AS THE Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen continue to gear up for their forthcoming – and rather costly – amalgamation as Creative Scotland (amid mounting criticism), the announcement of the SAC’s decisions on who would receive what is now known as Flexible Funding for the period 2009-2011 inevitably produced winners and losers among applicants in the Highlands & Islands.

William Wilson has already stated Lyth Art Centre’s position on their own negative answer, and both Pitlochry Festival Theatre and the Aros Centre in Portee have also been denied flexible funding status.

Dogstar Theatre and Goat Media Ltd also missed out, as did the Edinburgh-based Puppet Lab, run by Nairn-born Symon Macintyre, the company behind The Big Shop project in Inverness last year. Several other national organisations with close links to traditional Highlands & Islands arts also lost out, including the Traditional Music and Song Association.

Those who received better news include the Hebridean Celtic Festival, Highland Open Studios, Moniack Mhòr Writer’s Centre, Mull Theatre, Plan B, and the St Magnus Festival, as well as a number of companies based in the central belt whose work is regularly seen in the region. Our congratulations to those who made successful bids, and commiserations to those who now face the increasingly difficult task of surviving the next three years on project funding.

Our main interview this month looks at the work of Highland-based artist Eugenia Vronskaya, whose latest exhibition has opened at the Rebecca Hossack gallery in London. The artist’s work has been regularly exhibited at Kilmorack Gallery, and she will be showing again there later this summer, but for those who can’t get to London, her series of portraits in the foyer of Eden Court Theatre provide a permanent taste of her distinctive style.

Like the Strathpeffer Pavilion last month, our Venue Profile features another contender which was not open at the time of our original series, The Warehouse in Lossiemouth. On the venue theme, Sue Wilson called in on the Wrigley sisters in Kirkwall en route from the Shetland Folk Festival to catch up with the latest developments in the ongoing saga of the music centre they have established in town.

Mention of Orkney also leads us to the St Magnus Festival, and our From the Archive feature looks back to our very first interview, with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Not entirely by coincidence, the Hebrides Ensemble are reviving The Martyrdom of St Magnus, the chamber opera written by Sir Peter and poet George Mackay Brown for the inaugural St Magnus Festival, which became the festival’s very first event in St Magnus Cathedral on 18 June, 1977. They begin a short tour at the OneTouch Theatre in Inverness before taking the opera back to its original venue via a stopover in Edinburgh.

As usual, look out for more features and reviews in the course of the coming month, which promises to be a busy one, with Rockness kicking things off in the grand manner.

Kenny Mathieson
Commissioning Editor, Northings

Kenny Mathieson lives and works in Boat of Garten, Strathspey. He studied American and English Literature at the University of East Anglia, graduating with a BA (First Class) in 1978, and a PhD in 1983. He has been a freelance writer on various arts-related subjects since 1982, and contributes to the Inverness Courier, The Scotsman, The Herald, The List, and other publications. He has contributed to numerous reference books, and has written books on jazz and Celtic music.