Stellar Quines had been supported by the AmbITion programme (funded by Creative Scotland)  to undertake this work, for a number of reasons. First, by live streaming rehearsed readings and rehearsals, the company enables potential bookers and audiences to get an advance flavour of what their new productions will be like. Second, it’s very expensive to tour a production on the scale of ‘Ana’ and only a modest number of venues exist outside the major cities which could physically stage it, so a film version potentially gives the production a much wider and longer life. And, third, using 3D may—or may not—give those screen-venue audiences a more palpable sense of what the ‘real’ theatre experience would be like.

As readers of a previous blog will remember,  my one experience so far of a live satellite relay—‘The Nutcracker’ from the Bolshoi—was entirely positive, and I’d like the chance to have more such experiences. But, so far, Inverness venues are only offering ‘delayed’ relays—for example, of the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of ‘Frankenstein’. I have an odd reluctance to go to such presentations. It seems to me to be neither one thing nor the other—neither a film nor a live relay.

My sense is that there is, or should be, a substantial difference between a ‘filmed play’ and a ‘live relay’. In that Bolshoi relay, the camerawork was as simple and unobtrusive as possible, with basically just three camera positions: whole stage, a focus on one or two dancers, and the rare close up. That approximates very closely to the real theatre experience of sitting in the stalls and now and then using a pair of opera glasses. But a ‘filmed’ play should, I feel, be very different. It can, and should, make use of every opportunity that small, handheld, and remote cameras can offer to give a truly filmic experience—think of Scorsese filming the ‘The Last Waltz’ or his Stones movie. So simply offering a ‘delayed relay’ of a live show is for me an uncomfortable compromise.

But there are deeper implications here. Rural touring is very expensive. For even a small production, with only two or three actors and a couple of stage crew on the road, the total public subsidy per audience member may be more than for an audience member at an average Scottish Opera performance. Live, delayed and streamed relays offer (once the capital cost of the equipment has been met) a very much cheaper way of enabling remote and small communities to share in a high quality theatre experience.

Is that, however, the way we really want things to go? For very many years Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and its predecessor the HIDB, ran a scheme which provided additional funds to enable touring companies to meet the extra costs of touring in the Highlands and Islands. Sadly, budget cuts meant that fund was withdrawn a few years ago. But its existence was predicated on the concept that remoteness and rurality should not, by themselves, deprive those communities of quality live cultural experiences. Are they, are we, prepared to accept that now, in the name of financial stringency, we have to put quotation marks round that word ‘live’?

There is of course another argument that will increasingly come into play—the low carbon economy. It’s probably more energy-efficient to bring shows to communities, rather than expect the members of those communities to travel often very long distances to their nearest cultural centre. But will it be even more efficient to provide those communities, instead, with a virtual, digital version? Intuition says ‘yes’, but this may be a case where the counter-intuitive proves to be more accurate. Consider this: most such tours happen in the ‘down’ season from October to April. A touring production with five people visiting ten venues generates 50 bed nights in small communities at a quiet time of year, plus an equivalent number of meals, drinks, and incidental expenses. Multiply that by the number of tours and venues that take place across a year, and that’s quite a contribution to the local economy that will be entirely lost if there’s a switch to digital equivalents. And, to make the comparison truly fair, we also need to know how much energy this alternative satellite-relay process requires.

That counter-intuitive argument turns out to apply directly to the most apparently extreme version of the costly touring model—the Screen Machine mobile cinema. Though now operated by our sister organisation Regional Screen Scotland, the Screen Machine was developed, and originally operated, by HI~Arts to bring the highest quality cinema experience to the most remote communities, from Durness to Barra. If the live relay of plays model is about enabling small communities to share in a high quality urban experience, then the Screen Machine is about bringing the urban, arthouse/multiplex experience direct to those same communities.

Intuition would say that it’s very inefficient to use a huge gas-guzzling truck to bring movies to remote and island communities. But intuition may be wrong. A pilot survey undertaken by Carbon Diagnostics while the Screen Machine was in Ullapool for four screenings appeared to indicate that the carbon produced by the Machine on that trip was less than half what would have been produced if, as they said they would, many in those audiences had instead driven to Inverness to see the same films. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, however, and so, with funds from that same AmbITion programme, RSS and Carbon Diagnostics are now undertaking a more comprehensive survey to ascertain a broader and more accurate picture.

If it’s true that 7:84’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil kicked off the whole process of small scale touring in the Highlands, back in 1973 (some argue for earlier precedents) then perhaps we’re seeing the final stages of a forty-year process. But not if bodies like the Promoters Arts Network have their way . PAN’s Director Sam Eccles has been undertaking her own touring show, presenting to local promoters around the Highlands and Islands PAN’s bold and ambitious plans for the future—plans which, incidentally, also involve AmbITion support. So, let’s hope live theatre still has a healthy future in the Highlands and Islands, from Achiltibuie to Ardross, or Lochgilphead to Lyth.

© Robert Livingston

In HI~Arts we’ve been thinking a lot about what it might mean to be a ‘creative community’. In part that has been prompted by Creative Scotland’s ‘Creative Places’ awards, currently in the process of being judged for the second year. But we’re also exploring a more fundamental question of how culture works as a driver in terms of a community’s energy, cohesion, and sense of identity.

We all know a creative community when we see one. Some might say that the whole of Orkney is such a place—certainly Stromness is, and the island of Westray, and also the even smaller island of Papa Westray, with its extraordinary programme of ‘Papay Gyro Nights’.  Ullapool and the wider Lochbroom area is another, so is the island of Eigg. Indeed, most of the community land buy-out areas, whether it be Assynt or Gigha, tend to have a strong cultural character. What we’ve been thinking about are the factors that help to bring such a situation about, and how far they may be transferrable or replicable.

That’s probably why I’ve found myself on an External Advisory Group for the Scottish Government’s Review of Town Centre Regeneration. The Group’s work kicked off two weeks ago with a two day seminar in Kilmarnock, ably facilitated by Neil McInroy, Chief Executive of CLES. The Centre for Local Economic Strategies was new to me, but exploring their website, and the contents of their magazine, New Start, has led me to some interesting ideas, and one of those is the concept of ‘Third Place’.

It’s very straightforward. Where we live is our First Place, where we work our second. Third Places  are informal meeting spaces where we go to make social glue. They are essential to a healthy community. In the past, of course, churches occupied that central role within the community, and in many parts of the Highlands and Islands they still do, especially if, as in the church in our village, the formal service is followed by informal chat over coffee and biscuits. The classic English pub is another obvious example, staple of so many soap operas precisely because it can function as neutral ground where all the drama’s characters can interact.

When we bought our previous house in Anstruther we were nervous about being just across the road from a pub, imagining late night revellers and general rowdiness. We needn’t have worried. The Dreel Tavern was run by a London couple who ensured it had the feel of a classic ‘local’, with regulars propping up the bar, a roaring fire throughout winter, and good homely food for all comers. We ended up eating there most Friday nights. But in recent years pubs have been closing in their hundreds, and the percentage of the population who regularly attend church is a tiny fraction of those who actually profess some form of religious belief. So, reading about the concept of ‘Third Place’, I began to think about how far cultural centres can be third places. And it’s easy to name some that are: Taigh Chearsabhagh in Lochmaddy in North Uist is perhaps the most often cited example—after all it even houses the local post office—but Timespan in Helmsdale is another (and the biggest employer in the village). Nor do such centres have to be ‘not for profit’: most people would cite Ullapool’s emergence as a ‘creative place’ as having been kickstarted by Jean and Robert Urquhart’s vision of the ‘Ceilidh Place’ as a hotel and eating place that was also a haven of culture and creativity.

Indeed there may be times when the private sector is actually better than the charitable or funded sectors at creating a cultural ‘third place’, and I say that with no ideological intent. Balnain House is one of Inverness’s most important historic buildings. The group that set out to save its fabric envisioned it as the ‘home of Highland music’; but, probably because it was located on what was, at that time, the ‘wrong’ side of the river, its cafe, bar and shop all lost money, and it became unsustainable. Some time after its closure Kit Fraser opened Hootananny’s as a pub with music, bang in the centre of the old town, and more than a decade later it’s still fulfilling that valuable social function.

Similarly, in Kirkwall in Orkney the talented musical sisters Jennifer and Hazel Wrigley invested in ‘The Reel’ in a prominent central location, next to St Magnus Cathedral, as a cafe/bar, music shop, performance space, and site for classes, workshops, rehearsals and recordings. It’s a private business, but exercises a crucial and multifaceted function within the lively musical life of the islands.

We’ve just had a short break in rural Perthshire, which gave us the chance to experience two very good examples of cultural ‘third places’, one commercial in nature, one charitable. Though to define Pitlochry Festival Theatre by its charitable status would be very misleading—indeed the ‘commercial’ character of its productions has, in the past, been a reason for it not receiving Scottish Arts Council funding. Enter the theatre at any time of the day or night, even this late in the season, and it’s clearly a vibrant social hub for the area. But it’s social/entrepreneurial role goes well beyond that informal level, as it is also behind the local community company which promotes a range of tourism initiatives in the area, most prominently the annual ‘Enchanted Forest’  which, this year at least, fully lived up to its name.

And then, just a few miles away in Aberfeldy, there’s the Watermill  which combines in one handsomely converted historic building a gallery showcasing work of international standard (Paolozzi, Barns-Graham, Alan Davie, and Victor Pasmore, when we were there), with an award-winning bookshop and an excellent cafe. There seems little doubt that this thriving private business is the ‘third place’ for a large cross-section of the local community.

So, how does a cultural centre—a museum, gallery, theatre or arts centre—achieve the status of a ‘third place’ and so become of central importance to its community? I don’t think it’s straightforward. It’s certainly not just a matter of being an ‘ace caff with a quite nice museum attached’ as the V&A once notoriously promoted itself. The team behind the enlarged and rebuilt Pier Arts Centre in Orkney took the brave decision not to include a cafe in the new building, and thus avoid competing directly with existing local businesses. That may pose revenue challenges for the Pier, but it hasn’t stopped it, in its new form, becoming a wonderful focus of creativity and good fellowship, with an almost tangible spiritual quality about it (and that’s a word I use very rarely and hesitantly).

At the opposite extreme, I’ve written elsewhere of my experiences in the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow in the early 80s when, despite being in most physical respects a complete dump, it was such a vibrant ‘third place’ for so many Glaswegians that the scriptwriters of an early episode of ‘Taggart’ could refer to it as a rendezvous for two of their characters without further explanation. But a change of identity to the ‘CCA’ and the single biggest Arts Lottery grant given in Scotland turned the building into a forbidding temple of art, an impression which the current CCA team, under Francis McKee, are making great efforts to overcome.

As with the CCA, therefore, sometimes the greater the investment in the fabric of the building, the greater the distance from a sense of being a true ‘third place’. The enlarged An Tuireann in Portree on Skye opened with a great spirit of optimism but when some years later, in 2007, financial problems caused the centre to close, it had become sufficiently distanced from its wider community that there was no concerted campaign to reopen it, and the successor initiative, Atlas, was expressly designed not to be tied to a specific building.

For many independent museums in the Highlands and Islands, as elsewhere, there is a particular challenge: the need to charge admission to help to meet basic operating costs. Many such museums have seen visitor numbers plummet in recent years, but perhaps even more damagingly, they have also moved (conceptually speaking) to the periphery of their communities, unable to provide that crucial ‘third place’ function. In March 2011 the West Highland Museum in Fort William took the brave step of dropping admission charges and has since seen visitor numbers quadruple. It also has a very high rating on Tripadvisor, with many of the reviewers commenting particularly on the free admission. But only time will tell if this results in a viable financial model for the museum, or indeed for those of its counterparts still applying such charges.

All cultural facilities are under huge pressure to be more financially robust in these hard times. Sometimes this can result in some very crude pressures to ‘earn income’. As Balnain House showed, being good at running a music centre is no reason why the same people should be good at running a cafe, bar or shop. Perhaps thinking in terms of ‘Third Places’ will make it possible to approach these challenges in a more nuanced way, understanding and evaluating the ‘social capital’ wrapped up in a cultural facility’s assets and functions. And perhaps it can also break down those crude oppositions, between ‘charity’ and ‘business’, between ‘commerce’ and ‘culture’, between so-called ‘artistic elites’ and ‘ordinary folk’.

Almost thirty years ago we visited Dervaig in Mull for the first time, to see the original ‘Mull Little Theatre’ set up and run by Barrie and Marion Hesketh. On arrival we first went into what was obviously the original ‘village store’. There was very little actually on display, and what there was had a fly-blown, ‘beyond its sell-by date’ look. Apart from the elderly local woman behind the counter, we were the only people in the shop, and we left having bought nothing. A few doors down we squeezed into a tiny shop that was selling wine, coffee, cheese and books. You could sip coffee while sitting at a cramped table sampling one of the books. It was packed, and it was run by a Yorkshireman. There I go, falling into the trap of binary opposition: incomer dynamic/entrepreneurial versus local apathy/lack of energy. We need more subtle tools to understand how these circumstances come about, and how we can foster and sustain truly effective ‘third places’ in our communities.

© Robert Livingston

]]> http://northings.com/2012/10/16/how-to-come-third-and-win/feed/ 0 http://northings.com/2012/08/31/how-do-people-engage-with-culture-in-scotland/ http://northings.com/2012/08/31/how-do-people-engage-with-culture-in-scotland/#comments Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:55:22 +0000 http://northings.com/?p=73935

Scotland's Culture

Each year the Scottish government conduct a Scottish Household Survey that gives us an insight into the composition, characteristics, attitudes and behaviours of Scottish households and individuals. The research is used by the government to support their work in transport, communities and local government policy areas and allow for the early detection of national trends. The Survey covers a range of topics including housing, communities, economic activity, finance, education, transport and travel, the internet, health and caring, local services, volunteering and culture and sport.

I’ve been looking over the last three published reports going back to 2007 to see what trends we can detect about cultural attendance and participation in Scotland. I’ve picked out some of the things which caught my attention and I’ll let you interpret the facts in the way you want. However this type of information can help you to identify either how big a potential local or national audience you could have, or help us to identify areas that we need to grow, develop and support.

Sian’s Top Insights into the Scottish Household Survey

I’ve been looking at the reports from 2007/2008, 2009/2010 and the most recent report 2011 to see what patterns or trends I can see. These are some which stood out.

Participation and attendance

• 63% of the population read for pleasure, by far the most popular cultural activity to participate in (the second most popular activity is dancing with 17%). There are approximately 5.2 million people living in Scotland, so this means around 3.3 million people read for pleasure.
• When we then look at the cultural activities that people attend in Scotland it shows that only 5% of the population attend book or writing related events, that’s about 261,100 people. A fraction of the total number of people who read books.
• A similar trend emerged for dance – 19% of the population participate in dancing, however only 5% attend a live dance or ballet performance. It is not clear what the survey means by ‘participate in dancing’ and whether that refers to classes or dancing on a night out.
• However in music, art, theatre and cinema the behaviour shows the opposite trend.
• Around 11% of the population play an instrument, however 28% have attended a live music event (that’s around 1.5 million people).
• 9% of people actively create art or sculpture, while 17% have attended a gallery, and a further 17% have attended an exhibition or viewed an art collection (together that’s around 1.7 million people – although I would imagine that people who said they have visited a gallery are likely to be the same people who say they attend exhibitions).
• And in cinema, 53% of the population have been to the cinema to see a film (the most popular activity attended in Scotland), however only 2% of people in Scotland actively make film or video’s.

