Tributes paid to promoter of music and arts who made cultural contribution to Penwith

Former editor of The Cornishman Richard Vanhinsbergh and Jane Val Baker look back on the life of Martin Val Baker, who was dedicated to promoting the arts and music in Penwith and beyond

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An outwardly modest man with a wry, piercing sense of humour, Martin Val Baker, who has died aged 80, was a massive influence for more than five decades, in promoting music and the arts in Penwith in particular, and more widely in Cornwall.

A look at some of the headline chapters in the draft of his never-published memoirs will give some idea of a life devoted to these passions:

>> Heligan and the beatniks, covering an idyllic childhood spent between Heligan and St Ives which was colonised by an influx of Beats in the Sixties

>> Banning the bomb, his early life as an activist and lifetime pacifist

>> Art school in the Sixties, covering his time at Falmouth and Hornsey

>> Interlude and Rainydays, setting up his print works and gallery

>> Putting on the music, from folk clubs around the peninsula to gigs at St Ives Guildhall, the Penzance Winter Gardens, the St Ives September Festival, world music at the Acorn and more, with a host of famous and up-and-coming names covering more than 50 years

>> Peninsula Voice, in which Martin was one of the prime movers in establishing this alternative, popular and often scurrilous publication which thrived for a time in the Eighties. It in turn gave birth to the book Eighty from the Eighties, published by Martin, giving a snapshot of the Penwith cultural and artistic scene at that time, with photo portraits by Ashley Peters and profiles by some of the Voice contributors