This article is Sponsored by Wells Festival of Literature, bringing writers, readers and big ideas to the heart of Wells.

Wells has creativity in several forms this week, beginning with Wells Business Women In Meet Up on Thursday before Saturday brings both Introduction To Embroidery - Flowercup and the Stand Up to Cancer Music Quiz. Wells Art Contemporary is also continuing at the Cathedral, so there is little danger of the city running short of things to look at, make or answer questions about.

Thursday, 15 October starts in Shepton Mallet with More than widows weeds at The Salvation Army. Fashion curator and researcher Jennifer Parker will explore the history of mourning fashion in Britain, including Georgian customs, the use of black and Victorian mourning jewellery. Doors open at 7pm and the talk begins at 7.30pm. Entry costs £2 for members and £4 for non-members, with cash preferred. Mourning dress may sound like a fairly narrow wardrobe choice, but several centuries of fashion history apparently beg to differ.

Also on Thursday, Wells Business Women In Meet Up takes place at Fosso Lounge in Wells. The networking group is for women running businesses, working in corporate roles, developing side projects or looking to make useful professional connections locally. The emphasis is on conversation, listening and support rather than collecting business cards at competitive speed. Victoria Marshall, a strategic marketing consultant and paid ads specialist, hosts the Wells group.

Friday, 16 October brings another session of Little Seedlings Parent & Toddler Group in Shepton Mallet from 10am to 11.30am. The term-time group follows a forest school ethos and offers nature activities, arts and crafts, pond dipping, outdoor play and a mud kitchen. Parents, grandparents and other family members can attend, with sessions costing £8 plus £3 for each additional toddler. Mud kitchens remain one of the few kitchens where adding another handful of soil is rarely considered a culinary error.

Saturday, 17 October gives Wells a particularly busy diary. Introduction To Embroidery - Flowercup runs at Heritage Courtyard Gallery and Studios on Sadler Street. Royal School of Needlework-trained embroiderer Helen Richman will introduce beginners to hand embroidery stitches and techniques before helping them create a piece to take home. The workshop runs from 10am to 4pm and costs £65, with materials and equipment included. Teas, coffees and sweet treats are also provided, which seems a sensible precaution during six hours of concentrating on very small stitches.

Saturday evening in Wells brings the Stand Up to Cancer Music Quiz to Tramways on West Street from 7pm. Clive Hennessy will host the charity quiz, with teams of up to six people paying £5 per person. There will also be a raffle and a bar, with booking essential. Money raised will support Stand Up To Cancer through Cancer Research UK. The difficult part, as ever, will be discovering which team member has been quietly storing the names of obscure 1980s B-sides for exactly this moment.

At the Bath & West Showground, The Big Southwest Wedding Fair begins on Saturday and continues on Sunday, 18 October. More than 80 wedding professionals are due to attend, with couples able to explore suppliers, displays, live entertainment and catwalks while planning their day. There are opportunities to book, try, hire or buy wedding essentials under one roof. Anyone who thought choosing a cake was going to be the simple bit may be about to discover otherwise. The Bath & West Showground also confirms the fair for 17–18 October.

Sunday, 18 October brings Family Farm & Crafts Afternoon to Paddington Farm Trust in Glastonbury from 2pm to 4pm. Families will meet and feed goats, alpacas and ponies before heading into the barn for autumn crafts. The free session is aimed at children aged five to 11, with a maximum of three children per adult, and places must be booked. It is funded through the National Lottery Awards for All fund. Farm animals followed by craft supplies is a Sunday afternoon combination with very little opportunity for boredom. Paddington Farm Trust's own programme confirms the event for Sunday, 18 October.

Tuesday, 20 October sees The Arts Society Mid Somerset lecture on 'How the Advertising Industry Exploited Fine Art' at Caryford Hall. Tony Rawlins will draw on his advertising career to examine how works by artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael have been used to promote brands. Coffee is available from 10.15am for £1.50, members attend free and visitors pay £8. Even the Renaissance masters, it seems, have not escaped the attentions of the advertising department.

Tuesday evening also brings Group Soundscape with Helen Stillwell to Mells Barn. Doors open at 7pm for a 7.15pm start, with the session using gongs, crystal and Himalayan bowls, percussion and drum for an hour of therapeutic sound and relaxation. Pre-booking is essential. After a diary involving networking, wedding fairs and farm animals, an hour spent lying down listening to a gong may arrive at precisely the right moment.

Wednesday, 21 October brings Field To Food Learning Day to the Bath & West Showground. The Royal Bath & West Society event helps primary school children learn how food is produced and where it comes from through practical, hands-on activities involving farming and agriculture. The Society has split the programme across two learning days in 2026, with 21 October forming the second event. This one is for participating primary schools rather than a general public day out, so parents should not simply arrive at the gate expecting an impromptu agricultural school trip.

Also on Wednesday, Fun Dancing takes place at Chewton Mendip Village Hall from 5.30pm to 6.30pm. Helena Eden leads easy-to-follow routines drawing on a mixture of dance styles and music from across the decades, with both high and low-impact options available. Drop-in sessions cost £10, or five sessions cost £42.50. The emphasis is firmly on fun, which takes a useful amount of pressure off anyone whose left and right feet have historically declined to cooperate.

Two longer-running exhibitions also continue through the week. Wells Art Contemporary remains at Wells Cathedral until 7 November, with this year's "For what is time?" exhibition featuring 20 installations around the Cathedral and 100 artworks in the Cloisters. Meanwhile, Moments of Light continues at Dorothy House Hospice Care in Winsley until 31 December, with Bruce Munro's large-scale light installation marking the hospice's 50th anniversary.

More local stories

• Wells: Nearly 20,000 visitors flood Wells for huge food festival
• Glastonbury and Street: Glastonbury's Lux Tanning wins Somerset award after six months
• Shepton Mallet: Shepton football club offers fans a seat with their name on it

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