Age

I noticed three possible trends in the data around age and attendance.

• There has been a small rise (2%) of the number of 16 to 24 year olds in attending cultural events in the last 5 years (2007-2011).
• Similarly for people aged 25 to 34 there has been a 2% increase in attendance.
• Together that’s about an extra 25,000 people under the age of 34 attending cultural events.
• However, this is compared to a 3% decrease in the number of people aged 75 and over attending cultural events – this equates to a drop of around 10,970 people.

 Frequency of Attendance

• A quarter of people go to the cinema once a month in Scotland (that’s about 705,000 people), while 42% of people go 3 or 4 times in a year (around 1.1 million people).
• On average 27% of the population have attended the theatre in the last 5 years (1.4 million people), of these less than a third have been 3 or 4 times a year (approximately 469,990 people), just over a third had been twice a year and less than a third once a year.
• Similar patterns emerged from museum attendance, live music attendance, exhibition and gallery attendance. Around about a third of people will attend 3 or 4 times a year, a third twice a year and a third once a year.
• In Crafts, although the survey does not clearly outline what a craft exhibition is and whether that includes craft fairs or visiting craft shops, approximately 11% of the population (574,430 people) have attended a craft exhibition. Around 23% go 3 or 4 times a year, 35% go twice a year and 36% go once a year.
• There has been an increase in the frequency of craft exhibitions people attend in the last 5 years – we can see a 5% increase from 21% of people attending craft exhibitions 3 or 4 times a year in 2007 to 26% in 2011 – that’s an increase of approximately 28,700 people in 5 years.
• In opera and classical music 6% of the population attend these events (that’s around 313,330 people). Of these 40% attended one event per year, 30% saw 2 events per year and 22% saw 3 or 4 events, which is approximately 68,930 people.
• We can also see some rises and falls within opera and classical music attendance over the last 5 years. In 2009/2010 there was a big rise in the number of people attending classical and opera events. In 2007/08 27% of people saw 2 events per year, and then in 2009/10 34% of people had seen 2 events. However in 2011 only 29% of people went to see 2 classical or opera events – that’s a drop of 5% – approximately 21,932 people from the previous two years.
• A similar fall can be seen in the number of people who see opera or classical music once a year. In 2007/08 44% of people went to see at least one classical or opera concert (that’s around about 137,863 people). While in 2011 this dropped by 5% to 39% – which is a fall of about 15,666 people.
• Finally dance showed a different trend, of the 5% of the population who attend live dance or ballet performances, over 50% go to see a show once a year, 25% go twice a year and 15% go 3 or 4 times a year.

Rural versus Urban

For the first time in 2009/2010 the survey distinguished between urban and rural attendance and participation. Although we only have two reports worth of data to compare there are some interesting trends to be brought to your attention.

• Attendance of live music events in urban areas and accessible rural areas has increased by 5%.
• Theatre attendance across urban and rural areas has stayed the same since 2009.
• Museum attendance has increased by 5% in remote rural areas.
• Gallery attendance has increased in remote small towns by 5% and 4% in rural areas.
• Nearly twice as many people in rural areas attend craft exhibitions as they do in urban areas. While 10% of urban populations go to craft events, 19% do so in remote rural areas and 17% in accessible rural areas.
• 8% of large urban populations attend dance performances compared to 7% of people in accessible rural areas; only 5% attend dance performances in remote rural areas.
• Of course there are individuals who do not attend any cultural events during the year, and the report shows us that 22% of people in urban areas do not attend, while 30% of people in remote rural areas do not attend.

There is a lot more information available in the reports which you can download directly from the Scottish Governments website (all links made available below). And if you would like any advice on how to use and interpret this kind of data then you can get in touch with me.

Scotland’s People

Scottish Household Survey 2007/2008

Scottish Household Survey 2009/2010

Scottish Household Survey 2011

Scenically the East Neuk’s saviour, and commercially its nemesis, was Dr Beeching. Had the coastal branch line remained in place Anstruther would have been a reasonable daily commute from Edinburgh, and I’m sure that by now the very different villages that make up the famous ‘fringe of gold’ would have been linked by ribbon development and lost all their special character. But that same issue of accessibility has worked against economic diversification as the fishing industry has withered away.

In the last decade, however, both villages have revived hugely, and for two different but related reasons. Anstruther, like many east coast villages, gained a pontoon marina  in its old harbour, making it the furthest out safe anchorage on that side of the Firth of Forth. Now it’s a boom town. There are now three large fish and chip restaurants on the front, and on a busy day you can’t get into any of them. There are no empty properties, many derelict shells have been rebuilt, and there are lots of thriving local businesses.

Pittenweem’s revival has a different cause. Here a modest amount of inshore fishing continues, and the harbour is in any event less suitable for leisure-craft pontoons. Instead, Pittenweem has been turned round by art.

The Pittenweem Arts Festival  was launched 30 years ago by a small group of professional artists who had their homes (or at least their holiday homes) in the village–many taught in either the Edinburgh or Dundee art colleges. While I was working at the Crawford Centre in St Andrews, both Judith and I became involved in the festival, and in the memorable year of 1988 I collaborated on a deeply whimsical project with Crail-based composer Peter Davidson, and Hamburg-born, Pittenweem-resident artist Reinhard Behrens . I had jokingly once suggested to Peter that he should write the ‘Table Music for King Zog of Albania’ and he took me at my word, got a grant from the Scottish Arts Council, and wrote the piece for the Fife Wind Soloists. For the premier we concocted an elaborate back story for the piece, with installations by Reinhard of Albanian ‘memorabilia’, and my only attempt (to date) at stand up, portraying a demented German music professor. Our one rule had been that we should find out nothing at all about the real Albania, then the most obscure of all Iron Curtain countries. Ours was a dream Albania. We weren’t to know that the next year-1989-Albania, like the rest of the Communist bloc, would suddenly become a lot more visible to the rest of the world!

1988 was of course the anniversary of the Spanish Armada, and there is a strong tradition that the folk of the East Neuk, retaining Catholic sympathies, looked after the Spanish survivors of wrecked Armada ships as the fleet struggled round the north of Scotland. Certainly, locals often have a certain olive tinge to their skin…

To mark the event for the Festival Reinhard had turned a disused rowing boat into a replica galleon, and Fife Arts’ resident pyrotechnician had packed it full of fireworks. A torch-lit procession (the first, I think, in what became a regular feature of the festival) made its way from the centre of the village to the disused open air swimming pool where the ‘galleon’ was floating, and to the (somewhat inaudible) accompaniment of the Fife Wind Soloists playing (of course) the ‘Fireworks music for King Zog’ the replica went up in a true blaze of glory.

In the subsequent 25 years the Festival has grown to become a popular date in Scotland’s visual arts calendar. Its unique feature is that it hosts scores of different exhibitions in the widest possible range of venues: not just people’s houses, garages, and outbuildings, but all the very distinctive spaces that can be found in a historic, but still active, fishing port. So, aesthetic pleasure is combined with a childish delight in getting into places you wouldn’t otherwise see, or, alternatively, seeing familiar interiors utterly transformed.

Although we return to Fife regularly to visit old friends, I hadn’t been to the Festival itself since well before this explosion of temporary venues. So I was keen to get a sense of how the Festival worked, and whether it had any lessons to offer other communities that might be looking to achieve a measure of economic regeneration through the arts. Even outside festival time, the impact on Pittenweem is certainly obvious: new galleries, artists’ materials shops, and hardly an empty property to be seen.

We decided to avoid the traditional Friday night opening, which I suspected would be a bit of a rammy, and turned up at 11.00 on Monday morning. Already the field which acted as temporary car park was filling up. Friendly and efficient stewards showed us our parking place and sold us the essential Festival programme, with details of all 120 exhibiting artists. But, sensible though the edge-of-village parking arrangements were, they had one big disadvantage. If you made the mistake, as we did, of starting off visiting some of the displays close to the car park, you quickly got a false impression of the real quality of the festival. After four or five examples of depressingly poor work, we were beginning to wonder if the Festival was all hype and no substance.

After a reviving coffee we headed for the main invited exhibition, of work by John Byrne. This couldn’t fail to impress, so fertile is John’s imagination and so sure his technical skill. But even more impressive was a selection in the ‘Old Men’s Club’ of sculptures by Jake Harvey . This part-indoors, part-outside display was the perfect union of work and setting: right on the edge of the wonderful stonework of the Old Pier, Jake’s almost-but-not-quite abstract stone sculptures had a balance, a purity, a sense of wit, and a rightness, that was unforgettable. I wanted them to stay there as a permanent display, which would have been hard on the Old Men.

From then on it was one great display after another, often, like the Harvey, beautifully matching work to setting. Some artists were returning to their roots, like Lynn MacGregor, born in the village but now living in Northern Ireland. Others, like a group of seven photographers from London, had been invited to make work about Pitternweem and its inhabitants. Many more had chosen to move to the area to live and work in the village itself, or close by. Some of the most impressive work was in crafts, from locally-based makers to an invited cross-section of the best in contemporary Scottish crafts, curated by a regular colleague of HI~Arts, Tina Rose.

The mood was indeed festive, especially when torrential downpours appeared out of an almost clear sky, and everyone dashed for the nearest venue, no matter how small. Many displays featured a gratifying number of red ‘sold’ dots, even though the Festival still had the rest of the week to run. In four hours we got round less than a quarter of the venues and, in retrospect, missed some of the most potentially interesting. But we did see a marvelous display of art and craft work from Shetland, charmingly whimsical paintings by Angie Bee in a garden summerhouse so hot it needed four electric fans at once, and bought one of Hilke MacIntyre’s delightful sculpted ceramic tiles, entitled appropriately, ‘Just a Shower’. We ended our day calling in on Reinhard and his wife Margaret for tea, and enjoying the work on display by all four members of the Behrens family.

A number of thoughts coalesced in my mind afterwards. The first concerned quality. Had we been casual visitors we might well have been put off by those first few displays, got back in the car, and headed off to somewhere less crowded. Yet Pittenweem strives to be an inclusive festival, so the organisers must have difficulty in setting a quality threshold. Not inclusive enough, it would seem, as this year for the first time there is a ‘Fringe’ organised by artists who, to judge by their very good website , seem to feel that the official Festival isn’t doing enough for ‘Fife artists’ even though the vast majority of the official exhibitors are locally based. This has caused some controversy–Fringe exhibitors don’t pay for inclusion in the official marketing, as is tartly pointed out on the official website, yet benefit from the visitors it attracts.

The second concerns quality in a different sense–of display. Given that the Festival is run by volunteers, most of the displays were a terrific credit both to the organisers and to the individual artists. But there were some exceptions that let the side down, including the headline John Byrne exhibition, where the labels (stuck on the picture glass!) were often alarmingly dyslexic, and gave no indication of the dates of individual works, unforgivable when drawing from the fruits of an almost 50-year career.

My final point links back to Anstruther, and its new prosperity based on the harbour marina. Both ventures–the festival and the marina–are massively middle class in focus and involvement. Of course, regeneration needs money: to pay mooring fees, rent self-catering houses, buy meals and drinks, and, finally, buy art and craft. But you can’t avoid the feeling that Pittenweem in particular has gone the way that her sister village Crail went many years ago, and has become ‘gentrified’. Now it’s the few remaining fishermen, working on their boats in the harbour, who provide an exotic backdrop to the gallery-goers, and the incomers have become the dominant element in the population.

The Pittenweem Arts Festival is a great success and a huge achievement. But in economic regeneration terms, perhaps the greatest element of that success has lain in ensuring that Pittenweem remains visible. The designation of ‘book town’ and ‘craft town’ have had similar impacts in terms of visibility for the communities of Wigtown and West Kilbride. Other Fife communities, just a few miles from the East Neuk, have not benefitted from the same profile even when, like West Wemyss, their architecture has a similar picturesque potential. But they have not seen the same influx of culturally-inclined middle class incomers.

So there’s a balance to be struck. Those who have money are essential to the economy of the arts—either through direct expenditure or through the taxes they pay. But the arts are not for one class or group within society. It’s a relatively recent notion that the ‘high’ arts are socially elitist. My grandfather, a steel worker, had a passionate love of classical music which he passed on to my mother and hence to me. As recently as the 1950s the National Gallery in London would stay open late on Cup Final days because so many of those coming up to London for the match also wanted to see some ‘culture’. So while it may be inevitable that community regeneration through the arts needs the interest and investment of the chattering classes to oil the wheels, the challenge is to ensure that the end result is properly inclusive. In Pittenweem, as in other examples such as the St Magnus Festival, that’s perhaps best achieved through the huge numbers of local volunteers involved, and the various participatory programmes offered. I hope the population of Pittenweem as a whole is proud of their festival for what it does for the village—even those who have as little interest in the arts as I do in the Olympics!

PS:  my jokey title is a back-handed tribute to the memory of the great Australian art critic Robert Hughes, who died this month.  His TV series and book ‘The Shock of the New’ redefined how contemporary art could be tackled in the media, and almost everything he wrote, or presented, is worth reading or watching (except for his last book ‘Rome’ which is a sadly deficient potboiler).  His early collection of exhibition reviews was entitled ‘Nothing if not Critical’, a quote from Hazlitt, and an injunction I’ve always borne in mind.

© Robert Livingston

I am not unreflective about this passionate aversion. I know that it has a good deal to do with being bad at sports at school, and so being subject to the petty tyrannies of two sad, middle-aged PE teachers whose unthinking cruelties I cannot forgive, more than forty years on. And I have tried to get into the mind of the true sports fanatic. I read Nick Hornby’s ‘Fever Pitch’ with real pleasure, but put it down no wiser about the basic question as to how someone as intelligent and educated as Hornby could waste his time on the idiocies involved in being a dedicated team supporter.

This leads me to want to make two points. The first is to deplore, by analogy, any campaign or strategy which talks of getting ‘everyone involved in the arts’. I’ve just Googled the phrase ‘arts for all’ and got 2,950,000,000 hits. You couldn’t pay me to go to a football match (well, you could, but it would have to be in four figures), so I have some sympathy with anyone who says ‘you couldn’t drag me to an opera’ because they know that they couldn’t stand all that yodelling in Italian or German.

Only some sympathy, because while, as a Glaswegian, I have been daily exposed to the beautiful game almost since birth, there is so little real opera shown through the media that it’s understandable if most people’s idea of the artform is Lesley Garrett in a Union Jack dress. But my basic point stands: art is no more for everyone than sport is. Everyone has the right to opt out, though my right to opt out of sport feels distinctly undermined just at the moment.

My other point is about ageism. With only a few exceptions, top end achievement in the Olympics, as in so many sports, is for the young. There were those, after all, who said that Murray could have beaten Federer if the older player hadn’t had time to recover his energy while the roof was being closed. Federer is 30.

Undoubtedly there is ageism in the arts, as in all walks of life, but it’s much less intrinsic than in competitive sport. Think of the wonderful Christopher Plummer winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar at the age of 82, or Jeremy Irons (64) acting young turks Joe Armstrong and Tom Hiddlestone off the screen in the BBC’s recent films of the two parts of Henry IV. I very much enjoyed a Herald interview this week with one of my favourite actors, Bill Paterson (67; he went to my old school, but not at the same time as me!), in which he talks about the pleasures and rewards of being an older actor, and reminisces about his experiences of working with the great George Wyllie, who died earlier this year aged 90. George only became a fulltime artist after retiring at the age of 58 from his post as a customs officer. In the 1980s I had the great pleasure of working with George on a number of projects, and in his sixties he had more energy and inventiveness than most artists a third of his age.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of the artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, whom I also knew in the 1980s as she was President of the Friends of the Crawford Centre, the arts centre I was running. Willie worked right up to her death at the age of 92, and each decade her art seemed to become more luminous and joyous.

