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Nice touch: Chloe Petts feeling lippy at the prospect of headlining first Basement Comedy Club bill at City Screen Picturehouse on August 16

CITY Screen Picturehouse, York, has redecorated The Basement for the first time in 15 years for concerts, comedy and more.

The refurbishment will be marked by the launch of a new comedy night. “Although we’ll still be working with Damion Larkin for Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club nights on the first Saturday of the month, we’ve now set up our own Basement Comedy Club,” says City Screen general manager Cath Sharp.

“It’ll be held on the third Sunday of the month, so as not to compete with Laugh Out Loud. It’s been many years since we had our own club – remember The Other Side?”

The first bill, on August 16, at what will be the regular early evening kick-off of 6pm, will feature Chloe Petts, Faizan Shah and Lovdev Barpaga, introduced by MC Sara Barron.

Sara Barron: Compere for August 16 bill at The Basement

Petts has been touring their 2025 Edinburgh Fringe show Big Naturals, addressing lad culture and identity politics. Manchester comic Shah sheds light on his experiences growing up in an immigrant household, along with the mental health challenges this journey often entails.

Barpaga is a comedian, breakfast show presenter on FreeRadio in Birmingham and podcaster, hosting “Crazy Little Thing Called Lovdev”. On the comedy circuit for ten years now, he specialises in crafting old school-style one liners and puns.

Compere Barron made her Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2018 and has toured such shows as For Worse (2018), Enemies Closer (2019), Hard Feelings (2022) and Anything For You (2024). She co-created the Succession recap podcast Firecrotch and Normcore and presents They Like to Watch, a weekly TV discussion podcast.

She is taking her work-in-progress show Slop to the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe, where she will explore topics ranging from grannies and dogs to adult films and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Looking ahead, in the diary for September 20 are Daliso Chaponda, Hannah Platt, Dom Hatton-Woods and MC Raul Kholi, followed on October 18 by Lauren Pattison, Nicola Mantalios, Aaron Simmonds and MC Aaron Wood.

The redecorated Basement at City Screen Picturehouse

“It’s us and the Hackney Picturehouse, in East London, that will be running comedy clubs among the Picturehouse cinemas,” says Cath. “Hackney Picturehouse is doing a Saturday programme organised by Jon Barrenechea, and we’ve chosen to do Sundays with an early-doors policy with three acts and a compere from 6pm.”

As part of the Basement revamp, “we’ll be running a menu downstairs – the cinema auditorium menu – served on paper plates, and on cabaret nights, on crockery,” says Cath.

“The Basement capacity will be 100, seated in rows or standing, with a cabaret night capacity of 50, making it York’s most intimate venue.”

Veteran performer and producer Poppy Pout Presents will be putting on burlesque and cabaret nights, while the York Filmmakers club will continue to hold bi-monthly selection of shorts and BFI (British Film Institute) screenings.

The poster for Pigeon Paint Off, the live art competition at The Basement on September 12, in aid of Columba Sanctuary and Advocacy for Pigeons

RARE Collective artist Sharon McDonagh (alias spAm) and artist/DJ Sola will hold a DJ Night on a date yet to be confirmed. The Dead Toe Society’s Pigeon Paint Off day will take over The Basement on September 12 from 11am until late in a day filled with live music, talks and stalls, as well as the centrepiece of two rounds of the paint-off featuring pigeon-loving artists from all over the country.

Visitors will have the chance to “learn more about why pigeons need our support and how you can help advocate for their wellbeing”. The artworks will then go on display in a three-week exhibition.

The Basement upgrade, carried out by Picturehouse Cinemas to a design by architect Marta Tavares, has introduced a new lighting rig and sound panels, ox-blood red chairs and a French navy colour scheme on the walls, topped off by flamingo-pink on the stanchions.

Further features are a new screen for York Filmmakers and new microphone stands, while the floor has been re-painted and the adjoining green room for performers has new carpeting. Meanwhile, the old Basement chairs have found a new home at St Oswald’s Church, Fulford.

New red-and-black carpeting has been fitted at City Screen for the first time since 2000, with off-cuts being used in The Basement as flooring for drummers. The City Screen bar is to be re-fitted in October and new furniture will be provided for the first-floor terrace space.

Gill Riley’s exhibit from A Northern Landscape, on display in the Upstairs Gallery at City Screen Picturehouse

New mustard-yellow blinds have been installed on the first-floor corridor, where the latest exhibition, York Learning’s summer show, A Northern Landscape, is running in the Upstairs Gallery until September 4.

Course tutors challenged painting, drawing and watercolour learners aged 19 upwards to capture the essence of landscapes on plywood canvases, and now the work of more than 70 artists is on show.

This year also has welcomed the introduction of The Book Club programme at City Screen, launched on May 31, when Elizabeth Strout was in conversation with broadcaster Francine Stock, broadcast live from Picturehouse Central.

On August 4, Jaqueline Crooks marked the release of her new novel, Sky City, a spellbinding portrait of 1990s’ London, in conversation broadcast live from The Ritzy in Brixton.

Next up, Waterstones York presents Tidings: Poetry Quarterly featuring Kimberly Campanello at The Basement on September 22 from 7pm to 9pm. Contact event coordinator Nick Newman for more details at Manager.York@waterstones.com.

