From Monday 27 June Tibetan monks from the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery will be creating a colourful Sand Mandala in the Garden Room at Gold Hill Museum. This beautiful but short-lived work of art represents a Buddha’s palace and is composed of millions of grains of coloured sand, painstakingly put into place using hollow metal funnels called Chagpurs. The monks can be seen at work during normal opening hours 10.30a.m. to 4.30p.m. and there is no charge. On Thursday at 6.30p.m. there will be a talk about the Monastery and the Sand Mandala; tickets can be collected from the Garden Room. The monks’ residency concludes on Monday 04 July with a ceremony starting at 10.30a.m. in which the completed design is ritually swept up and dispersed.

Tickets for a 7.00p.m. Monday 04 July performance by the monks of sacred music and dance in Shaftesbury Town Hall are available online at Eventbrite.com and from “Nature’s Treasures” in Shaftesbury High Street.

Fourteen British ships were sunk, and over 6000 Royal Navy personnel died, in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916. Two British battlecruisers blew up spectacularly with almost total loss of life. At least three local men died at Jutland: Gilbert John Maidment of Shaftesbury, Cecil Herbert Riggs of Berwick St John, and Harold Percival Hoskins of Enmore Green. Their details are now included in the Shaftesbury Remembers the Great War exhibition at Gold Hill Museum, thanks to the researches of HLF Community Project volunteer Chris Stupples.

The first three hours of the Battle of the Somme on 01 July 1916 claimed 50,000 British casualties, of whom 19,000 were killed. This will be the focus of the next Reminiscence Afternoon at Shaftesbury Library on Tuesday 28 June 2.30 – 3.30p.m. Another of the highly popular Ancestry Afternoons will take place at Shaftesbury Library on Friday 24 June 1.30 – 3.00p.m. For details of these Community Project events please email Ann Symons and Claire Ryley at education@goldhillmuseum.org.uk or phone Gold Hill Museum on 01747 852157.