I had meant to write before now about this year’s Royal Scottish Academy annual exhibition.  which was a revelation for me, in the way it devoted so much of the wall space to ambitious installations by some 22 artists. Although these invitees were of all ages, it was the seniors who most impressed me, with artists like Doug Cocker (67), Harris-based Steve Dilworth (63), and the RSA’s former President Bill Scott (who sadly died at the age of 77 just before the exhibition opening), all at the absolute top of their game.

Of course, it can be argued that the late flowering creativity of older artists is such a well-known phenomenon, from Titian to Lucian Freud, that the real risk is that it’s ‘mid-career’ artists who can get overlooked. So it’s fitting that, for me, the most astounding work in an RSA show full of good things was a sculpture by Annie Cattrell (graduated GSA, 1984) entitled ‘Conditions’ . Words can’t describe, or photographs capture, the astonishing, magical, ethereal beauty and fascination of this piece, and if you miss its current showing at Timespan in Helmsdale, then, along with several other breathtaking works, ‘Conditions’ will be on show at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery from August till October. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. For me, Annie Cattrell has accomplished something finer, and more lasting, in this sculpture, than all the medal-winning achievements that will dominate the media in the coming weeks. (Though, grudgingly, I have to admit, that Bradley Wiggins is quite something…).

© Robert Livingston

Improve your online sales with these 21 Tips

If you are selling directly from your website as an artist or crafts maker then you might be wondering how you can increase your traffic, improve your website and most importantly increase your sales. After working with a number of different makers over the last 3 years and keeping on top of the latest developments in online selling, these are some tips that could go some way to increasing your online sales. Much of what is recommended here are techniques at improving customer service and customer relationships, which are key to generating sales and repeat sales. You certainly don’t have to implement all of the 21 tips outlined here, but it might be worthwhile to experiment with a couple and see if you notice any change.

One of the best pieces of advice I have come across while research online is to be brave and test things, don’t be afraid to experiment. The mantra ‘Test Everything, Assume Nothing’ is something to keep in mind when using any new online technology. You will never know what strategy or angle is going to work for you best until you test it. Testing is the only way to discover what works, and what doesn’t work, on your website.

1. Offer one product or service on your home page
2. Reposition your opt-in offer to boost your opt-ins and build a bigger list of loyal subscribers.
3. Feature different benefits in your headlines
4. Establish a problem in your copy and show how you can solve it
5. Add credibility to your copy and enhance your visitors trust in you
6. Focus on your site visitors – not yourself
7. Instil urgency in your copy – and convince readers they need to buy now!
8. Remove any references to ‘buying’ from the top fold
9. Boost your products desirability by adding images
10. Grab the attention of ‘Scanners’ by changing the format and appearance of your copy
11. Fine tune your follow-up processes to maximise sales and attract more repeat business.
12. Have a clean call to action
13. Know your 30 second elevator pitch
14. Make sure you have a transparent About You page
15. Add an online video
16. Review your product line up
17. Review your order handling process
18. Look for broken links
19. Include inserts with delivered products
20. Make sure you are cross-selling ­
21. Use the language of sales

#1 Offer one product or service on your home page

If you sell a number of products or service on your website then it is recommended that you test whether or not this is the best strategy for you. Offering fewer products in one place with more copy describing those products tends to translate into higher sales.

Why? It helps to focus people. Instead of trying to please everyone who visits your site by offering a large range of products – you can really focus on one key set of benefits and answer all the possible questions and doubts your visitors might have about your product.

It doesn’t mean you have to stop selling the other products, but you can always offer them to your customers from other web pages or by using follow-up offers.

Sales Test: Write up a sales copy letter for your lead product and put it on your home page – run this as a test for two weeks/ month and watch what impact it has on your sales.

#2 Reposition your opt-in offer to boost your opt-ins and build a bigger list of loyal subscribers

Your opt-in offer (enewsletter sign up, email sign up, competition etc – anything which requires a customer to provide you with their email address) is your tool for gathering your customer’s email addresses and building your email list, which will allow you to regularly keep in touch with your subscribers, build relationships, trust and loyalty, and sell them your products.

Where you place your opt-in offer on your site has a huge impact on the number of subscribers you can attract.

Sales Test 01: Place your opt-in offer in as prominent a position as possible on your home page, preferably in the ‘Top Fold’ of your home page (the area of the screen first visible to a visitor before they scroll down the page)  – the Top Left of the page  is where the visitors’ eyes are often drawn first.

Sales Test 02: Place you opt-in offer within the second ‘page’ of text, after you have caught your visitors’ attention and established your credibility, impressed them with your skills, experience and testimonials from happy customers.

Sales Test 03: Place your opt-in offer on every page of your site so it’s always in front of your visitors. The more sign up opportunities you provide, the more subscribers you are likely to get.

#3 Feature different benefits in your headline

Your headline has a huge impact on your sales, it is often the first thing that visitors’ to your site sees, so it must grab their attention and compel them to read your sales copy.

A successful headline should highlight a problem your target audience faces and stress the main benefit of your product in solving this problem. It is not simply a matter of telling your visitor what the product is, but what it does for them.

#4 Establish a problem in your copy and show how you can solve it

In the first few paragraphs of sales pitch you need to go into more detail about the problem you introduced in your headline – you need to show your audience that you relate to them – only when your audience feels you understand their problem will they feel more confident that you can solve it.

Once the problem is established, you can then begin to introduce your product or service as the solution to this problem. By emphasising how your product or service will solve your reader’s problem, you should see a boost in sales.

#5 Add credibility to your copy and enhance your visitors trust in you

It’s vital that your sales copy establishes your credibility – it is through this process that your visitors come to trust you and feel comfortable enough to buy from you.

Establishing Credibility 1: Include customer testimonials in your sales pitch. These should be excerpts from genuine feedback from customers expressing how your product or service helped solve their particular problem. A customer testimonial that states how your product benefited them is much more effective than one that just says something like “Your product is great”.

Establishing Credibility 2: Add a section to your copy that outlines your credentials, experience and any background information that makes you qualified to solve your target audience’s problem. Your aim should be to effectively convince readers that you are the best person to offer them a solution to their problem.

#6 Focus on your site visitors – not yourself

The most successful sales copy focuses on the reader. Look carefully at your sales copy, is it filled with references to ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘we’? If your copy is filled with these then you need to shift the focus towards the ‘You’ and ‘Your’.

#7 Instil urgency in your copy – and convince readers they need to buy now!

It’s important that your sales copy instil a sense of urgency in your visitors, compelling them to buy now. The best place to do this is towards the end of your sales pitch, near the call to action (when you ask for the sale).

Sales Test: Try using each one of these against your copy and monitor their impact

• Offer a limited-time price discount where visitors must buy before a certain date in order to qualify for the discount.
• Offer additional bonuses for free if visitors buy within a certain time frame.
• Offer only a limited quantity of your product or services.
• Offer a limited quantity bonus.

#8 Remove any references to ‘buying’ from the top fold

People usually go online looking for free information. If you start your sales pitch too early in your copy, you may end up losing them before you’ve had a chance to hook them. Only once you have established the problem and how you can solve it, can you start selling to them.

Sales Test: Remove all references to ‘buying’ ‘cost’ and ‘sale’ from the top fold of your website and compare the results to the copy you’re using now.

#9 Boost your products desirability by adding images

Images of your product makes them seem more tangible and ‘real’ to your visitors and are a powerful sales tool.

Sales Test: Try placing images near the top your page vs. placing them near the call to action at the bottom, where you are asking for the sale. You could also test adding images to your order page. By monitoring your sales during each test, you’ll learn exactly where to place product images for maximum impact.

#10 Grab the attention of ‘scanners’ by changing the formatting and appearance of your copy

Very few visitors to your website will read every word of your sales copy from start to finish. Most will ‘scan’ your copy as they scroll down the page, reading only certain words and phrases that jump out at them or catch their eye.

Sales Test: Test highlighting your key benefits to find the right combination that will grab the attention of people who scan rather than read online, these includes:

• Using bold, italics and highlighting (sparingly) to emphasize the most important benefits of your offer.
• Varying the length of your paragraphs so the page doesn’t look like a block of uniformly formatted text.
• Adding sub-headlines that emphasize your key messages and compel your visitors to read the paragraphs that follow.
• Leaving the right-hand side of your text ragged (as that’s easier to read than ‘justified’ text that uses the whole width of the page).
• Centering important – but short – chunks of text or sub-headlines to further draw them out of the main body of text.
• Using bullet lists (like this one) to emphasize key points.

#11 Fine tune your follow-up process to maximise sales and attract more repeat business.

Following up with your customers and subscribers with an email is crucial to generating more sales as it often takes several contacts before someone buys from your site.

Following up with new subscribers: Start by restating your offer and asking for the sale again. Try sending an immediate follow-up after new subscribers sign up, giving them a reason to return to the site the same day as they subscribe. You can test this against sending a follow-up three days after subscribers first visit your site to see which method works best.

Following up with existing customers: A third of customers will buy again if they are given the chance – repeat customers helps you to develop profitable, long-term relationships with them and allows you to offer products related to their original purchase. Try offering them a special offer immediately after they make a purchase, against sending one three days afterwards to see which approach generates more repeat business.

#12 Have a Clean Call to Action

What are you asking your potential customer to do? What is the one thing you most want them to do? Getting your potential customer (or prospect) to click on the ‘Buy’ button has to be done tastefully and professionally. You need to make it really obvious what you want them to do, and if at all possible, the benefits they receive should be close by so that clicking through is compelling.

Don’t try to cram all your content onto the one screen, you want to communicate not confuse people.

#13 Know your 30 Second Elevator Pitch

You need to be able to boil down your message into a 30-second elevator pitch, less is often better. 

#14 Make sure you have a transparent About You page

Customers like to know who they are doing business with. If you offer a generic page which doesn’t tell people who you are and why you do what you do – change it. It is important that you are transparent. This might not drive sales alone, but it has a significant impact. If you have website analytics have a look at how many people are clicking through to your ‘About’ page.

#15 Add an Online Video

People don’t read as much anymore, which is probably why You Tube is now the second biggest search engine – people prefer to watch and learn. Video offers a dynamic, interactive and immersive experiences for potential customers. Even if you create a simple screen cast demo about your products, you will be ahead of the competition who still build text-heavy websites.

#16 Review your product line up

Ask yourself what is selling and what isn’t and why. If a product isn’t selling don’t waste your time promoting it. If it is producing you very little revenue, find another product to promote. Devote your time and effort to the products that are producing for you.

#17 Review your order handling process

From web copy through to the delivery of the product, review each element of the purchasing experience, and ask others to place orders and evaluate their experience. Look for points in the sequence where a prospect might be turned off. Is there something about any page sequence that might generate doubt or negative feelings in the prospects mind? A significant number of customers abandon their orders at the order form or during the checkout process. Examine yours closely to reduce this happening on your website. Make sure your order process guides the customer through step-by-step while providing continual reassurance.

#18 Look for broken links

Having webpages load with a broken image or having visitors get a lot of ‘File Not Found’ messages can create a negative impression. Fix any broken links immediately to improve sales. Periodically surf your site to confirm everything on your page functions as you intended.

#19 Include inserts with delivered products

When you have products which you mail out to your customers make sure you include a brochure or flyer for other products in the package. These customers are your best prospects for repeat sales. When they open the package they have been waiting for, and are thrilled with the product, they are instantly in a receptive buying mood. For instance you might have sold an item of jewellery to a customer, include in the package a flyer encouraging purchasers to consider giving other items you make as a gift.

#20 Make sure you are cross-selling

Use cross-selling to sell complimentary products on your website. Increase sales by highlighting all complimentary products at high selling product pages. The scope and flexibility for cross-selling your products will depend on the shopping cart software you choose.

#21 Use the Language of Sales

Don’t know what type of words to use to get people to act? Below is a list of words that can be used to grab people’s attention in your web copy:

Phrases that sell

• Ask for your free…
• At Last!
• By popular demand
• Check out these great features:
• Don’t miss…
• Good News!
• Here’s what you get:
• New low price!
• Now for the first time…
• How you can too…
• The first…
• The only…
• This is your last chance to…

I’m reading a thick pack of lies. It’s called a novel. This one is thicker than most so it might contain more lies. More people who are not real. It’s called “A Suitable Boy” and Vikram Seth is taking me back to India even though I’ve never been there. Well you can’t just work a few tides and get there, when you clear The Sound.

There’s a reason why I say I’m back in India. A year last boxing-day I received a phone-call from my oldest son. He and his girlfriend traveled together, through India for a period of several months. He had been there before but with a kayak. The purpose of that first journey, as I understand it, was to cope with the challenge of interesting rivers. It’s what they call an extreme sport. The purpose of his second visit, as I understand it, was to look and experience what they met, as a couple travelling and colliding with cultures very different to those of the Outer Hebrides or of Devon.

I was held, rooted to my chair by Sean’s commentary. He simply described what he saw and felt, from a public phone which had no screen around it. How children were coming up close and gazing into his eyes. There is no culture of privacy, no taboo at that intent staring. Fingers would reach out and pull at the twisted strands of ginger hair we call dreadlocks. Sean said he was seeing some people resting. A woman was lying in her sari. This would also be her blanket, her shelter. It was probably the only thing she possessed. The observations were relayed immediately to the Outer Hebrides. The father was learning through the son’s eyes.

But Seth’s characters matter to me a lot, even if they’re not real people. I can’t enter the minds of the real children or the woman described by Sean, nor those of the people studying him and the people he was studying. But Vikram Seth has allowed me to be intimate with a steady stream of minds. Some live in a fictional city and some in the non-fictional city of Calcutta. And some live in villages. I’ve just realized that the traveller’s narrative and the fiction have something in common. I’m completely dependent on the consciousness of the person who is reporting what they perceive or imagine or both. Both are aiming for nothing less than truth.

It’s only this morning I was telling lies to the innocent. Storytelling to the first three Secondary years in Tobermory High School, one class after another. I asked a few questions, in between the yarns. I asked what books they were reading. A futuristic trilogy was described by many. “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins has been top of the Amazon children’s best seller list for some time now. People have to play daring mind-games to obtain food. So it was not too big a leap to build pictures of imagined islands – to help the pupils map them, their personal map from their own imaginations.

There were the bronze cliffs, high and deep as the basalt cliffs of Fingals Cave, but on the floating island where Aeolus lives in peace and plenty in the bosom of his extended family. I explained how The Odyssey came to life for me in the rugged translation of Robert Fagles. It could well be that episodes began as spoken stories before they were formed into the ringing language of Homer. So we were simply returning to that.

Then we imagined the bronze pillars which support the island of the women somewhere out to the west of Ireland. The line of thought reminds me of another island you can only find sometimes, the one in Orkney which appears out of haar. It hosts the summer home of a daughter, lost to the sea but who has made a good living for herself and her child, with her tall Finman. Even though he’s a bit short of words and his fingers are nearly joined in a web.

We looked under the water, the way the widespan sonar equipment does, aboard the research-vessel the class had visited just before coming back for the stories. I told the North Uist version of the selkie story. It’s inevitable that the seal-wife will find her skin again and that her nature will make it impossible to stay on land afterwards. So she leaves her children and dives down out of our normal sight.

