ELEVEN music shows, two films, two talks, two Big Frugs featuring poetry and music, and a night with Cornwall comedian Johnny Cowling will make up St Ives Arts Club’s impressive array of 18 events at this year’s St Ives September Festival.

Starting with Cornwall singer-songwriter Will Keating and award-winning banjo player John Dowling on Saturday, September 13, the Arts Club volunteers are in for a busy fortnight which ends with Joanna Cooke – once described by the legendary Martha Reeves as “the baby girl singing the blues” – and her band on Saturday, September 27.

An impressive array of Arts Club music also includes shows with West Country folk singers Miranda Sykes, Jim Causley, Alex Hart and The Richard Trethewey Trio, the return of Martyn Barker’s Tea Band from east Yorkshire and a first-time appearance for multi-instrumentalist Séamus Mckenna.

St Ives will be represented by Dave and Dee Brotherton with their self-penned Cornwall – A Sense of Place, lunchtime appearances by The Larks – Nicole Tesseyman and Josh Frost – and the Arts Club Ukelele Collective who will be performing a free show outside their home venue on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 24.

Comedian Johnn Cowling is at the Arts Club on Saturday, September 20 and two more of poetry icon Bob Devereux’s traditional Big Frugs will take place on both Thursdays of the Festival.

Thursday, September 18 will see back-to-back talks with local historian Janet Axten’s From St Ives Arts Club to Tate St Ives: The Movers and Shakers Who Created Our Cultural Heritage at 11am followed by Liz Fenwick, an American author living in Cornwall, at 1.30pm.

The two featured films are fund-raising screening of Wind, Tide and Oar for St Ives Jumbo Association and Enys Men, the mind-bending folk horror from Bafta award-winning film director Mark Jenkin who will be conducting a Q&A session afterwards.

Festival details and booking are online at www.stivesseptemberfestival.co.uk