*Painter Kimbal Bumstead stands outside According To McGee against a backdrop of the soon-to-reopen Clifford’s Tower*

YORK gallery According To McGee launches its Return Of The Painter 2022 series with a duo exhibition by painters Kimbal Bumstead and Simon Crawford.

Gallery co-directors Greg and Ails McGee have opted to put the emphasis on scale and colour. “But it’s not just the ‘wow’ factor,” says Ails. “There are deeper meanings behind the collections of Kimbal and Simon. This, and the fact that their latest paintings dovetail so well with each other, means that the time is right to hand over the reins to both of these fascinating artists.”

Bumstead and Crawford are synchronising their creativity for the first time for this show’s run from Saturday until Monday, April 4 at the Tower Street gallery.

Bumstead, new to York but with years of experience of painting under his belt, brings a new energy to the gallery buoyed by exhibiting in Sheffield, Tokyo, Amsterdam and at the Mall Galleries in London, as well as teaching abstract art classes with York Learning.

“It’s really thrilling to be an artist,” he says. “My job is to bring things into existence that weren’t there before, and I use colour and mark-making to get there. But there are other aspects too. These paintings aren’t just experiments in colour, nor are they just expressions of feelings, they are also explorations of journeys into other worlds.”

*Painter Kimbal Bumstead, right, with All Saints School students Emma Storkey, George Clarke and Emmanuelle Butler, on work experience at According To McGee*

The Kimbal Bumstead collection, Segments Of Journeys, hangs on the wall of the front gallery opposite Clifford’s Tower, where they “pulse and shimmer, suggesting memories and half-formed ideas”.

“The subject matter isn’t fixed, it’s yet to be defined,” says Bumstead. “If the idea of journeying is the building block of the painting, the overarching theme is that there’s no destination.

“I love the process of trying to let go and getting lost in the painting. That’s a positive to me and reflects on how I live my life. Stuff happens, you navigate it, and hopefully you enjoy the process.

“I like trying to see a street differently each time I walk down it, and the same goes for my paintings. Each time I look at them, I find something new, something I hadn’t noticed before.”

Bumstead points to the intersecting colours and mark making on the surfaces of his paintings, with some strokes sliding into areas that had been painted much earlier. “It’s like landscapes,” he says. “I like how a landscape in real life has different layers. Physical layers, ideas that people project, memories, different stories, traces of the old next to the new. It’s something I’m really keen on capturing.”

*Cool Shade, Running Water, by Simon Crawford*

Explaining further, he says: “It’s not dissimilar to experiencing York as a city. On the one hand, you see what’s on the surface, the old buildings next to new ones, but then there’s another world, the one you have to imagine, the one where different stories have taken place and settled like sediment. That’s really the case with this collection; there is not just one way of seeing it.”

Gallery co-director Greg says: “It’s heavy stuff, but at its heart it’s an antidote to the current obsession with targets and data. This is less harnessing data and more harnessing dreams, which is a priority in most artists’ manifestos.”

On the opposite wall hangs Cool Shade And Hot Light, the new collection by Knaresborough artist Simon Crawford. “In terms of scope and vividity, the collections complement each other, with Simon’s approach perhaps more relatively literal in his depictions of his experiences,” says Greg.

Crawford’s work comes in response to his travels in India. “To call it a ‘life-changing experience’ is to underestimate it,” he says. “It brought me new textures and colours, and I have been trying to skewer them in my palette and on the surface of my canvases since. I think this collection is a true representation of what I saw and how I saw it.”

After exhibitions in Dean Clough galleries in Halifax, Moscow galleries and Messums North, he brings his impressionistic portraits of India to According To McGee, much to Greg’s delight.

*Surrounded by colour: Painter Simon Crawford with his artworks at According To McGee*

“What’s especially great is that when Simon now turns his attention to northern subject matters, he filters his depictions through the conduit of tropical heat, so that you get Rievaulx Abbey endowed with the glittering humidity of an Indian jungle,” he says.

“It’s witty and sensual, and it’s exactly what we’re looking for in our search for more excellent painters to represent. Simon’s use of colour is instantly recognisable, and it’s humbling to see he’s showing no signs of backing down.”

Ails adds: “The Punjabi palette seems to work really well with our collectors, especially here in the north. Whether it’s from Simon or Kimbal, or from McGee favourites like Amrik Varkalis, a fearless celebration of hot colour connects with clients. Whether that’s down to the general doom and gloom of our times, or the drizzly weather, we haven’t worked out yet!

“But we’ve worked hard on curating this exhibition, helped in no small way by Emma Storkey, Emmanuelle Butler and George Clarke, who, as Year 10 students from All Saints School, have spent ten days on work experience with us.”

Return Of The Painter 2022: Kimbal Bumstead and Simon Crawford launches at According To McGee, Tower Street, York, on Saturday at 12 noon and closes on April 4. Gallery opening hours: Monday to Friday, 11am to 3pm; Saturdays, 11am to 4pm; or by appointment on 07973 653702.

Tag: York Learning

New-look Basement at City Screen Picturehouse launches monthly Sunday comedy club from August 16

Kimbal Bumstead and Simon Crawford unite to bring bursts of profuse colour to According To McGee in synchronised show