Departing Oban (© Ian Stephen)

Then I had a request. The girl-guides in the class had been along to an Tobar the night before. They had heard me tell the strange Irish story of the hook, the knife and the axe. It shares the imagery of three huge waves, with many other stories, from Brittany to Iceland. But it’s not only meteorological conditions meeting geological ones. Water forced, under pressure to swell its way through gaps or over bulges in the sea-bed.

If this story is also a lie – and it is seriously weird in places – then it had enough resonance for these young people to want to hear it again.

I think now there’s a lot of truth in this tale and in the selkie story and in the geography of floating or lost islands. The reason we’re drawn into these impossible stories is because the characters in them ring true – the way they behave – even if they are half seal and half human. You wouldn’t be moved by the ending if you didn’t recognize something in the seal-wife who has to return to her home environment. Her first home. And she does leave the best of fish on the rocks for her children.

This visit to Mull had the purpose of linking with the visit of the research ship as part of Oban’s Festival of the Sea. Dr John Howe gave a passionate talk on seabed mapping accompanied by a spectacular 3d imaging show. I hope the stories took us to equally scientific scrutiny of our relationship with the sea. But the science is human psychology.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

Baltic traders in Stornoway

Bookmarks

Dinny Smith comes home

Among the Bushrangers


The Gorilla Hunters

Two Years before the Mast


The Coral Sea


The Sea of Adventure

Kidnapped

Northern Diver

From Russia with Love

And then there was John Sandwick

who steered you to the Baltic

(the books department, not the shoes).


You browsed, he smiled.

You’d read everything in the house


but you’d reached the age for tickets.


You read the books at the shelves

till they said you could take them home.

The lady librarian explained spines,

how they could snap

if you folded and squeezed down,

how dog-ears spoiled it for everyone,

how bookmarks were best.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

The sausage and beer thing is interesting. Here, that would be very much a class divide—opera goers nipping into a local ‘greasy spoon’ before visiting ‘The Garden’ would definitely be slumming. Before a visit to the Vienna Volksoper, we dined in the Volksoper Café opposite, and were fascinated to see members of the Viennese establishment, dressed to the nines, tucking into their wursts and their long glasses of local beer.

Don’t get me started on the trains. In the course of 18 days we made ten separate train journeys across Bavaria and Austria, including connections, and all were on time, left from the platform noted on the ticket and, although mostly very busy, were never over-crowded. And they’re cheaper, too. And the stations are clean, bright, and full of great food outlets. Our hotel in Vienna, being very green, offered a ten per cent discount to those, like us, who arrived and left by train. Of course: it’s the only way to travel.

If the trains were cheap, so were the concerts, operas and ballets. In the city of Regensburg, which with a population of about 150,000 is roughly the size of Dundee, but has over 1500 listed buildings (the RAF never got round to bombing it) we went to see the local opera company. http://www.theater-regensburg.de For just 25 euros each we had great seats in the stalls, in a gem of a mid-19th century theatre, beautifully restored, to see a production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, an opera that requires such lavish orchestral forces, and such star singers, that Scottish Opera has never mounted it, and probably never will. It was superb—great singing and playing, and an intelligent and powerful staging with a brilliant set. Scottish Opera’s Tosca, at Eden Court last week, cost £40 each for equivalent seats.

Even the Vienna Volksoper was still cheaper than Scottish Opera for a ballet version of Carl Orff’s warhorse ‘Carmina Burana’ that involved an on-stage chorus of 70 (plus at times a children’s chorus of 30), a corps de ballet of 25, three operatic soloists, and a symphony orchestra in the pit. I’d booked for the show thinking it might be a bit of a romp. It turned out to be an overwhelming artistic and emotional experience, and I don’t mind admitting I was in tears by the end. The production redeemed a great musical masterpiece from the degradation of Old Spice adverts, horror movies and Classic FM.

One interesting factor is that companies like the Volksoper, and indeed the equivalent companies in Regensburg and Salzburg, stage operas and musicals together in the same season, with the same company. In Britain, musicals tend to be the preserve of theatres, like the RSC or Dundee Rep. Linking operas and musicals is clearly to the benefit of each. The ‘musicals’ sensibility brought a tremendous ‘oomph’ to the production of ‘Carmina Burana’, while I’m sure those operatic voices will sound wonderful in the forthcoming 50th anniversary production of ‘The Sound of Music’.

Of course, there is the opposite end of the scale. We also stayed with an old friend in Salzburg, where the annual festival has some of the highest ticket prices in Europe. But what we’ve seen of those Festival audiences, on past visits and on films, suggests that those attending are doing so as much for social (or even business) reasons as for artistic purposes. Some of the men, in particular, looked as if they’d rather be somewhere else—the golf course, perhaps. At the events we attended—in Bamberg, as well as Regensburg and Vienna, the large (often sold out) audiences were emphatically there for the music—listened with massive attention, and responded with rapturous applause.

And sometimes a great experience can be free (apart, that is, from a small offering). In Salzburg the Dom (Cathedral) and the neighbouring Franziskaner Church, have live music as part of mass every Sunday. In the Franziskaner that means a Mozart mass and Church Sonata, with orchestra, organist, soloists and choir, beautifully integrated into the liturgical service. I first enjoyed this uplifting Salzburg Sunday morning experience as a student, 37 years ago—it was great to see the tradition continuing.

One aspect of price that is, of course, very different in Germany and Austria is the admission charges for galleries and museums. We’re spoilt here in the UK by our free admission, and I couldn’t help feeling again that we’re missing a trick. Once you’ve got to somewhere like Regensburg or Vienna, the cost of admission to a gallery is one of the smallest costs of your trip—less probably than you’ll pay for lunch. Few people are going to be put off, especially as most major cities have offers like the ‘Vienna Card’ which combines free public transport with discounted admission to dozens of venues. Now, technology should make it easy for galleries here to offer free admission to UK (or even just local) residents, through some kind of smart card, while charging a reasonable admission price to tourists. As public funding shrinks, this is surely an issue that needs to be revisited.

And using such technology could deliver tremendous visitor data, whether the card was being swiped for free admission or as part of a paid package. A decade ago we had a holiday in Amsterdam and bought the annual Netherlands Gallery card which, for a modest price, gave free admission to some 400 museums and galleries throughout the Netherlands. That meant that the specific visits—where, when, and how often—of every card holder could be tracked and accumulated. So much more robust than visitor surveys, and so much simpler for the visitor. By the way, we managed a neat trick by going back to Amsterdam the following year a week earlier and getting even more value out of our cards. Of course, as my colleague Sian pointed out, first we’d have to overcome the very healthy British dislike of being electronically tracked!

And there is also the question of value for money. Admission to the V&A’s current piece of Olympics propaganda, British Design 1948-2012, costs £12 full whack. In Vienna, we paid 12 euros for admission to the Albertina, a lesser-known treasure of the city which specialises in works on paper, but that ticket price covered no less than three major exhibitions.  2012 is the 150th anniversary of the quintessential Viennese artist, Gustav Klimt, and every major gallery has its own exhibition about him. The Albertina’s contribution explores his life and work through his drawings—over 200 of them. It was an utterly engrossing exhibition, which changed forever our perceptions of an artist too readily dismissed as kitsch. But after that demanding and inspiring experience, we were then faced with ‘Impressionismus’, another 200 works on paper by Impressionist artists from Boudin to Redon and Manet to Cezanne. This was by any standards a world class exhibition—the substantial section on Degas alone would have been an impressive exhibition in most contexts. After nearly three hours, mentally and physically exhausted, we couldn’t begin to contemplate the third exhibition, ‘From Monet to Picasso’. But we’d certainly got full value from the ticket price!

And that poses a question I’ve asked once or twice before? Can we have too much art? Of course, a resident of Vienna wouldn’t need to cram those three blockbuster exhibitions into one visit, as we did with only three days in the city, but I think they’d still have had to buy a ticket for each visit. So, did the exhibitions need to be so huge? Could we have understood Klimt’s remarkable qualities as a draughtsman by seeing only half as many works? Would we have felt we’d got value for money, and had an enriching experience, if we’d only seen that Degas section, and not the whole comprehensive survey. I suspect the answer to both questions is ‘yes’.

So why the epic quality of these, and indeed of several other exhibitions we saw on our travels, not to mention several which Judith has seen in London recently? I suspect there are three factors: the ambition (and obsession) of curators, the expectations of sponsors, and the need to create a media ‘buzz’. The trouble is that none of these factors take much account of the needs of the footsore, eye-strained, brain dead visitor.

Fortunately, not every celebration of Klimt had to be on this scale. Early in his career Klimt painted some of the murals for the great stair hall of the then new Kunsthistorisches Museumin Vienna. Usually you’d need opera glasses to study them. But for this anniversary year the museum authorities have constructed a scaffolding gantry that allows visitors to get up close and personal to these beautiful paintings, made on the cusp of Klimt’s maturity. Of course, they couldn’t leave it at that—there’s also an enormous, comprehensively documented, exhibition about how these works came about. But that’s in another room, you don’t have to go there, you can just enjoy the exhibition experience at its purest: getting to spend some time, at your own pace, in the company of great art.

© Robert Livingston

Of course we still rely on and serve our local communities and again we use the web and online technologies to connect with our communities. But how many people are online in Scotland and who are the groups we are not reaching with our online promotion?

What is Digital Participation? It basically describes people’s ability to gain access to digital technology and understand how to use it creatively. The Scottish Government’s Social Research arm published a report on Digital Participation in Scotland this month, which gives a summary of the various data available to us around the topic of internet usage.

Across the UK 74% of people have a broadband connection at home, this is compared to 61% in Scotland – so why the difference?

The report suggests that to a certain extent the figures are skewed by the large number of people online based in the South of England, and that Scotland’s digital participation rate is not actually that different from communities across the rest of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. However it does ask the question – who is not online?

Based on a review of four different research studies conducted by Ipsos Mori, Ofcom, the Scottish Household Survey and the Oxford Internet Survey, the Scottish Governments report found that the demographic make-up for non-internet users appears to be mainly older people, who have low household incomes and are not working.

Unsurprisingly the report found that people of an older age, or on lower incomes, with fewer educational qualifications, who are not working, that have a disability or long-term illness, or are from areas of deprivation are much less likely to be digitally engaged. There are some pretty obvious reasons why some of the people in these groups might be digitally marginalised, and, again, unsurprisingly the biggest barriers to getting online were associated with cost and infrastructure (in some areas of Scotland we know it is virtually impossible to get a reliable internet connection).

What was interesting were the levels, from the non-user groups, of disinterest in the web. The Scottish Household Survey found that of the individuals who do not use the internet 62% said they were unlikely to ever use it. The report suggests that a possible explanation for this is a lack of knowledge about computers and the internet and therefore people are unable to recognise the benefits being online can have for them directly. It was also interesting to learn that there is ever so slightly more people accessing the internet from home in rural areas than urban areas in Scotland – but we are talking 1 or 2% here.

So what relevance does this have for us and audience development? It lets you know which groups will not respond to an online campaign for a start. If you are looking to engage with people identified in the non-users groups then you can’t rely on your online marketing to reach them alone. 

The other advice that the report gives, which is of use for us when thinking about targeting audiences through the internet, is the recommendations on how to encourage people to get online. It is suggested that by communicating the relevant and specific benefits to a non-engaged group is one way of breaking down any barriers. Second is to provide reassurance that the internet is for them. It is a commonly held belief that the internet is time-consuming and detracts from daily life, to break this perception down we could emphasise how much fun the internet is, that it helps to keep the mind active and can save you money.

The Scottish Government set out its Digital Ambitions for Scotland in October 2011, which stated that ‘the rate of broadband uptake by people in Scotland should be at or above the UK average by 2013, and should be the highest among the UK nations by 2015′. If Scotland can achieve this target our job of promoting online should be made easier, but we will need to wait till next year to see if this ambition has been achievable.

Digital participation in Scotlandor you can visit the Scottish Government website.

If you are planning a digital marketing campaign or would like to explore the options available to you through the web then do get in touch to arrange a meeting with me. You can also check out our Tip Sheets for Digital Marketing.

On Wednesday 15th February this Residency ranged a fair distance from the Western Isles. From a waypoint at the School of Scottish Studies, George Square, Edinburgh, I rode shotgun on a road movie to the outskirts of Swansea. We were on the edge of a Celtic sea-route where stories were traded along with produce. This was a family visit and we arrived to news of a sudden death. The sad news led in turn, a few days later, to an inland setting.

Storytellers at Calanais

The Thomas Helwys Baptist Church in Lenton, Nottingham is a strong example of 1960s architecture – exposed brickwork is set with great curving laminated timber beams. There is a feeling of space and calm inside. Across the road are contrasting icons of centuries. There is cluster of high-rise flats, of the same period as the church but now due for demolition. A much older fine brick warehouse with arching windows has been converted to student flats and looks set to be fit for a further century.

The death we had come to mark occurred in one of the bleak towers. The minister knew the man who died and had been a main link to tight circles of a limited world outside. We dealt with the necessary business together and, in the course of our exchange Jenny (the Baptist minister) asked me about my own work. I told her I was now a Reader in Residence in the Hebrides. She told me the church had its own reading group and it met the next day. Could I come and tell a story?

So that is how the stories gleaned from Western Isles Libraries and the School of Scottish Studies archives were told in a district of Nottingham.

Two research students began the discussion. They are writing a joint dissertation, comparing different reading groups. One read a descriptive poem but omitted the title. So it was a riddle. This suggested the story of the wise grieve at Calanais farm (collected and transcribed by Donald Morrison, cooper, Stornoway) . As readers of this blog, listeners to Isles FM and members of a reading group in Stornoway and another in Lenton know, this is one of many stories with a pattern of three. Each element is really a sort of riddle. Now those who have heard it can share that story further.

But I’m going to continue the journey with one more story suggested by the last. Angus Cameron, recorded in Skye in 1958, provided a fine version of another witty tale included in the Morrison manuscript but he also offered another group of three riddles.

George Buchanan was a historical figure but his name has become a timeless byname for the one who wins by wit. But he outstretched himself at least once. He was in the jail, in England and things were not looking great. His reputation was to be tested by the king who made him an offer. Answer three questions correctly and be granted freedom.

But Buchanan did a bit of fancy footwork first. His own brother, known to be a simple fellow, was smuggled in to take the learned man’s place.
So the brother heard the questions and provided his own answers.

How many ladders do you need, to reach the moon?


One – if it’s long enough.

How long will it take a man to go round the world?


Twenty-four hours, if he goes in step with the sun.

The King’s examiner must have been getting anxious then but his last card would have been the ace.
What am I thinking?

I know what you’re thinking all right. You’re thinking I’m George Buchanan. But you’re wrong – I’m his brother, the fool.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

But of course Hamish had parallel careers as a translator and collector of folklore as well as a poet and writer of a small number of songs which can range from the scurrilous exercise of wit to the enormous scale of the Freedom Come All Ye. I was guided through the archival systems by Cathlin Macaulay and before long there was a reference in my hand which related to a recording made by said Mr Henderson. It related perfectly to a play I’ve got under construction – but not the direct subject of last week’s research.

A shoal of stories. Sir E Scott School.

It’s very like fishing. I was soon into a shoal. Most of the stories held in the archive are summarized in short paragraphs which themselves are fine examples of storytelling. You can then access the oral recording, originally on reel-to-reel machines and now also available as digital files on computer. And who should I meet at the fishing but Deirdre not of the sorrows – the MacMahone woman who organized a wonderful recreation of Gaelic psalm singing over the waters of Loch Erisort, last May.

