your family isn’t something that should be taken lightly. But if you know you’re ready – and fully prepared! – for the a hairy new addition then Cardiff Dogs Home should be your very first port of call.

However you want to help, just remember the directions, pop down and say hello. You’ll be glad you did.

For full details on all Cardiff Dogs Home and Friends Of Cardiff Dogs Home events visit: http://www.friendsofcardiffdogshome.org.uk/ The next event is their debut pub quiz on January 25 at the Barons Court pub, 8pm. Grab your brainiest friends and see us there!

All photos by Adam Chard

On the recent mixed reviews and temperate box office traffic for The Rum Diary, it brings up the question of how you can approach a literary adaptation project. The first consideration of course is whether or not a film stands as a piece of art of its own accord, without any knowledge of the book it was adapted from, or the ideologies of the author. When making a film, you have the ego of a director to contend with, not to mention the personal interests of any of the stars. Remember how Johnny Depp was a longtime friend and admirer of Hunter S Thompson? Yes? No? Well, he was.

So while your film will probably attract some die-hard lit fans (who will also probably be its biggest critics), it’s also going to have to stand on its own and attract viewers purely through its own merits.

This has brought us to thinking about this in a more general light: what are some of the key themes necessary for a successful book to screen adaptation?

Stay true to your roots…

Although this is seemingly in complete opposition to the idea of the film existing as a piece of art on its own, keeping with the ideology of the author is actually an important part of adapting a book for the big screen.

There have been numerous occasions when authors have cut off ties with an adaptation due to perceived warping of its message. Alan Moore has built up a long-standing antipathy with the Hollywood movie machine as a result of the way it continually takes his nuanced and intelligent comic books and turns them into big dumb explosion-fests. Also, while Nic Roeg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches was fairly faithful in many respects, the decision to retool the book’s bleakly moving conclusion – which dealt honestly with issues of mortality – into a far more conventional happy ending was met with dismay by the famously curmudgeonly author.

In the case of The Rum Diary, it says true to the message at the heart of all of Thompson’s work – exposing the corruption of “the man” and uncovering the sordid nature of the American dream. Soused non-writer Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) journeys to a failing English language newspaper in American-occupied 1950s Puerto Rico. The newspaper is on its last legs, staffed by a collection of misfits who choose a steady diet of rum to help them survive the heat and the constant riots against the American occupation that take place outside the newspaper’s office.

Kemp is a writer searching for a voice, which he eventually finds, after a series of run-ins with angry locals, negotiating offers from smarmy American PR exec Sal Henderson (played Aaron Eckhart’s epic chin) to write killer copy for a brochure to encourage rich Americans to buy up land in the unspoiled paradise, simultaneously leaving the local residents homeless and scavenging. This trade-off runs to the core of everything that Thompson ever wrote – that the idea of the American dream is based on greedy capitalism that survives through the exploitation of others.

But don’t stay too true…

The first Harry Potter film was an incredibly literal take on the source material, to the extent that the whole experience seemed kind of pointless. Of course, it made a bajillion dollars, so it’s possible that we don’t know what we’re talking talking about. In some cases, a willingness to approach things in a radically different way is absolutely essential.

Anyone who has read Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho would agree that a direct translation would have been both unfilmable and unwatchable. Mary Harron’s decision to dial back the splatter and focus instead on Patrick Bateman’s fragmented psyche resulted in a blackly comic movie that captured the spirit of the novel without making viewers vomit up their popcorn.

Sometimes an original text can provide little more than a jumping off point for the film version. Sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick’s work has inspired a range of very different movies, from the chilly, Vangelis-augmented Blade Runner to the explosive Total Recall, still the high-water mark for filmic representations of tri-boobed space-hookers. In both cases, the adaptations of Dick’s stories Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and We Can Remember it For You Wholesale bear little resemblance to what ended up on the screen, but were nonetheless extremely successful in their own right. Did we mention the tri-boobed space-hooker?

Though some criticism of The Rum Diary has come from it straying too far from the original book, this seems futile criticism. Parts of the book, for example, are much better realised through the medium of film than they were in the book. The concept of the luxury hotel, for example, is an urgent and visceral theme when you see the flesh of the tropical paradise that is to be butchered by American greed.

