Culture
During the summer of 2010, the television production company Wall to Wall filmed a series for BBC One in the town centre which was broadcast from 2 November 2010. Called Turn Back Time - The High Street, the series features a number of families running traditional bakers, butchers, grocers, and dressmakers shops, as well as a tea room, as they would have been during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, during World War II, and in the 1960s and 1970s.
A town fete called Collett Day is held in June in the town's Collett Park. Two annual agricultural shows are held close to the town: the four-day Royal Bath and West Show, which is held at the showground of the Royal Bath and West of England Society near Evercreech, 2.5 mi (4.0 km) south-east of the town, while the one-day Mid-Somerset Show is held on fields on Shepton Mallet's southern edge. Other events held at the Bath and West Showground include the New Wine and Soul Survivor festivals, the Shepton Mallet International Antiques & Collectors' Fair, the National Amateur Gardening Show and the National Adventure Sports Show.
The Glastonbury Festival, the largest music festival in Europe, is held in the village of Pilton, approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south-west of Shepton Mallet. The Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music was held at Shepton Mallet in 1970. The town also hosts the annual Shepton Mallet Digital Arts Festival which was founded in 2009.
In 2007, The Amulet complex in the town centre became the base for the Bristol Academy of Performing Arts (BAPA), and the complex was renamed The Academy. In 2009, BAPA went into administration and was briefly replaced by the Musical Theatre School, before that also failed. The complex's auditorium has the only suspended seating system in the United Kingdom.
The town's weekly newspaper, part of the Mid Somerset Series, is called the Shepton Mallet Journal. The town is also covered by the Fosse Way Magazine and Mendip Times.
In 2007, Shepton Mallet came to international attention when Westcountry Farmhouse Cheesemakers broadcast the maturation of a round of Cheddar cheese called Wedginald, an event that attracted more than 1.5 million viewers.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)
“The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)