Deirdre was looking to the north coast of Scotland for authentic links to recorded material. I was seeking versions of key stories in the Morrison manuscript – transcriptions of oral tales made in the 1800s.

Here are some findings:

I have already retold, in these columns, Morrison’s version of the story of the wise factor from Skye and the loss of a cow and boat. In 1958 Angus Cameron from Skye recorded exactly that story for the School of Scottish Studies. It is astonishing how similar even the sketched detail is. But even the English synopsis of this Gaelic recording provides a name for the wise factor.

Morrison records a strong version of the sinking of the galleon at Tobermory, linked to a tale of intrigue and the legend of Lady’s Rock, off Lismore. In 1953, Calum Maclean recorded one Captain D MacCormick describe a tradition which contains a detail of this gunpowder plot.

The story of the three knots which can control the wind ranges around the coasts of Scotland, east, north and west. Morrison lists one which describes the visit of a crew from Heisker, off North Uist to Lewis. In 1962 D A Macdonald recorded Donald Maclellan from Tigharry tell a version which runs very close. Now the Morrison manuscript was not republished until 1975 so the evidence points to an unbroken telling of seminal stories over several centuries. More of these stories later.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

The plan was to use a seminal traditional story (transcribed by one Donald Morrison, cooper by trade) as a starting point. Then explore how the theme of crossing open water is echoed in other books. I borrowed two titles from a themed display, on stands you meet as you enter the library. Kevin Patterson’s The Water In Between and Richard Deakin’s Waterlog. Patterson’s book took a hold of me and other correspondence and accounts which had seemed so important were set aside.

It’s an account of a voyage in open ocean – the Pacific in this case – undertaken for traditional reasons. The author had been unlucky in love. So has his companion who happily does know how to sail and navigate. By the end of the adventure so does Patterson. But his urgent impulse to sail his small ship home to Western Canada is at least equal to the restless desire that made him leave it.

At another level, this gripping read is also an analysis of travel writing, not only journeys by sea. He writes well on Theroux and Chatwin. But he can turn the same wry and sharp wit on his own quests.

Deakin’s book is a different type of journey. It follows a concept – suggested by a John Cheever story which also resulted in the movie The Swimmer (starring Burt Lancaster). But this is a swimmer’s journey through Britain rather than the 8 miles home from a party on Long Island. (That’s the other Long Island, the one across the pond.)

Of course he can’t swim from one length of the joined-up countries to the other. It’s more an investigation into the localized places where there is swimming without chlorine. There’s a fair bit of wit and Deakin approaches swimming the way some would poaching. He has a war of words with the gamekeepers who would keep exclusive chalk stream waters for the trout and their pursuers. He finds eccentric clubs of people who hold to traditions of leaping into cold or partly-heated waters but all in the outdoors, in salt or fresh water. He even attempts to find a fabled pool in underground caverns. And there is a build-up towards the goal of swimming the Corrievreckan gulf. That’s where Orwell nearly drowned, almost carried into the dangerous area in a small boat. That would have left 1984 unfinished.

A young man called Bill Dunn helped Orwell run the small farm on Jura. He went on to marry Orwell’s sister. He also swam the Gulf of Corrievreckan, despite losing a leg during the war. Deakin failed to find the right conditions for that swim and it’s not easy to see how it would be crucial to this book anyway. It’s really a devotee’s hymn to surviving untamed places and activities and noncomformists, in a merrier England and a small section of Wales.

When it came to the night of the event in Stornoway Library, we did indeed begin many journeys as participants described books which were suggested by Morrison’s account of a crossing to St Kilda, when a gannet’s beak pierced the hull of an open boat. We made skeletal versions of the stories as a short series of text messages. Because that’s what a story is – a clear backbone with the flesh fixed to the frame.
 Here are versions from one group:

Open boat sails from Harris to St.Kilda

Good weather with Factor’s wife onboard

Sea full of herring sky full of gannets
A huge THUMP stuns boat
Half way there

Gannet beak breaches hull
Crew leave dead bird stuck in boat
Wind picks up coming in fast
Islanders catch boat and see beak WOW!

and the story in a still shorter form:

Boat Bird Beak Bloody Hell Beach

St.Kildans welcome boat kept afloat by a gannet’s beak

Then one person made the excellent suggestion of extending our planned reading to the inner terrain of journeys in the mind. She proposed Janice Galloway’s The Trick is To Keep Breathing as our next adventure and volunteered to introduce it next meeting on.

But I’d like to end by referring to another approach to documenting adventures. Three experienced sea kayakers have gathered their experience and that of other members of a close community into a seminal guide-book. The Outer Hebrides is subtitled “Sea Kayaking around the Isles and St Kilda” and is by Mike Sullivan, Robert Emmott and Tim Pickering. It was first published in 2010 by Pesda Press. (www.pesdapress.com).

This book differs from all of the above in that has a very clear and specific purpose. It’s a pilot book for those who use the most practical and elegant small craft of all – the kayak. These slim vessels enable people to go where no other mariner could go in any other type of vessel. So the details of tested routes along the coastline of the whole span of the Outer Hebrides are shared in crisp detail. A clear outline of a chart detail is backed up with a tight explanation of the route – the gains and the dangers.

Many years of combined experience have also yielded a strong stock of sharp photographs. Some of these have a practical purpose in showing the look of the land which is symbolized on the chart. But some are like a lyrical counterpoint to the text.
There are also stories of water-breaking crossings; a description of the basking shark; a summary of practical pieces of safety advice and other well-written examples of sea-kyaking lore which make the book of interest to those who are not planning to paddle anywhere at all.

This is an exemplary publication – a well-made, well laid-out durable manual and more.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

It depends on how you look at it. I’ve been reading from the many accounts of voyages to St Kilda. That’s a further 40 miles out from when you clear the Sound of Harris. But you do get the picture of a stable society and a viable one, by the standards of the time, until increased contact with the outside world and a dwindling population made evacuation inevitable. I also went to hear a very well-researched talk, arranged by the Islands Book Trust. Ian Parker ‘s findings can also be found summarized here and there are other links to the detailed documentation of recent excavations. http://www.ceuig.com/archives/3091

Boreray

Observation of the archaeological evidence on Boreray (about 5 miles over ocean from Hirta) implies that there was a resident population here but further back than any recorded accounts can say. The evidence is in the lie of stones. There are terraced walls which must have held the soil in place on a south-facing slope. There are well-constructed shelters, nearly undergound, under the more recent layer of bothies and stores.

I’ve come to think that this objective evidence might be at least as reliable as some travellers’ accounts. There are reports of a stranding incident on Boreray in Martin Martin and in Kenneth MacAulay. There is further evidence in a list of repaired and wrecked boats that sounds like a secular litany. The number of stranded men varies between accounts. In one version, a securing rope parted and the boat was wrecked. In another, the boat which landed them was wrecked at Village Bay. In another, the men who landed the stranded group are struck down by the cholera epidemic which decimated the population of Hirta.

In all the stories, there is the necessity of finding a way of signaling between the two islands. I’ve looked to Boreray from Oiseval and Connachair and from the deep natural tunnel at Glen Bay. Last week I saw a projection which took the perspective of the research expedition camping on Boreray, looking back over to the higher ground of Hirta. It seems to me that this is the essence of the story, whatever version, whatever details. And it seems likely that there has been more than one stranding incident over the years.

Boreray

This coming week (5th Feb) I’m visiting another archive – at the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. So I took the chance to record a version of the stranding story for Isles FM. We have a regular broadcast slot now, on a Tuesday morning, while the residency runs. Up till now, discussion and stories and readings from library books have gone out live. But thanks to Donald Saunders, the regular slot can be continued.
I explained to Donald that, for me, this is a pibroch of a story. The mood and the pipes and the piper – the ambient temperature and humidity have all got to be in tune.

The narrative reminds me of another great story of survival, this one documented in scrupulous detail – Shackleton’s voyage in the converted lifeboat from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Their own survival meant that the relief ship could return for the other stranded members of the expedition. As in the Boreray story, the men endure hardships but all survive. And there’s not many West of Scotland stories with an affirmative ending like that.

• Boreray video and reading by Ian Stephen

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

He picked this up from Fladda Chuinn, one of the Islands off the near coasts of Skye. He had been on a sea-kayak expedition, making the shortest crossing of the Minch. Sean told me how I couldn’t imagine the stockpile of generations of driftwood, built up by the tides in that place.

Wreck © Ian Stephen

This piece has bent timbers, probably oak. I don’t want to scrape the weathered surface to inspect the grain. The fastenings are iron. It’s certainly older than me and probably older than the two of us put together.

If you can kayak across from our Long Island to Skye, you can see how a story could cross, given the right breeze. Donald Morrison, a cooper, born in 1787, says that this story is from Skye. When I say “says” we’re both writing but we’re trying to speak.

In the edition of the Morrison manuscript, edited by Norman Macdonald “under the direction of Alexander Morrison, District Librarian, Public Library, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 1975” the story is titled A Judge who Pleased Both Clients. It begins on page 105.

I’ve read it often, but I’ve gone back to it again. I’m also thinking of phrases I’ve heard when I’ve been working on Skye. Some years ago, I worked with the artist Caroline Dear, installing art in Uig woods. The school pupils of Uig told their versions of this story and others and we installed slabs of slate with their phrases engraved, in a dyke which was rebuilt.

And I’m seeing the lines of the North Skye Coast, sailing the Eilean Trodday gap to make a landfall in poor visibility at Duntulm bay.

THE WISE FACTOR

There were two crofters, neighbours, both of them happy men. Each had a great passion in his life. I’m sorry to say that we’re not talking about the crofter’s wife, in either case, though each of them was married happily enough. No but one was very fond of a particular boat and the other had a very fine cow.

We’re very fond of beam in a boat, on the west coasts and this vessel had ample. She’d looked after this man, all their lives. Many’s a thumping lythe and haddock came over her gunnels and she had always found the way home, through the reefs to the secure geo where she was always drawn up the shore.

Now the crofter did not venture out to sea as often as he used to but he’d be content to take a stroll in the evening and just stand back from the cliff, admiring her lines.

His neighbour would just pat the cow’s rump in the morning and she’d wander out and find her own grazings. He never even had to send the dog. She’d be home in good time in the evening and give a good yield of quality milk. She always found her own good grazing. She’d never kick or bump the pail. You knew what to expect and it would be the same every day, whatever the weather.

But this night the cow did not appear home, back at the croft. Right away, our man knew something was wrong. He went out, along the cliffs there and then. He was stopped in his tracks, just at the edge of his own ground. There was mud and hoof marks and signs of a struggle but the cow had slithered over the edge. Now these are gradual grassy cliffs and she might have survived. But she’d gone stumbling into the very spot where his neighbour’s boat was kept. She must have panicked. There were split planks and broken timbers everywhere. The splinters of the boat had finished her off.

Now pain sometimes shown itself as anger. This man who’d never had a bad word with his neighbour goes shouting and banging at his door.
“Your boat has killed my cow.”

“What are you talking about man? You’re making no sense.”
But then, when the other fellow realized what was behind the words, he said, “And what about my boat. Is she all right?”

“Of course she’s not all right but it’s my cow we’re talking about here and your boat has done for her.”

Wreck detail © Ian Stephen

Well, first there was arguments and then silence and then a court case. Neither of these men had much money behind them but it looked as if they would ruin themselves at law. There was no legal precedence for this case and no court could decide who was responsible for the losses.
 The case was much discussed and gained the interest of Macdonald, the laird of much of Skye at the time. It was due to go to the Court of Session and we all know how long that could take.
“Gentlemen,” said Macdonald, “Do you not think there’s enough men putting claret into the mouths of the Edinburgh lawyers without us contributing more?”
He suggested putting the case to a factor on the neighbouring estate. This man was widely known for his wisdom and for his deep learning.
So they all agreed to meet.

“Now,” says the factor, “I’ve no letters after my name and no legal qualifications whatsoever.”
They all nodded their understanding.
“And I’ve no reason to say why my judgement should be better than any other man’s but there’s no point in having this discussion unless we all agree to abide by the finding.”
He looked to the man who had lost his cow. He nodded. And the one who had lost his boat. He nodded too. And then he asked Macdonald, the Laird if he would also abide by the finding.
“Well I do not see what that has directly to do with myself but yes, of course, I’ll abide by what’s decided.”

“In that case, “ says the factor, “I can clearly see both sides to the argument. The cow might well have survived her slip had the boat not been in that exact place. And clearly the boat would still be intact had the cow not fallen. But we must look a little deeper into the very cause of the accident. Now it seems to me, that a section of coast like that has inherent dangers to man and beast. Therefore a dyke should have been established to offer that protection. And so I find against the laird for the value of a replacement cow to this man and boat to that. And for the cost of instating a suitable dyke so that an accident like this may not happen again.”

To his credit, Macdonald accepted the finding and paid out the sums required. And that’s the story of the wise factor.

When I told this one, or something like it, to Seamas who was rebuilding the dyke in Uig woods, incorporating the engraved slabs, he told me he’d heard it before. His grandfather told a story very like it. Only it was a horse that went over the cliff.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

Blogging has become quite the social media phenomenon in the last 2 years. They’re a fantastic tool to be using for both marketing and promoting yourself, your artwork, your organisation, basically anything that you do, or it can also be a brilliant way of putting your thoughts and inspirations down into words, a creative journal if you like.

Below are just some of the creative Blogs I’ve come across recently.

If you have a blog you would like to add to this list please do contact me.

ARTS AND CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS

• Creative Cultures Scotland  – A place for creative practitioners to network and represent their skills.
• The Editorial – The Editorial: The Temporary Projects Season: Ruth Barker’s Blog
• Rowan Gallery – The Rowan Gallery in Helensburgh
• Craft Research –  Knowledge through making
• Craftspace – A Crafts Development Organisation
• Innovative Craft – The latest developments at IC: Innovative Crafts
• Caritas Music –  Music promoter, distributor, store and production company blog
• Creative Industries Shetland – Textiles and music in the North Isles of Scotland

 ARTISTS AND MAKERS

• Judy Scott Textiles and Mixed Media –  A Vintage Girl who just loves to create with fabric paper thread and paint
• Elizabeth McCrindle’s Art from Scotland – The journey of a Scottish artist, equine, canine, landscape and sporting art
• The Thoughts of An Artist – A blog from Ralph Taylor, a Fife based Painter
• Jan Patience Journalist and Art Lover – Blogs about the art she’s seen and artists she met on her travels in Scotland
• Lightstalker’s Blog – Glen Campbell – Highland based photographer
• My Minds Eye – A blog from an Edinburgh based artistic dabbler – Alexander J Blair
• Mad Cat Art Studio – A blog from Marion Boddy-Evans in Skye
• Tim Wootton – A wildlife artist based in Stromness, Orkney
• Lesley McInally Ceramic Art – A Scottish ceramic artist living and working in Canada
• Pure Art and Soul – An artist’s blog inspired by music, by dreams, by hope for a better world
• Feltsket – A crofter and textile maker in Shetland
• Austin Taylor Photography – Freelance Photographer based in Shetland
• Felt Addiction – A blog from maker Joni Phippin
• Home in the Highlands – A Midwest American transplanted to the Highlands
• Red 2 White – A self-taught designer-maker based in the Highlands
• Ebba Redman – Jewellery Designer who runs Tayberry Gallery in Perth
• Taking Time – A touring exhibition from Craftspace curated with Helen Carnac
• Text-Isles – Shetland’s Contemporary Textile Group
• Kerrianne Flett – Third Year Duncan of Jordanstone Art and Design Student
• Mary-Ann’s Cottage – Two artists inspired by the maiden voyage of the Westland in 1879
• Paper Boats – Documenting the Paper Boat Fundraiser and Exhibition to raise funds for Mary-Ann’s Cottage
• Joanne B Kaar – Journeys of an Artist in residency in Durness, Sutherland
• Timespan Artists in Residence – A place for artists staying with us to record their ideas, encounters and thoughts.

