In 2009, George Langworthy and Maryam Henein released The Vanishing Of The Bees – a documentary about the disappearance of honey bees, and the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. As part of the film’s grassroots Bee The Change campaign, there’ll be a screening of the film on Thursday, January 19, at Otley Courthouse.

Narrated by Ellen Page (Juno, Inception), The Vanishing Of The Bees has been hailed as a hard-hitting successor to An Inconvenient Truth. Its subject may not initially seem important, but the film brings home all the reasons why we need to pay attention – not least of all because the bees’ disappearance poses a serious threat to world food supplies, as commercial honeybees pollinate the crops that make up a third of our food produce. To highlight the problems illustrated in the film, there will be a follow-up Q&A session with a panel of experts, including West Yorkshire’s Bee Inspector from the government’s Food And Environment Research Agency. Honey stalls will also be there for the evening, helping raise funds for both Bees for Development and Otley Courthouse.

If you’d rather blame it on the Bossa Nova than on the bees, come and join us for Bossa Revista on Saturday, January 21.

The group invite us to join their celebration of bossa nova music, as well offering a tribute to the genre’s father, Antonio Carlos Jobim, writer of the classic Girl from Ipanema and frequent collaborator with Frank Sinatra. It promises to be a night full of plenty of fantastic tunes from 1950s Brazil, when folk and urban life in Rio came together to create many of the best songs in the world.

To book for these events, or check out our brand new Spring programme, visit our website otleycourthouse.org.uk, or find us on Facebook and Twitter!.