Make sure you cut the cr*p

This is vital. Successful adaptations are normally a triumph of editing. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies may all weigh in at a buttock-numbing three-plus hours, but compared to the books they are the very model of economic storytelling. JRR Tolkien was many things, but succint wasn’t one of them. The novels are packed with lengthy digressions that have only a nominal connection with the actual narrative. Cutting out the interminable Tom Bombadil section and bits about what happens to the hobbit’s horses when they get chased off might have irritated a few six-sided-dice-wielding uber-nerds, but it at least meant that the audience didn’t die of boredom/old age before the credits rolled.

But don’t cut too much

Sometimes adaptations can cut, willy nilly, from the original material, leaving out important points of the original story. A fairly recent film adaptation that oversimplified literary content (one suspects) to ensure more universal appeal was Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

The original tween fiction, written by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, focused on the story of two teenagers who met and got together over a long night of gig going, and covered all manner of complicated relationship negotiation (friendship, straight, gay, and bisexual). Norah – the female lead – was stubborn and spunky in the book, but her onscreen counterpart (played by Kat Dennings) had less spunk and less security, leaving cinema goers with a weakened female protagonist who betrayed the usual boring sexist stereotype characteristics: she’s insecure about her prettier friends, seeks reassurance about her looks, blah blah blah. Film-Norah’s personal triumph onscreen is having an orgasm (ably assisted by Michael Cera’s magic fingers) and dumping her douchebag boyfriend. (Feminism rarely translates to the big screen, in case you were wondering).

The ‘villain’ of the story – Nick’s ex-girlfriend, Triss – was reduced from an interesting, three-dimensional character in the book (who actually gets a little girl-on-girl action in a bathroom with Norah) to a flat, two-dimensional bitch type with no interest in boys other than feeding her ego. (The lesbian scene doesn’t get a look in either, in case you’re interested.) The book did a fine job of portraying these less conventional female roles … but apparently Hollywood is less bothered about promoting strong and complex female characters. Bah.

A less cogent example of cutting too much from a literary source comes from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Because so few animals remain on Earth, owning one is a sign of prestige due to their expense. Because of this, many inhabitants of Earth choose cheaper, synthetic alternatives. It’s a key point that runs through the book, but is only really mentioned in Blade Runner when Deckard finds Zhora performing at a strip club with her synthetic snake. “Think I’d be working in a place like this if I could afford a real snake?” she asks him. This is the only allusion to the theme, which also raises the important question of what it means to consciousness and what it means “to be” – to be animal – versus to be human – versus to be android. Despite that omission, Blade Runner still makes for enjoyable viewing, whether you get the extra layer about consciousness, or not.

Who’s who…

There’s also the issue of casting. It’s incredibly difficult to please audiences who may have built up a detailed mental picture of what characters look and sound like. This is less of a problem for comic-book adaptations as there are clear visual cues – even though anybody who has witnessed Keanu Reeves playing John Constantine may disagree – but it can be much harder when adapting novels as the filmmakers are competeing against millions of personal versions of a character.

One of the reasons the Austen (etc) adaptations are always so well received is because of the choice of hero – it means that heaving bosoms across the land can heave a little higher, combining the sigh factor of a modern day dish with the mental picture they have created of the dashing hero. As an example, try Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (cue squeals of joy from around the world as he emerges from the lake dripping wet with white shirt clinging desperately to his weedy frame. Rrrrowr).

Returning to the Rum Diary, many purists would probably argue that, however awesome he is, Johnny Depp is a little too venerable to be playing the 20-something Paul Kemp. However, in this case, it works. This is partly because of Depp’s previous experience portraying one of Hunter S. Thompson’s literary alter-egos. But the age difference also adds another layer to the desperation of a writer needing to find his voice.

The angst and turmoil of Kemp in the book is the visceral passion of youth – where it’s almost second nature to rebel and fight the power (you have more energy, and less to lose). But transpose that desire to find your voice, the disaffection for state controls and the gradual realisation that the people in charge are corrupt beyond redemption to someone in their mid-forties (with less energy and without the prospect of an endless ‘rest of their life’ ahead of them) – and suddenly, you have a more poignant story and a stronger protagonist.