WRITERS & MUSICIANS

• Breathing Out – Occasional journal of Scottish writer and musician Clare O’Brien
• The Truth About Lies – A writer based in Glasgow
• Sea Penguin – The view from nowhere, to everywhere – or should that be the other way round?
• John Crosbie – Various bits of writing, opinions, plays, screenpalys, poems etc

THEATRE & DANCE

• Theatre in Scotland –  Theatre in Scotland aims to inform the theatre going public of Scotland which shows are playing around the country and when, with reviews, interviews and much more
• Scottish Ballet – Latest news from the Scottish Ballet
• Citymoves Dance – Dance news and opportunities in the North East

CULTURAL COMMUNITIES

• The Spill Blog – An open to all music and culture blog which originated from the Guardian’s Readers Recommended community
• Artists Talking – Artists Talking is a unique space to explore artists’ insights and perspectives on contemporary practice
• UK Handmade – UK Handmade is a design led online magazine committed to showcasing and promoting the best creative talent the UK has to offer

AROUND THE GLOBE

• Las Vegas Art and Culture – Arts and Culture from the other side of the pond
• Granny Sue – Storytelling, writing, life and all that intervenes based in the USA
• Writing, fishing and sesenach’s Scotland – A freelance writer in Staffordshire
• Natalie De Koning – A blog from an Aspiring Artist from the Netherlands

* We’ve recently changed our blog set up on Northings which means that some of the content on the ‘old’ audience development blog hasn’t been available recently. However, I’ve finally found some time to copy and paste the most important content across to the ‘new’ audience development blog.

Created: April 2010

Updated:

April 2011

April 2012

I firmly believe that the great strength of small and independent bookshops is that they bring to your attention interesting titles that you wouldn’t readily stumble across in Waterstones, or have recommended to you by Amazon. And so it was in the Ceilidh Place—I found a book I knew nothing of, Shetlander WJ Tait’s translation of François Villon’s ‘Testament’, published last year by the Hansel Press  which is run by an Orkney-based cooperative including the Shetland-born sculptor John Cumming. I’m pleased to be able to say that HI~Arts has been able to give both John and Hansel some support in the past.

Now I’ve had a mild fascination with the French medieval poet-rogue Villon ever since, as a child, I saw the wonderful Ronald Colman swashbuckler, ‘If I Were King’ (long overdue on DVD), and so the prospect of reading his poems in Shetlandic was both surprising and enticing. The introductory essays present a very interesting argument about the importance for a localised language such as Shetlandic to do more than just reflect, and comment on, the specifics of where it’s spoken—as most of Tait’s contemporaries writing in Shetlandic had done—but to engage with the international mainstream, and WJ (Billy) Tait, who died in 1992 with these translations unpublished, certainly does that.

It probably helps, as you read these poems, to be familiar enough with Shetland itself to have the sound of the language ringing in your ears, but even without that advantage, I’m sure the sheer rambunctious, energetic life force of the writing would come across vividly. I remembered how, without knowledge of Gaelic, I’d never been able to appreciate Sorley Maclean’s poems through his own (deliberately?) turgid English versions, until I read the lively translations into Scots by Douglas Young.

Regular readers will know of my, probably obsessive, love of the music-streaming service Spotify. The day after we got back from Ullapool, I logged on to an album by the Faroese composer and pianist, Kristian Blak. I’d come across his music many years ago when I’d been given two of his CDs by the Director of the Faroes Nordic House (and there’s another whole blog to write about the concept of Nordic Houses!). The album I chose had the intriguing title of Shalder Geo.  Now, I knew that ‘geo’ is the word in Orcadian and Shetlandic for a narrow inlet of water, and sure enough it turned out that on this disc Blak was mingling Faroese and Shetlandic tunes as his source material. The result was highly intriguing and affecting, reminding me sometimes of the best music of that influential Irishman, Michael O’Suilleabhain. This is one thing Spotify does really well—open doors to music that is at the same time both very local, and yet international in scope and appeal. After all, before heading for Ullapool, we’d had a little season of Galician folk music, courtesy of the Spotify ‘related artists’ function.

A couple of weeks ago two of our team had attended a Creative Scotland seminar on ‘International’ opportunities. They both found it a rather disappointing event, pitched at a very basic level. These two examples I’ve discussed here, that link Shetland to a much wider world, in both space and time, seem to me to offer genuinely intriguing models of ‘internationalism’. That is, they both spring from a state of mind that is open and outward-looking, not closed in and parochial.

Of course, these are just two examples that I’ve stumbled across in the past few days. I could also cite Stornoway-born writer Kevin MacNeil’s many links with Sweden  including his version of Torgny Lindgren’s play ‘Sweetness’ for Dogstar Theatre; or artist Lynn Bennett-Mackenzie in Gairloch who’s painstakingly developing an international artists’ residency programme Ceangal  with Indian-based artist Somu Desai; or the links with Norway and Bolivia (!) that will be explored in this summer’s St Magnus Festival on Orkney; or the extraordinary, ongoing international odyssey of Matthew Zajac’s play The Tailor of Inverness  .

As those introductory essays to Tait’s Villon poems remind us, there was a time when the seaways put Shetland—and much of the rest of the Highlands and Islands—at the centre of criss-crossing international networks. Now technology—Spotify, Youtube, social networking, even Amazon—is once again making the concept of ‘remoteness’ meaningless for artists who live—at least from the point of view of the Central Belt—‘on the edge’.

© Robert Livingston

I’ve always been interested in the relationship between spoken and written language and this is central to both these areas of work. I hope the novel has the rhythms of spoken language in it, with voices from Lewis and other areas of Scotland to the fore.

And the Morrison Manuscript is the work of a passionate collector and teller of tales. The style is very direct and so there is still a strong sense that the tales have come from an oral tradition.

Restricted Vessel (© Ian Stephen)

This is the difference. There comes a time when you have to put a stop to revisions, to a book which will be published. But you re-make a traditional story every time you tell it. So the written version is not really the definitive one, simply a recording of one telling of it. Whereas a work of literature is as complete as you can make it – though sometimes you want a rough finish rather than a shiny one.

I have also been gathering new and previously published poems and I’m still making revisions so even previously collected poems will appear in a slightly different form.

However, I hope to pass selected stories from collections in Western Isles Libraries to people who will be faithful to the rich material in one sense but make it their own in another. After the holiday, Events newspaper will publish my retelling of one of my favourite stories in the collection. And I hope to tell it on Isles FM and to share it with school pupils. The notes reckon the story took place at around 1700 but for me it’s timeless and placeless.

For a large part of 2011, I’ve been organising a linked series of exhibitions for an Lanntair Arts Centre. All of these have explored the different forms a story can take – sometimes a film and sometimes a printed text or a handwritten one or the spoken voice or music or dance made in response to that story. There have been versions on most of Scottish islands public galleries and the final exhibition is at Highland Print Studio, Inverness till 14th Jan.

I’ve come to the conclusion that a storyteller really is like a seagoing vessel that is restricted in its ability to manoeuvre, perhaps a deep-drafted ship in areas where there is shallow water.

When you are telling a story that may have been honed over generations, you have a duty to be faithful to the essential form of it and the tone of it. You can’t really go anywhere you want to, the way you can in a novel or a narrative poem. But if you don’t make the story your own, it won’t come alive.

I’ve two recommendations from the lending collections of Western Isles Libraries. 
Storytelling Scotland, A Nation in Narrative, by Donald Smith (398.09411)

Traditions of the Western Isles, Donald Morrison, edited Norman Macdonald,
(941.14)

For a taster, here’s the introductory summary from the Morrison manuscript to “MacKorr – the Clever Grieve” (p 194)

“ A near ‘fairy story’ of a clever young man whose talents consist of “sleeping long in a storm, keeping bairns from the fire and being good at gathering friends to a feast,” and who proves this to his employer at Callanish, Isle of Lewis, circa 1700.”

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

Sian's Facebook Timeline

At the end of last month Facebook users saw one of the biggest refurbishments to the social network there has been, since it went global. The introduction of the Facebook Timeline has created a lot of controversy, as we all grapple with the changes to the design features of the site, while trying to continue to engage with our fans. Some love it, others hate it. But what kind of impact is this having on our pages and their abilities to connect with Facebook users?

Facebook states that “the new Pages helps businesses and organizations express their identity through features like cover photo and Page timeline” (Facebook Pages). Brittany Darwell of Inside Facebook reiterates this when writing:

“Timeline is primarily a design change and is unlikely to be directly responsible for any differences in fan engagement because most interaction occurs on posts within News Feed, not on pages themselves. Page owners should recognize the importance of Timeline as a first impression for visitors, but should not count on the redesign to change the way fans interact with their page.”

Facebook Timeline, according to Facebook, is only about changing design. They want to see businesses design interesting pages to capture people’s attention, and then focus on engaging fans through the news feed. But there have been reports that we are seeing less posts from pages getting through to people’s individual news feeds, and a marked drop in engagement with fans.

EdgeRank Checker and HubSpot released studies that looked into brand pages last month. They took 3,500 brand pages and found that all, regardless of whether they converted to Timeline of not, lost traffic (March 2012). HubSpot indicated that content scheduled to be published automatically to Facebook, after the company switched to Timeline, saw a 234% decrease in user engagement.

An eye movement study conducted by SimpleUsability found the Facebook Timeline that brand pages were forced to switch over to are “flawed”, with many of the new features going unnoticed or being misunderstood.

“The average user doesn’t fully understand the new layout, or interact with it in the way intended,” said Guy Redwood, managing director of SimpleUsability. “This will likely change over time, but as the mechanics of obtaining ‘Likes’ has become more difficult for brands, they now need to drive engagement more than ever.”

From the study SimpleUsability discovered the following:

• Cover photos are not as important as they think – most users in the study ignored the cover image entirely or disregarded it as ‘advertising space’. In most cases the first action a user took when landing on a facebook page was to scroll down the page to orientate themselves.
• The Timeline is a valuable feature – the benefit of the Timeline is that it has the ability to tell a brands story. The study found that it was easier to learn about a brand through their Facebook page then it was on their official website.
• The timeline only works if it is current – an outdated timeline confuses people, but the study found that most users do not look beyond one month in the Timelines reverse chronology.
• Users notice when a Friend ‘Likes’ or interacts with a brand – users are more likely to interact with a friends comment about a brand that they consider timely.
• Users rarely, if ever, interact with Apps – this could change over time as people become more familiar with Timeline, but for now, few people notice the customisable app button, it’s almost exclusively used to view photos.

Social Media Management platform Wildfire conducted their own research into how the Timeline has impacted on their partners pages by comparing how pages were accessed before the Timeline was adopted and a month after adoption. They found that top volume pages saw a marked increase in engagement, while other pages saw a general decline in all engagement areas. Wildfire also analysed types of posts and their impact pre- and post-timeline.

Pre-Timeline status updates were the best way to generate ‘likes’ and comments in comparison to other post types such as photos and video. However video posts were the best ways to generate ‘shares’ and outperformed all other post types. Post-Timeline the data revealed that status updates were still generating the most ‘likes’, that photo posts were slightly better at generating comments, and that videos were still the best way of generating ‘shares’.

What Wildfire has demonstrated is that the Timeline is working best for visual media – so it you have available visual media (photography, animation, illustration and videos) get these loaded onto your Facebook page.

Any change that takes place on a platform such as Facebook is going to cause some confusion, irritation and therefore some decrease in engagement. The old adage ‘time heals all wounds’ might well apply to this recent change, and after a while, once we understand how to use the site again, posts will start to reappear and our engagement increase.

On the other hand this could be the first sign of the tide turning against Facebook. The first group of people to leave the network won’t be those with pages, it will be the users, the people we are using the network to talk to. If this is something which concerns you then there are other alternatives such as Twitter (which is currently having a greater impact on search engine optimisation then Facebook is) and Google +. 

Of course a social network is about cultivating your community through providing useful, interesting content of value, and building a meaningful dialogue between your audiences/customers to engage them effectively, rather than fancy design and layout changes. However, if the fancy design and layout changes are effecting engagement with meaningful content, then does this not defeat the purpose of the network for businesses?

—

What are the main changes that will impact on businesses pages

1. Introduction of the Cover Photo (measuring 851 x 315 pixels).
2. No more default landing pages, now when users come to your Facebook page they will land on one page only, the main page with your cover photo and wall.
3. Private messaging – you will now have the ability to private message your fans.
4. Pin Posts – you can now ‘pin’ selected wall posts to the top of your wall. This will highlight the post so that it appears at the top of your wall.

Other recommended articles:

 15 must know tips to rock your new Facebook timeline business page

How to engage your audience with the new Facebook timeline for pages

Facebook Timeline for Pages – FAQs

Can you name 3 reasons I should give a rip about your Facebook business page?

Facebook Timeline pages and how to use them to promote your business

8 Tactful ways to use your personal Facebook account as a marketing tool

Good examples of Facebook pages

For good use of Photo Covers – http://www.facebook.com/fanta?ref=ts

Good use of Twitter App’s and Timeline – http://www.facebook.com/edfringe?ref=ts

Good use of Multiple Apps (see Show Your Best) – http://www.facebook.com/olympics

Good use of photography and video and Highlight feature – http://www.facebook.com/smallpetitklein?ref=ts

We have taken a line of approach which tries to take account of the strong oral tradition in the outer Hebrides. Since about the 1950s there has also been a very strong literary culture with writers of the international stature of Iain Crichton Smith, Derick Thompson and Donald Macaulay at the forefront. But earlier transcriptions of spoken stories indicate that the love of language, wit and narrative have been an established cultural force in this region for as far back as records can document.

My own working practice, since I began to publish and perform stories and poems in 1979, has been hugely indebted to an established tradition of oral storytelling. Part of this has come to me through my upbringing but I have also benefited from the work of those who have gathered well-developed examples of this vernacular art form. Donald Morrison, (1787 – 1834) was a cooper, working in Stornoway. No doubt his contacts with the herring-trade brought him in contact with a range of storytellers. His transcriptions of stories which range all down the western seaboard of Scotland and on across the North Sea to the Netherlands and Sweden, were gathered in a manuscript of 9 parts.

Sadly, two of these have been lost but the remainder were published in 1975 as edited by Norman Macdonald with the then District Librarian, Alexander Morrison. The collection is available in lending and reference copies at Stornoway Library. A copy is also held at the National Library of Scotland. We very much wish to draw attention to this seminal collection as a key aim of the Residency. Plans include regular slots on Isles FM and a regular feature in Events. These will include the retelling of selected stories from the collection. Look out for examples on this site.

We hope to work with existing writing groups in the Western Isles and work together to compile a reading programme which will compare work by contemporary Island writers with writing from other times and countries.

Ian Stephen was born in Stornoway and still lives there. He studied Education, Drama and Literature at Aberdeen University graduating with a B Ed (hons) with distinction.

Ian worked for the Coastguard Service for many years but has been a full time writer and artist since winning the first Robert Louis Stevenson Award in 1995. His project of navigating through the settings of traditional maritime stories was funded by a Creative Scotland Award and this has remained a key element in his work. He travels widely to tell stories.

