Hi from Don and Joanne,

Showcase is once more filled with an interesting selection of work. There’s a poem by Vicki Feaver; a short story by Grace Sim, a member of the Lanark Writers’ Group; a felt handbag by Lynn Ramsbottom, a member of Diverse Fibres; a photograph by Jimmy Maxwell ; a painting by Julie Morris and a song from Koda. We thank all of those contributors and wish them well in the rest of their work. Please keep your contributions coming in for future showcases.

Events in our listings now cover the period up till the end of May. They are taken from group schedules and a lot of groups will come to end-of-season round about then. We rely on you to let us know when, or if, your group takes a Summer break and if you want to change your listing in any way. Even if you have all these details on your own website, I’m afraid it would take us too long to research, so please do just drop us an email.

‘But now,’ in the words of Monty Python, ‘for something completely different!’ We have wanted for some time to increase the interactivity of our website. So, this month, we have taken the plunge and launched a discussion 'forum' via the 'Smartgroups' website, provided free (except for some advertisements) by Yahoo. We want the forum to be a place where any topic which might be relevant to the artistic and cultural life of the Clyde Valley can be aired.

How does it work we hear you ask? The forum is called clydevalley.net and you can join in by surfing to

www.smartgroups.com/groups/clydevalley.net

There you must first register by supplying an email address and a password of your choice. After registering as a member, you can return to the forum at any time and 'log in' using your name and password. We have also added a link on the clydevalley.net front page labelled 'Forum'. Just clicking on that will take you to the forum page where you can log in.

Once logged in, you can do quite a few things such as start a discussion on any topic, add your views to those of others or just read and ponder on what others are saying. All contributions to the forum are by email, and you can choose to automatically receive all emails which are sent to the forum so, if you do, you might want to set up your email program with a special mailbox and filter to collect them. Alternatively you might prefer to just receive a 'digest' from time to time. There is a 'help' button if you need it and we will also try to respond to emails if you get into difficulty with anything.

This is an experiment. We've initially set up the forum to be as open and unrestricted as possible, and we'll see how it goes. Our aim is to widen participation and encourage better communication and dialogue among the cultural community of the valley. To get you going, we have already posted a question but we are going to try to stay in the background as much as possible. This is your forum.

Joanne and Don