Keith Pockett
Dartmouth Connections - Keith Pockett, The New Chairman of The Flavel Trustees
“I love this place – it has brought something special to Dartmouth that didn’t exist before, a focus for leisure and entertainment and is the core of arts for the surrounding area. I am proud to be involved.”
Keith Pockett’s description of the Flavel, a project so close to his heart he has agreed to become the new chairman of the Flavel Trustees. It’s a time of change for the arts and community centre with its library, theatre and meeting rooms – as Keith explained: “The Flavel has been with us for four and a half years now and was built after a long campaign of fundraising and hard work.
“Now it finds itself in a renaissance time. A lot of the original people who have been with the project from the very start have decided it is time to move on. They have done a marvellous job and given Dartmouth this wonderful venue. Now it is brilliant that new people have come forward with fresh ideas to join us. Their experience and their new approaches will bring new enthusiasm to the Flavel.
“It is a big business with huge responsibilities and has to be properly run, which it is, and kept top of the mark. As trustees, we have to make sure we have a building that is fit for purpose and sufficient funds for it to be run successfully. It is a lot of work – but very rewarding.”
Keith’s enthusiasm and good humour are tangible. He is a man of contradictions – an accountant and insurance brokerage consultant who can’t draw or paint, but who loves the arts especially theatre, films, comedy and even acting! When we meet in the Flavel’s new upstairs lounge area he is nursing a sore head – an injury sustained while being carried in a sedan chair during rehearsals for his role of Robin Hood’s Mother in the forthcoming Christmas pantomime of the Dartmouth Players. “If only I had been wearing my wig – it might not have bled so much!”
In 2003, Keith answered a newspaper advertisement to join the trustees, quickly assuming the role of treasurer with his gift for numbers.
Keith said: “My wife June and I had come home to Kingswear after many years away in London and Suffolk. Originally I commuted away for half the week, carrying on consultancy work, but I suddenly had to take early retirement when diagnosed with glaucoma and could no longer drive. The Flavel’s appeal for new trustees came just at the right time – here was a chance to do something good for the town that I love.”
And the love affair with Dartmouth, Kingswear and the River Dart has been there since birth, through joy and tragedy. Keith was born in Townstal in 1947, in his grandparents’ house in Rodney Close. He remembers with misty eyed pleasure chugging up the wintry Dart in his grandfather’s boat, his brother tightly bound in a woolly duffle coat, with the little engine they affectionately called Dumpy powering them forward. He recalls the delight of crabbing and the trip to the old cinema to see Moby Dick with his aunt, although it ended in tears: “Three minutes into the film I was so terrified and in such floods of tears that we had to leave!”
Keith was just three years old when his mother, Joyce, contracted polio and died. His extended family scooped up the little boy and surrounded him with love, and he went to live with his grandparents in Kingswear, attending the village school. His grandfather was the lodge keeper at Britannia Royal Naval College for many years and was followed into the job by Keith’s Uncle John, who also became the Town Sergeant.
Meanwhile Keith’s father, a bricklayer who helped build the houses at Townstal after the war, had moved to London, and eventually remarried. When Keith was seven he went to live with his father, but explained: “It made me most unhappy – I missed the Dart, the sea, and my home. I hated London with its thick green smog – the peasoupers as my father called them.
“We came to Dartmouth several times a year, often for regatta which I loved, and I always considered this my home. June and I bought our own house in Kingswear, finally, seven years ago and it is so good to be home! Even my brothers who were born in London consider Dartmouth their real home.”
Keith and June have three daughters who live in the South East of England and delight in the company of their four grandchildren – a fifth is on the way!
“My grandson is an old man of 10 and on his last visit he sank into an armchair and announced ‘It’s good to be home’ – they love it here as much as we do! I’m sure Megan, my grand daughter, thinks we go ‘crabbying’ every day!”
The Flavel’s success is a joy to Keith and something he hopes to build on in his time as chairman. He was delighted to see it full on a recent visit to the cinema, and said: “It already offers something for everyone but I want to make it even more accessible and wide ranging.
“It is a wonderful place with excellent friendly staff who have a vitality that is so important, and a tireless team of more than 100 volunteers who do so much. I have made many friends here – I help with maintenance work, attend events, and work behind the bar and even perform on the stage! It is a delightful and vital asset to this special town.”
First Published October 2009 By The Dart