Work in drama includes the play Seven Hunters – a touring production, directed by Gerry Mulgrew for Communicado, The Highland Festival and Tosg. His first collection of poems Malin, Hebrides, Minches was published in Aarhus Denmark, in 1983 and his new and selected poems Adrift were published in the Czech Republic in 2007. Poems and short-stories were gathered in the pocketbooks/Polygon series in Green Waters (with Graham Rich and Ian Hamilton Finlay) and Mackerel and Creamola (with Donald Urquhart).

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

This performance blew away, once and for all, the legend of the origin of the Goldbergs: that Bach composed them for a pupil, named Goldberg, to play to his insomniac employer. That’s patently nonsense. Not just because, if played properly, the work is far too stimulating to be conducive to slumber, but, as MacGregor showed, it is all of a piece. The idea that young Goldberg might have extracted a few movements, as and when, to while away the dark reaches of the night is wholly implausible.

But the fact that the legend has persisted for so long points to an early example of the deeply-rooted belief that music has to be ‘useful’. After all, in Bach’s time, most of it was: either it was embedded in church liturgies, or it had a role to play in civic and state occasions, or it was simply to aid the digestion—the origin, of course, of the term ‘Table music’.

Bach supremely demonstrated the uselessness of music, not just in the Goldbergs, but above all in the towering achievement of The Art of Fugue, which is so far from being composed for any particular purpose that Bach wrote it in ‘open stave’ with no indication of the instruments for which it was intended. But even after a subsequent century and a half of Romanticism, the idea that music should be useful didn’t go away. In the 1920’s the young Paul Hindemith declared that he was writing Gebrauchsmusik—explicitly, ‘useful music’—for social or political purposes, or for amateurs. In the next decade that high-minded aim would take a much darker turn, as totalitarian regimes in Germany and the USSR sought to stipulate that all music—indeed all art—must serve ‘the state’ or ‘the people’.

And still, today, stale old debates arise, about whether art is of benefit to society, or is simply ‘for art’s sake’. There are several ironies about this. The first is that, despite overwhelming evidence from throughout the world, governments and government departments fail to grasp the concept that the arts—and perhaps especially music—can have huge impacts on crucial areas of policy and expenditure: health, education, crime. It’s horrifying to realise that almost a decade has passed since we all hailed First Minister Jack McConnell’s speech on St Andrews Day, 2003,  in which he stated that:

Culture cuts across every aspect of government – it can make a difference to our success in tackling poverty, it can make Scotland a healthier place and it has a significant contribution to make towards our economy.

Creative Scotland has just announced a three year Arts and Criminal Justice Programme. An excellent idea. But I believe I’m right in saying that the sizeable budget will come from Creative Scotland’s own coffers. Surely one of the Scottish Government’s smallest budget areas shouldn’t be subsidising one of the largest? That’s hardly in the spirit of McConnell’s speech, where he challenged his various departmental Ministers to come up with proposals for how they would put culture at the heart of government.

The party of Government may have changed since then, but not the issue of the centrality of culture. As Neil Mulholland argued in a recent Bella Caledonia post , what is the Independence project, if not cultural?

So, instead of the Golden Age some of us hoped for back in 2003, of a flood of new resources for the arts from the big boys among Government departments, it seems instead that increasingly the arts have to prove their instrumental worth to get funded even from dedicated arts budgets. This despite the fact that it is also a decade since the Editor of the British Medical Journal argued that diverting just 0.5% of the NHS budget to arts activities would have hugely disproportionate benefits—a view supported at the time by a great number of medical professionals

But there is a further irony. The evidence I referred to is increasingly showing that almost any engagement in the arts can be beneficial. That is, these do not have to be projects designed specifically to achieve a particular end, such as boosting personal confidence, or diverting young people from anti-social behaviour. Just experiencing the live arts as an audience member is beneficial in many ways, both social and personal, both psychological and physiological.

Let’s take as an example what some would consider one of the most outmoded, or elitist, forms of engagement in the arts: the chamber music recital. I’ve written before about the excellent At One with Music series of lunchtime concerts in Inverness Town House. Inevitably, given that these are held on weekdays, the great majority of the audience is retired—indeed many of them appear very elderly and perhaps a bit frail, so a lunchtime concert offers an excellent opportunity that doesn’t involve travel in the dark. Most of those attending are regulars, and they tend to arrive very early, so there’s a real social buzz. Now, the superficial benefits of such social interaction are obvious, but here’s where we get into more difficult territory: Does the act of listening to great music have a direct physiological benefit? And is that benefit greater if the performance is ‘live’, not a recording?

Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about the much debunked ‘Mozart effect’ here. But I firmly believe that if one really listens to good music—and I mean genres such as jazz, traditional and world, as much as classical—then there is a physical involvement. Most obviously we react to rhythm. But I think we also became ‘in tune’ (pardon the pun) with the pulse of the music and, in the case of something as complex as Bach, with its unfolding architecture. And so, when the music ends, we experience an elation, an exhilaration, that can be profound, and lasting. The effect of a great concert can, literally, buoy me up for days.

Give me time and space, and I’ll happily extend that argument into different artforms: contemporary dance, for certain; theatre at its best, and even the visual arts. Randy Klinger, redoubtable founder and Director of the Moray Arts Centre, argues repeatedly and eloquently that his project is about re-establishing the pre-eminence of ‘beauty’ in our lives. Randy understands well how uncomfortable many people can be with that concept of ‘beauty’. In our post-modern, ironic, self-conscious society, making a baldly stated commitment to ‘beauty’ is a bit like announcing that you’ve found religion. In both cases embarrassing silences tend to follow.

But what if Randy’s right? Humans (and indeed Neanderthals) were already making art at least 40,000 years ago—indeed the earliest use of pigment has been traced back to a date ten times earlier than that. Music is certainly at least as old—the oldest flute so far discovered is also from 40,000 years ago. The very new science of evolutionary neurology will argue—as its proponents are already doing about religion—that humankind developed art because it conveyed some form of evolutionary advantage. Others will reject such a reductionist argument. But art is not even a uniquely human concept: just look at the bower bird!

So, finally, what I’m arguing is that the long running stand-off between the intrinsic and the instrumental values of the arts is simply pointless. Perhaps the single most famous piece of classical music of the 1960s was the Sinfonia by Luciano Berio, the third movement of which uses an extraordinary tapestry of texts, ranging from Samuel Beckett to student slogans from 1968. At one point these words surface from the aural maelstrom:

And tomorrow we’ll read that ‘Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto’ [or the composer and title of any other work included in the same programme] made tulips grow in my garden and altered the flow of the ocean currents. We must believe it’s true. There must be something else. Otherwise it would be quite hopeless.

That’s my credo. Art matters, it’s as simple as that. Or it would be quite hopeless. Last Saturday Joanna MacGregor proved that, in spades.

© Robert Livingston, 2012

Social Media Platforms Authors Should Explore by Tyora Moody

A-Z of Social Media – A Helpful Guide by Media Square

Creative use of social media to increase public engagement– by Dr. Sophy Smith, Institute of Creative Technologies, DeMontfort University

social media guide for small organisations by Simon Duncan

Sharing Good Practice – Social Marketing Scotland’s Outdoors Beyond the Usual Suspects by Atlas Social Martketing

Twitter for Artists and Arts Organisations by @hannahnicklin

Creating and Customising a Brand Channel by You Tube and Google

State of social Media: The Social Media Report by Nielsen

2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by the Social Media Examiner

How Voluntary Organisations can use Flickr for Social Media Success by Connect Communities

10 Social Media Tips for Arts Organisation – The Guardian

23 Social Media Facts to Share with Executives – Jeff Esposito  

Social Media. The Facts – by Generate

I will keep updating this page as I gather more information, and if you come across something of interest please post a link to the site using the comments function below.

Happy Tweeting everyone!

Often or not people are surprised at how excited I get about statistics, data and research information. It’s a genuine excitement as well, I often refer to myself as a bit of an information geek. The reason why I love cold hard statistical evidence is because it can’t really lie, these are the facts that we cannot ignore. Although what saddens me is often it is ignored and sometimes overlooked as having any direct relevance, and in the really extreme cases can be manipulated to suit predetermined opinions.

Last year I worked on an evaluation for a new festival, I looked at and analysed their audience survey, which was completed by those attending the festival events and activities. As a result of the evaluation, and of course the success of the festival itself, it has now been able to secure additional funding to rerun the festival this year. The value of the audience survey is one which cannot really be matched by any other means of evaluation (although others might disagree). However when we are in the business or providing arts, cultural and creativity, the ultimate indicator of success is the audience experience, is it not? It is my belief that even if the art exhibited is not ‘understood’ or recieves, what we might consider to be, negative feedback, this is all helpful, useful and reliable information. If we were constantly praised for the work we do, then we would never develop, never grow, never seek to engage with new ideas and new audiences. It is much easier to address constructive criticism then it is to be told everything is perfect all the time.

I have had the opportunity of evaluating a number of organisations audience surveys now, and I am always on the look out to evaluate and analyse other’s audiences! If you engage audiences or customers in an arts, creative or cultural setting, and are interested in learning more from them, then the time has come to drop me a line.

If you are looking for audience survey design, implementation, evaluation and/or analysis then please contact me at HI-Arts (sian@hi-arts.co.uk).  

 I genuinely look forward to hearing from you!

In the first edition of 2012, an ‘Industry Insight’ article was focused on getting the right price point for your goods. A handful of suppliers and retailers were interviewed about the current climate and it became quite apparent that there has been an insurgence in the £10 category in recent months. Customers will not hesitate in spending £10 as these are more likely to be impulse buys.

With forecasts still gloomy, the retail climate continues to be a tough one, it is important as a maker to offer retailers what customer are demanding, and at the moment it is gifts valued around £10. As a maker myself, it is increasingly difficult to create and offer such goods when the cost of raw materials continues to rise. Also taking in to account the retailers mark-up as well as your own! With this in mind, a maker has to sell an item for £4 in order for the retailer to sell at £10. Not only difficult, but also having to compete the foreign, mass produced goods!

The article has been an interesting read and one which I am now taking into account. It has made me think about reducing my costs i.e., buying in cheaper/alternative materials, without compromising the end product. The key being to create fun and unusual items that customers still believe to be good value for money. It’s not easy having to be one step ahead, but the beauty of handcrafted products, is that they are unique and will often stand out against the mass produced. Keep creating!!

Kathryn, Lazy Daisy Glass

Thank you to Kathryn of Lazy Daisy Glass for her thought-provoking blog – This is the first of a series of guest blogs by craft makers and retailers which will be hosted by Northings Crafts Blogs in 2012. If you are interested in contributing to our blog site, please feel free to contact Avril on avril@hi-arts.co.uk

Sacrum Quiver, body adornment in blown and cast glass, Patricia Niemann 2011/12 (image by Fergus Mather)

I personally will have to blame a masterclass attended at North Lands Creative Glass in the summer. Michael Rogers from the US, glass artist of international renown, teacher and poet, led a truly inspirational class. Also, I have been drawn more and more to anthropology and the study of the human body, and this particular way of working is the only way to reproduce my chosen models faithfully. And, finally, my work is … err … somewhat increasing in scale.

What follows below is an illustrated description of the process, lengthy and still in no way complete. How did this come about? Well – Twitter is to blame! Or more precisely my Twitter friend Justin Bellinger in Denmark. During the masterclass I ‘mini-blogged’ a little about the process. Talking to him it became clear that the process was too complicated to explain in a few tweets 140 characters in length. So I promised him a proper explanation – and only recently followed up on it: I have an important solo exhibition coming up shortly at Broadfield House Glass Museum in the Midlands and needed to make more pieces: A perfect opportunity to recap the process! The sacrum is a bone located at the bottom of the human spine, forming part of the pelvis. My piece also contains the coccyx below.

Lost Wax casting: A Human Sacrum

Making a rubber mould

1. Preparing the sacrum (medical specimen)
The sacrum bone has to be looked at carefully: Are there undercuts and hollows, which make moulding difficult? There are all of those! These have to be blocked off and smoothed down with oil-based clay (plastiline).

2. Framing the sacrum

Now, the sacrum is embedded halfway up in a layer of more plastiline (green in the image). A big cone-like shape is made from plastiline and attached to the sacrum – this will later be the reservoir for the glass to be molten into the final mould. A tight ‘frame’ is built around everything with sheets of glass cut to size. This frame has to be watertight, because liquid rubber is to be poured in later: All edges are to be sealed with more plasticine. Deep registering indentations are made with the help of a dowel and the whole interior of the frame is sprayed with a separator (that’s why it looks so shiny here).

3. Pouring the first layer of rubber

Liquid silicone is carefully measured, weighed and mixed with catalyst and booster and slowly poured into the frame from the highest point. While it takes time to set (30 min +), the surface of the rubber must be painted with an old brush to prevent it pooling in the lowest spot – and try to even out the complete rubber thickness all around the model. From previously set rubber chamfered bits are cut and attached into the setting rubber (later registration marks for plaster).

4. Pouring the first layer of plaster
Now plaster ismeasured out, a water/plaster mix made and poured to about 3cm thickness over the rubber and left to set. The plaster layer will later give stability to the completed rubber mould.

5. Turning the mould and treating the opposite side

The frame is now to be turned onto the plaster side and the plastiline on top and around the sacrum is removed. The sacrum is left in place. A new half of the cone shape is modelled from plastiline and attached. Again, the surface is carefully sprayed with separator and another layer of rubber mixed and brushed on (with chamfered bits). Another layer of plaster is poured and let set. Finally the whole mould can be disassembled: First, take the glass walls away, and then take off plaster casings. Now prise the two rubber halves apart carefully and off the sacrum bone. Finally remove the sacrum bone. The rubber will have picked up the finest details of the bone surface!

Making waxes

1. Pour wax

Assemble the new hollow mould, taking care to fit everything together by using the registration marks. With strong rubber bands the mould can be kept tightly pressed together. Level the mould on the table. Melt moulding wax and pour/ladle into the cavity. It is best to leave the wax to set undisturbed for 4 hours at room temperature. Then disassemble the mould again. Special care must be taken in prising off the rubber, especially when you are aware of special ‘undercut’-issues: the wax is soft and fragile and can break easily. The sacrum is such a delicate piece, that something always breaks or needs fixing. This can be done with the help of metal dental tools and the flame of a wee spirit burner or candle.

2. Finish wax

The finished wax on the far left has wax sprues attached. These ensure that the glass can later flow into the extreme fine ends of the mould, which could otherwise be closed off by trapped air in the mould. Visible in the image are also the original sacrum bone in the middle and both halves of the two part rubber/plaster mould in the background.

