Thanks very much to all who attended and performed.

The event was a fantastic mix of poetry, prose, music and comedy with some random rambling (apparently about me!) courtesy of my Dad who was asked to tell a story whilst I did an interview- ta very much for that Dad!

We had over 200 people come along during the day and performances from:

Dermot B. Glennon
Matt Dennerly
John Calvert
Adam and Andy
Arthur Chapelle
Segun Lee-French
Dave Morgan
David Aldred
Paul Broadhurst
Belowski
Suzanne Finchett
Honor Donnelly
Kate Cocker
Sandre Clays
John Clays
Ray
Rod Tame
Don Parry
Dominic Berry
Hannah Dennerly
Steven Waling
Gordon Zola
Gaetana
Amanda Ng with Richard and Phil
Gary McMahon
And me

It was great to see such a vast array of different ages, backgrounds, styles, delivery and experience all at one event. There were seasoned performers and those who had never performed in public before.

The atmosphere was one of mutual encouragement and as Hannah Dennerly put it, we were all there to celebrate each other's creativity and passion for the spoken (or sung) word.

All in all the event was an excellent start to The 24 Hour Arty People's intended programme of events. We really felt that we had begun to achieve our aim of inspiring new artists and encouraging existing ones, just as Tony Wilson did.

My Mum took 100’s of photos during the event. Every performer was photographed, You will find them in a few days at:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17229507415&ref=ts and http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=17404759836&ref=ts .

Join our Facebook group for details of future events: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17229507415&ref=ts.

I would like to again thank everyone who helped out with this event, The Royal Exchange and our sponsors.

Please tune in to the Channel M breakfast news on Monday at 6-9am to see my interview and some clips of some of the morning performers.

Also, thanks for bearing with me during my first go at compering (I had to choose a 5 hour event for my first one didn't I?!)

Well done you arty lot!

Cheers Gemma,
I know I ended up chatting over coffee around the corner for much of before having to get home for the Stockton Heath festival, but from the bits I saw it looked like a roaring success - I thought I'd be performing to almost nobody at that time of the morning but there was a very good turnout.

A huge thanks to Gemma and everyone who helped make this amazing event go so well - I was around all day and perfomed quite early on myself - lots of highlights, and Gemma's dad stole the whole show - hope he gets the bug for performance so we see more

Just a special thanks to Gemma for making a very nervous poet into a yeah, I can do this poet! You gave me a great introduction which put me at ease! Thanks for all your hard work in making it happen & I'm there to help out in anyway for the next one! Thanks to your Mum & Dad also who were great!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17229507415

Photos from the event taken by Andy Brown have been added to our group on Facebook.

Hi Gemma

John and I had a really lovely time and what an interesting venue. All the poets were great. Thank you for organising much needed poetry events.

Sounds like a great time was held by all! Only wish I could have being there!

Thanks very much for all of your feedback.

I've now uploaded the 200+ photos taken by my Mum, Louise:

http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=17229507415&view=all

I missed the first third, but the last two I really liked most of what I heard. I was glad of the chance to read some new poems.

I liked most the non-competitive nature of the reading. I think there's too much competition in poetry anyway, and it was good to go somewhere where the poets actually stayed around to listen, and were open to all kinds of stuff.