Networking Highlands and Islands Arts

KENNY MATHIESON hears about the work of DUNCAN MACINNES, who is the administrator of PAN, the Highland-wide promoters network, and is involved in running SEALL Arts and the Skye Festival in south Skye.

DUNCAN MACINNES was born in distant Hertfordshire, but Skye was very much a part of his family roots. His father was a Skyeman, and Duncan spent childhood holidays on the island before moving there permanently in the late 60s. He took a degree in Civil Engineering and Physical Geography, and worked as a Countryside Ranger on the Clan Donald estate for 16 years until he opted to go freelance.

His early involvement in the arts came through participation in local amateur drama and music, including folk music and the local Gaelic choir (although he admits to not being a fully-fledged speaker of the language). His involvement in promoting arts events came about largely by chance.

“The promotion end of it began when one group from Edinburgh wanted to come up to Skye, and they happened to have my name as a contact for the village hall. They came up and did their own show in the village hall, and it was fun. The next stage was getting slowly sucked into the old Highland Council system, when Peter Quillam-Cane was the arts officer.

“He was the one who nurtured various local promoters, like Jean Urquhart at the Ceilidh Place and Willie Wilson at Lyth Arts Centre. That group was really the early days of what became PAN. I can’t really praise Peter’s approach enough – he found out what was going on locally and nurtured it, rather than marching in and saying right, here’s what you’re going to do.

“I had worked at Clan Donald for about 16 years, and gave it up about 12 years ago to go freelance, and I got more involved with arts development then. A little before that, maybe 1988 or so, I had started getting involved more in actively promoting rather than very occasionally receiving visiting groups. I started putting on things at the visitor centre at Clan Donald – I was countryside ranger and self-appointed arts officer!

“We quickly built up a supportive local audience, and some of those people who were coming along were keen to get involved and turn it into more of a community project than a one-man band, and that was when SEALL Arts (Sleat Entertainments for All) was started, in May 1991. The Skye Festival began that year as well.”

SEALL is run by a  committee of six, and promotes a variety of different arts forms, other than visual arts. They used a variety of local venues in its early years, but linked up with Sabhal Mòr Ostaig when their new buildings became available in the mid-90s. The college became their “spiritual home”, and Duncan believes it represents an exemplary partnership between a community group and the education sector.

In addition to his work with SEALL and the Skye Festival, Duncan is also the administrator of PAN (Promoters Arts Network), which was formally established in 1998.

“PAN grew out of the old Highland Promoters Forum, which was Peter’s doing originally. Eventually the Council no longer had an arts officer in place, and we decided to go independent at that point, and expand across the whole area, taking in the islands and down to Argyll. It has a committee of 15 spread around the area which runs PAN, and I look after the administration on their behalf.

“In its simplest terms PAN is an independent group offering support, advice and networking in the true sense for promoters in the Highlands and Islands.

“I provide information about touring companies to local promoters, and I provide information to the companies about who the promoters are. PAN itself doesn’t promote, unlike some touring schemes in England, for example. We are basically an information gathering place, but it is rapidly developing, and we are looking at the implications of that in detail now.

“PAN has started to apply for and receive project funding. We get administrative funding for the Scottish Arts Council and a bit from Highland Council and HI-Arts, but we are now getting additional funds to help to develop touring as well. It is still not funding for PAN to put things on directly, though.

“We have literally just heard that we have received £36,000 for audience development from the Scottish Arts Council’s Lottery Fund, for example, to look at ways in which we can add support to local promoters in that regard. We also have some money from Enterprise Music Scotland to take jazz and classical music into venues where that hasn’t happened before.

“It opens up the possibility, for example, of a situation in the future where PAN might receive funds to commission specific pieces of work.”

PAN has around 70 members currently, but Duncan is in the process of inviting registrations for next year, and believes that there may be potentially twice that number when the new registrations are received in the next couple of months.

“In one way that is hugely encouraging,” he laughed, “and in another it’s quite scary!”
PAN can be contacted at Ostaig House, Teangue, isle of Skye, IV44 8RQ (Tel: 01471 844207, email: dm@cali.co.uk).

© Kenny Mathieson, 2003