Launching in Style

MICHAEL RUSSELL welcomes the continuing growth of Cowalfest on the eve of this year’s event

THE CAR DECK of a ferry is a decidedly different setting on which to see a film, watch a play, listen to a poem, dance to music and be enthralled by an artist creating a painting from scratch, but all of those things – and more – were to be sampled on board the Western Ferries ‘Sound of Scarba’ in mid August as the latest Cowalfest was well and truly launched.

The ‘Sound of Scarba’, with its sister vessels in their familiar white and red Western Ferries livery, usually shuttles back and forth between Dunoon and Gourock, carrying people and vehicles from the Central belt to the gateway to Highland Scotland.
 But in the gorgeous – and surprisingly non-midgey – twilight of a late summer Wednesday night, she took on board instead some one hundred invited guests and paying customers and proceeded up Loch Long for a three hour voyage during which wine was served and entertainment provided.

 Each of the brief items related to something in this year’s ambitious line up, and the centre piece of the evening was the formal unveiling of that programme, which runs from the 5–15 October.

Before that, however, artist Don MacNeil put together one of his energetic and inspirational landscapes in front of an appreciative crowd, poet Neil MacNeil read from his own work, Sadie Dixon-Spain of the Walking Theatre Company got into the character of Deirdre of the Sorrows ( a poem largely based in the Cowal peninsula), and David Bruce, former Director of the Scottish Film Council, introduced and then screened the appropriately titled ‘Seaward the Great Ships’, John Grierson’s great documentary which was also Scotland’s first Oscar Winner.

Film is another first for 2006, with a comprehensive series of screenings using the HI~Arts Screen Machine Take 2, which will move around the area

Cowalfest started as a small end of season walking festival with a cultural twist, but its originators, Russell and Dorothy Bruce, have constantly sought to expand year on year. Now, whilst the walks are still the bedrock, there are also hundreds of opportunities to participate in a whole variety of arts and performance activities. As a result it has become one of the most varied arts showcases available anywhere outside Scotland’s cities.
 
Last year the ‘Window Shoppers Gallery’ was the major innovation, with over 60 shops in Dunoon giving up display space to an original artwork. This year the idea has been expanded and developed with Dundee Print Studio providing the pictures and even more shops joining in.

The 2006 Festival is the biggest ever, covering two weekends instead of one, introducing more art forms and running up to the very start of this year’s Mod, which is also in Dunoon.

Poetry is included for the first time with the appointment of a Cowalfest “Poet in Residence”, the much celebrated Neil MacNeil, who describes himself as being “spiritually from Barra, late of Greenock and now living in Spain”. Neil will kick off the events on National Poetry Day (5 October), will lead a walk through Puck’s Glen in Dunoon, and will oversee the creation of a “poetry tree” in the Festival’s Arts Centre in the St John’s Church Halls on Saturday 7th October.

Film is another first for 2006, with a comprehensive series of screenings using the HI~Arts Screen Machine Take 2, which will move around the area.

The film offerings include a tribute to Michael Powell on the 70th anniversary of the making of ‘Island at the Edge of the World’, an archive night led by Janet MacBain of the Scottish Screen Archive, and showings of the STV documentary narrated by Bill Paterson called ‘Chaplain’s Goliath’, which is a tribute to Eric Campbell – originally from Dunoon – who became one of the icons of the silent screen.

Last year the first memorial lecture in celebration of the life and work of Robin Jenkins, one of Scotland greatest and most prolific 20th century novelists, attracted a surprisingly large crowd on a wet and windy night to the writer’s former home village of Toward.
 
The second lecture will take place on Wednesday 11 October this year, right at the centre point of the festival, again in Toward but this time using the Screen Machine which will be parked at Toward Primary School, within sight of the house that Jenkins occupied until he died last year.

The lecture will be given by Harry Reid, former editor of ‘The Herald’. who championed Jenkins career and was instrumental in securing a newspaper serialistion for Jenkins’ novel ‘The Awakening of George Darroch’, an even which re-ignited interest in Jenkins after a period in which he had been out of the public eye.

The Walking Theatre Company, based at Dunans in Glendaruel, are performing during seven of the walks. but they will also contribute poetry at special outings during which well known cook Alision Sykora will demonstrate and serve what she calls a “backwoods lunch”. Food also makes it into the film programme, with a dinner at Loch Fyne Oysters during the Powell celebrations.

There are more musical events than ever before, there will be an illustrated focus on the work of David Douglas, one of Scotland’s greatest plant collectors, and Ardkinglas House, a magnificent private home on Loch Fyneside designed by Robert Lorimer and deeply influenced by the Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts movements will be open for two organised tours.

There will also be a photography competition supported by the Forestry Commission (who have been integral to the building of the Cowalfest idea, along with HI~Arts, Visit Scotland, Argyll & the Islands Enterprise, SNH , the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park and Argyll and Bute Council).

Private sponsorship has come from Western Ferries and Tulloch , amongst others, but the greatest success has been achieved by the constant development of local and incoming audiences on which the Festival is focused and for which it will continue to expand its wide ranging programmes.

Indeed, next year is already in Russell and Dorothy Bruce’s sights, as they prepare an even bigger series of happenings to mark 2007 and the Year of Highland Culture.

Cowalfest 06 runs from 5-15 October.

© Michael Russell, 2006

Links

• Cowalfest