I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be hosting a new festival in my home city of Wells later this year - the Wells Stone Carving Festival.
Taking place over the May Day bank holiday weekend, the festival will bring together a small group of talented stonemasons and carvers from across the UK who will each create a sculpture in just 2.5 days.
They will be provided with the same piece of local limestone and given the brief of Medieval England: Knights, Bishops & Kings from which to draw their inspiration. Expect an array of sculptures or reliefs covering everything from heraldry to the church, crusades to the crown, grotesques, peasants and iconography - both traditional and contemporary interpretations.
The festival is a great opportunity for the small number of craftspeople still practicing this ancient skill today to showcase their skill and creativity to the general public, and it will take place in a city which was built using the same methods centuries ago.
We'll have some food, music and talks alongside the carving so they'll be plenty to see and do, and they'll even be an opportunity to pick up a mallet and chisel yourself and try your hand at masonry, letter cutting or carving.
The final sculptures will be auctioned off on Monday afternoon, so if you see something you like you can place a bid, either through a sealed bid or live in the auction. Or you can also buy a raffle ticket if you want to win a carving that I will create especially for the festival.
The festival will take place at The Bishop's Barn, a medieval tithe barn located in the recreation ground in the centre of the city. The Wells Recreation Ground Trust is running a programme of events at this year to bring this underappreciated and underused historic building back into the heart of the community.
The trust wants to give this unique space a purpose and ensure it can generate enough revenue each year to ensure its long-term future and cover the maintenance of the building and the wider recreation ground.
If you want to find out more about the festival or you want to get involved then take a look at the website - www.wellsstonecarvingfestival.com - or drop me a line directly.
I look forward to announcing more details soon.