So there you have it. A step by step guide to producing the perfect literary adaptation by two people with zero experience of so doing. Please feel free to let us know how right/wrong we managed to get it. As a small bonus feature, here are a few of the best and worst examples of cinematic library raiding.

Yay!

Fight Club (1999)
David Fincher directly lifts much of the dialogue straight from Chuck Palahnuik’s novel, before adorning it with the his hyper-kinetic visual flair. Also features one of the best uses of music in film, as skyscrapers collapse to The Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’.

High Fidelity (2000)
Proof that making changes isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Despite transplanting the action from London to Chicago, the film perfectly captures the book’s central theme of obsessive man-children slowly learning how to live in the real world. It is also a fascinating relic of an era when John Cusack and Jack Black were in good movies.

The Shining (1980)
That Stephen King famously produced his own – infinitely shitter – version because of his dislike for Kubrick’s adaptation makes you seriously question the writer’s judgement. A nerve-shredding exercise in creeping dread and the main reason that we now think adorable female twins are completely terrifying.

Boo!

Gulliver’s Travels (2010)
Takes Swift’s 18th century satirical masterpiece and turns it into a Jack Black-driven vehicle for jokes about piss and thinly veiled adverts for Guitar Hero. Way to go Hollywood!

Constantine (2005)
OK so it’s a comic book adaptation, but one so egregious that it’s worth mentioning here. Casting Keanu Reeves as the cynical, blond-haired, Liverpudlian, chain-smoking occult detective John Constantine was a slap in the face to both fans of the book and basic logic.Woah!

I, Robot (2004)
Isaac Asimov’s original is a genre-defining piece of sci-fi that has served as a blueprint for much of what has followed it. Alex Proyas’ movie adaptation was an opportunity to make things blow up near Will Smith.

by Huw Thomas and Helia Phoenix

As Christmas draws near everyone is starting to get into the party mood… after a year of creating events from awareness campaigns for inspiring women, to the arts event Papergirl, Cardiff – to their games festival playARK – now thinkARK are ready to have a little festive break, recharge the batteries and start again next year!!!

If you are free this Sunday at 7pm, thinkARK would love to see you. Come and play their Christmas game Jokul Frosti, in Canton, Cardiff. They will also have some other surprises for you on the night.

To cover costs and also put a bit into the savings for our planned 2012 events, the tickets are £7.50 and you can get them from their eventbrite page: http://jokulfrosti.eventbrite.com

It’s going to be great fun, and I guarantee you will see Canton in a whole new light. If you can’t come but think someone might be interested please pass the info on.

‘Nyth’ (which is Welsh for ‘Nest’) is approaching its 3rd birthday in January and for the past three years we have enjoyed watching a growing audience as each event progresses and becomes increasingly more successful. It has earned a loyal following and is expanding into other areas of media, for example internet podcasts showcasing interviews and tracks by the artists involved. There are now five members of the ‘Nyth’ team and there are designs to stage the night in different venues across the country and limit it not only to gigs but to such cultural happenings as film-screenings and art exhibitions. We usually charge about £4 on the door which means we can just about cover the artists’ travelling fees and other overheads.

Our intention/ethos is and has always been simply to stage regular music nights that give a platform to bands both locally and from outside Cardiff and provide entertainment to (good)music-lovers from 18-80. One of the members of our team is a set-designer by trade and we put a lot of effort into decorating the venue which gives the nights a personal touch, something that I feel is lost in Cardiff’s mainstream gig venues. We pride ourselves on having a multi-lingual/cultural following, as we showcase both Welsh and English bands/artrists (and have even put on a gig with René Griffiths all the way from Patagonia in the past). We co-hosted a stage in this year’s Sŵn Festival, and amongst other artists, the world-famous Gruff Rhys (of Super Furry Animals fame) played a secret gig for us.

This Christmas we have organised a very special gig with great acts and DJs involved.

The special guests joining us for our Magnificent Christmas Party are:

No Thee No Ess
Tim Ten Yen
Fennel Seeds
Twll Daear/Pry Genwair
Guest DJs

8th of December, £4/5 on the door, Gwdihw Bar, 6 Guildford Crescent, Cardiff.
Gwdihw website

Check out the photos below, and keep an eye on the We Are Cardiff site for Dan’s story, coming soon…