Making a plaster-silica mould

The wax in the image above sits stuck on a piece of float (or window) glass. This arrangement is to be transferred onto a small pottery turntable. Enough plaster and silica flour are weighed out in equal proportions, thoroughly mixed by hand and set aside. A face mask must be worn, because silica dust has the nasty habit of gradually blocking up the lungs forever, when inhaled (‘silicosis’). A small bowl of shredded glass fibre is also prepared. Lay a throwaway bristle brush at the ready and off you go: Pour a small amount of cold water into a small bowl and with dry hands start drizzling in the mould mix until a mound forms in the middle. Let this soak through and mix or ‘squeeze’ to a consistency of cream. Wash the mixing hand and start painting the mould mix quickly and evenly onto the wax, taking great care to reach and cover any nook and cranny! Start at the bottom of the cone ‘reservoir’ and work your way up. The fist coat is crucial and hard to apply. The mixture tries to ‘pearl off’, but it will ‘stick down’ eventually. Once the mix is too firm to paint, pour the excess into a lined bin and wash the wee bowl in a dip basin. Plaster or plaster mix must never be poured down the drain, because it will gradually block pipes. Continue to mix fresh material and paint on even layers until you have reached an even thickness of about 2cm all around the wax. Now add the fibre to a new mix and spread it on evenly. The fibre will strengthen the mould when firing. Finish the mould with two more coats, checking the thickness on the bottom intermittently by lifting the glass plate and peeking under the wax. Smooth down the last coat as evenly as possible using your (wet) hands. Let the mould set for a little, but no more than a couple of hours. Steam out the wax as soon as possible, i.e. before the mould has dried. At North Lands the mould is set on a metal table with a hole, through which the hose of a wallpaper steamer comes up. The molten wax drops into a basin below, filled with a little water. Cover the mould with a plastic bag, tie loosely and steam away, for ca. 1 hour. The wax is molten out completely, when the top of the mould feels hot. The mould is now at its most fragile. Let it cool slightly before moving and place to dry in a drying kiln or in a warm place, always with its opening down. The moulds will feel significantly lighter after drying.

Firing the mould

Now you can see what the cone reservoir is for! The cold casting glass (Bullseye billets in this case) is weighed, cut to size and very carefully loaded into the moulds. The moulds are soft, the glass is hard and sharp, but no speck of mould wall must fall down into the mould! If it does, it will be imbedded in the cast forever. The filled moulds are levelled and stabilised with ceramic props and kiln furniture and sand is put down on the kiln shelf to catch any potential disaster overflow.
Now the kiln can be slowly fired up, at a rate of 50°C/hr to 840°C. At this temperature the glass is liquid enough to fill up the whole sacrum cavity over the space of 4 hours. Liquid glass behaves like honey. Because glass is an insulating material with tricky expansion and shrinkage rates, the cooling must be very slow and controlled. Even when the temperature meters suggest safety, the finished cast pieces should sit undisturbed for a day to make absolutely sure they are evenly cold all the way through. These pieces will be in the kiln for 72 hours altogether, 48 hours of which is firing and controlled cooling.

Finishing

1. De-vesting

This image was taken after the firing, once the kiln has cooled completely. You can see that all the glass has molten down into the mould.

In order to de-vest the piece, i.e. break the mould away and clean the glass, a work area needs to be prepared. A few layers of newspaper are spread out and wooden tools and spatulas prepared. A metal brush (not too stiff and hard – your glass piece is delicate), old toothbrushes and inexpensive small bristle brushes will be helpful. Latex gloves are useful: The mould material tends to dry out your skin. Make sure you – again – wear a tight-fitting facemask because of the silica dust, and ideally work under extraction or outside: The fine dust will get everywhere! Carry the now soft and brittle piece to the prepared work area and carefully start easing the mould material away. It will come away in very convenient layers. Note the paper thin edges on the far right in both pictures above: This is very thin, sharp and dangerous glass. If you are careless or get distracted, it can be (by experience) a serious potential hand-slicing hazard. The thin remaining layer of mould material can now be tackled with the metal brush, then the toothbrush and finally the small bristle brush. At this stage a fine metal dental tool may be helpful to remove the last trapped mould material. Generally, it is best to clean the piece of all mould material before bringing it in contact with water; even if it seems tedious. On the right you see one of the almost completely de-vested sacra. The sprues have done their job perfectly!

2. Cold working

This is done by machines or by hand using abrasive material and water.  Water not only cools the piece, but also binds silica dust particles generated in the process. Safety glasses are essential for any kind of cold working: Due to the process and the fast spinning machines tiny glass chips are created, which can bounce far. These machines make a lot of noise: Hearing protection is advised. The first machine used in this instance will be an even-edged diamond-sintered grinding wheel on a lathe: Notches are carefully ground to mark intended break-off points in the sprues. The next machine will be the sliding table saw: It is a big and very loud machine, seemingly scary, but in reality one of the most ‘harmless’ and useful machines in a ‘Cold Shop’. Here is a picture of the two sacra after the reservoir cone and the sprues have been sawn off. The next cold working stages will happen on a lathe with stone or diamond wheels in different profiles and ever finer grit sizes.

On the far left you can clearly see one of the sacrum’s holes. The other holes are not so obvious and not all completely free of glass. Earlier, I may not have been careful enough with the painting-on of the first mould mix layer! Alas, it turns out that the glass blocking those holes is very thin and can easily be removed with small diamond burrs using a pendant (flexible shaft) drill machine.

Glass casting is not always this complicated, but in the case of this piece lengthy and necessary. Most of the stages are somewhat meditative, and if care is taken at every stage – hugely rewarding! Studio glass is an entirely addictive art form. You have been warned.

www.patbat.com

Last week’s flying visit to catch part of the closing week of Celtic Connections offered the opportunities to sadly confirm one grumpy prejudice, and happily explode another. In recent years, few cultural topics have prompted more grumpy tirades from me than the refurbishment of Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, known as ‘Kelvingrove’ for short. As a youngster I was taken there on regular visits by both my mother and my primary school, and, once grown up, our very first flat of our own looked directly down the street to its outrageous facade. So, I had a lot invested, emotionally, in the reopening of Kelvingrove in 2006, after the largest refurbishment in its history. In the event, I hated what had been done to the collections so much that I’ve never been back since. For me, it was as if someone had scrawled graffiti on the surface of a great and much-loved work of art.

So, it was with some trepidation that I approached my first visit to the new Riverside Museum, the posh new home (and name) for what I’ve known, all my life, as the ‘Transport Museum’. Not least because, since the opening last summer, there had been quite a few negative comments in the press about aspects of the displays. Judith said to me, as we entered, ‘save the analysis for over lunch’, but she needn’t have worried, as I’d no need to suppress my grumpy side. I loved it. We spent four hours there, and I was entertained, enchanted and enlightened.

At the same time I can fully understand those who’ve complained at how some of the displays make it difficult to really enjoy the objects—the ‘Arnold Clark’ wall of cars, three high, for example, or the ring of bicycles, suspended in mid air, and half of them upside down. But I decided early on in my visit that the Riverside Museum is really a ‘Wunderkammer’, and as such has gone right back to the 17th century origins of the museum concept. Rather than present a taxonomic or consistent account of, say, the development of the tram or the internal combustion engine, the Riverside tells a series of discrete stories, and on the whole it tells them well. I’m usually wary of the use of videos in museum displays—not least because they can date so quickly—but here I thought they were mostly very successful, thanks in large part to the sensitive creativity of media company 55° .

I was particularly moved by two links to my childhood. First, seeing the boat used for fifty years by the remarkable father and son, Ben and George Parsonage, to pull bodies, living and dead, from the Clyde as officers of the Glasgow Humane Society. George was one of my art teachers at Whitehill Secondary School, and the video in which he describes how his father designed and made the boat, and how they worked together as a team, is a piece of archive footage that will never date. And then, just before we left, in the recreated ‘Main Street’ (which is, I admit, a bit cheesy), I found the interior of the Italian Cafe of my childhood, The Rendezvous in Duke Street, and sat again in one of the booths where, fifty years earlier, I’d have been enjoying wonderful vanilla ice cream with the most lividly red raspberry sauce imaginable. Bliss!

Our chief reason for coming down was the annual Transatlantic Sessions gig at Celtic Connections. We’re passionate fans of the programme, have never missed an episode of all five series, and indeed have watched many of them several times, but we’d never previously made it to the live version. And it was also our first chance to hear live one of the world’s great musicians, Dobro-player Jerry Douglas who, together with the great Aly Bain, is music director of both the series and the concert. And it didn’t disappoint. Sixteen superb musicians, almost three hours of music, not a single number that was dull or weak, and a unanimous standing ovation from a packed Royal Concert Hall. And the great thing about TS is that it never stands still. Alongside stalwarts like Bruce Molsky and Eddi Reader, the line-up featured mesmeric chanteuse Ruth Moody from the Wailin’ Jennies, and the astounding Raoul Mola, previously of the Mavericks, who has a voice that combines the power of Frankie Lane with the seductive charm of Tony Bennett. All in all, a truly great evening.

Except…

Except for the sound. We watch the TS programmes with the music channelled through our hifi, and we have one of the accompanying CDs. We know, therefore, the care with which the sound for TS is always balanced to bring out every line as part of a euphonious whole, by a superb team that includes my old Third Eye mate, Alan Young. But in the Royal Concert Hall, close your eyes, and you could have imagined that the musicians were playing at the other end of a very large aircraft hangar. It was aural mush. Worse than that, the sound was sometimes downright distorted. Canadian singer Tim O’Brien was first up, and the harshness of his amplified voice boded ill for the rest of the evening. Aly’s glorious sweet violin tone was often stretched out, and Jerry’s subtle accompaniments, with little riffs and phrases, often leapt rudely out of the sound mix.

I’d write this off as an unfortunate one-off, were it not that the same thing was true of my last visit to the Concert Hall, two years previously, to hear the Trilok Gurtu Band. In both cases I had a near-ideal seat in the middle of the stalls, so if the sound balance wasn’t right there, I doubt it was right anywhere in the hall. That this needn’t be the case was proved the following night when we went to hear the truly wonderful Omar Sosa and his band in the Old Fruitmarket. Now, this was many decibels louder than the TS gig, but the sound projection had pin-point clarity, and it was also an absolutely integral element of the music-making, as critical as the baseline or the rhythm. The result was that, despite being so much louder and in a more confined space, it was never tiring to listen to, whereas at TS I was torn between wanting the performances to go on all night, and longing for the aural barrage to end.

How can musicians of such world class skill and sensitivity accept such a distortion of their artistry? And why do audiences put up with it? Surely we haven’t become so aurally bludgeoned that we don’t notice? And of course this doesn’t just apply to this one venue. Crude amplification is too often the curse of live music-making. Enough is enough, I say! It’s time for both musicians and audiences to form a new CAMRA—the CAMpaign for Real Amplification. After all, the original CamRA was, I imagine, started by a bunch of grumpy old men.

© Robert Livingston, 2012

Are you constantly looking for the right funding route but coming up empty handed? Are you looking for alternative routes to fund your project that doesn’t rely on public bodies? Would you like to start engaging people with your project now? Crowdfunding could be your answer.

Crowdfunding is a modern, online and interactive way to raise funds directly from the public – or the Crowd – for your projects and activities. With the advent of Crowdfunding we can now turn our audiences into supporters and funders, by collecting multiple small donations online and offering unique incentives to encourage giving, not only can you raise funds to get your project of the ground but you can start to build a ‘buzz’ around it before hand.

Crowdfunding is the latest addition to your Fundraising toolkit.

The practice of asking people to donate to a cause, charity, project or initiative is not a new concept, however Crowdfunding formalises a process of fundraising for projects through the internet and social networking. Crowdfunding is the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money together, via the internet, in order to support the efforts initiated by other people or organisations. A Crowdfunding project relies on a number of small donations from your community in exchange for a reward and the ability to support your project.

Crowdfunding is an advantageous addition to your abilities to raise cash in large or small amounts to support a project you initiate; it can replace or support the need to apply for specialised Funding or Investment from traditional funders such as arts councils, enterprise development, trusts and foundations.

Crowdfunding relies on the offline and online communities you cultivate, the crowd can exist as a community but they can also form from disparate groups around the world who share an interest in funding a person, project, event, campaign etc. The advantage of an online fundraising solution such as Crowdfunding is that the internet allows for the fast and effective flow of information around the world, increasing awareness and the pool of potential funders who can engage with what you do.

 How is Crowdfunding relevant to me?

The beauty of Crowdfunding is that you can fundraise for any idea, project or campaign that you have a passion to deliver. It enables you to access new funders who ultimately become your supporters, without having to rely on traditional methods and formal processes of funding.

 In a time when budgets are being reduced Crowdfunding offers an enterprising solution to raising the funds you need. It takes the pressure off you to find the right funding route or investment strand that fits your idea or campaign. It gives you the freedom to pursue the project you and your community want to see happen.

Which is perhaps the most important aspect of Crowdfunding, it enables your community to mobilise around the things that they really want to see happen; the crowd becomes the investors in their own future. Which also means it is a good indicator of the eventual success of your project.

 So how does it work?

1. You select the creative project, idea, campaign, event etc that you want to organise and that needs funding.
2. You identify how much you need to raise in order to deliver this project.
3. Identify your story and your pitch, how are you going to encourage people to donate.
4. Consider how you will reward your new funders.
5. Pick a Crowdfunding website to launch your campaign.
6. Tell everyone you know, and those interested in what you do, all about your Crowdfunding campaign.
7. Watch as people start donating to your project.

 Crowdfunding Sites:

• Crowdfunder – Allows people to raise funds for almost any type of project and give rewards to their community of funders. www.crowdfunder.co.uk
• Crowdcube – Enables start-up companies to raising funding be offering real equity in the business. www.crowdcube.com
• Indiegogo – an online social marketplace connecting filmmakers and fans to make independent film happen. http://www.indiegogo.com/
• Unbound – For books (currently published authors or new authors via agents). http://unbound.co.uk
• Bussbnk – Crowdfunding for donations and loans, ventures must deliver a clear social or public benefit. www.buzzbnk.org  
• Go fund me – An easy way to raise money online for personal fundraising ideas. This site is geared towards individuals interested in raising money online for personal causes. http://gofundme.com
• RocketHub – A platform for grassroots Crowdfunding of creative projects. www.rockethub.com
• Sponsume – fundraising platform for creative projects based in the UK and Europe. www.sponsume.com
• Pleasefund.us – a risk free way for people to raise money to fund their creative ideas and projects. www.pleasefund.us
• Wedidthis – A UK based site, which featured selected projects each month.  www.wedidthis.org.uk
• NewJelly – Founded in Oslo, Norway in 2010, NewJelly allows talent to showcase their work, goals and dreams. www.newjelly.com
• Akamusic – Founded in 2008 Akamusic is a community side that gives artists the possibility of having an album or a single produced. http://www.akamusic.com/
• ArtistShare – a Service for musicians to fund their projects outside the normal recording industry. http://www.artistshare.com
• Soloco – currently in development, based in Glasgow, they support community projects and initiatives. www.soloco.co.uk
• Angel Shares Scotland – recently launched in Edinburgh, this is a site dedicated to funding arts projects and administed by Arts& Business Scotland. www.angelsharesscotland.com/

Read Northings Interview with Ed Whiting the Founder of Wedidthis.org.uk

HI-Arts Craft Development and Audience Development are delivering a Crowdfunding workshop in Orkney at the end of February. For more information please click here.

HI-Arts Audience Development will be providing a Crowdfunding workshop in association with Arts & Business very soon. Please contact sian@hi-arts.co.uk for more details.

16 new outcomes were identified to deliver sustainable economic growth, of which Cultural Engagement is one. This is encouarging for the Cultural and Creative sector, as it enables us all to recognise the objectives of Scottish Government in relation to the objectives and corporate plan laid out and delivered by Creative Scotland.

While the term ‘cultural engagement’ has not been defined by the Government, it does suggest that in the coming years cultural organiastions and providers will be guided towards increasing cultural engagement (this could refer to the total number of people engaged in cultural activities, the level and type of engagement people have with the cultural sector or the ways in which people engage).

There are a number of other performance indicators that the cultural and creative sector can help to deliver on, these are the New Indicators which I can identify has having a significant impact for the cultural and creative sector:

• Increase businesses; we are seeing a rise in the number of independent creative businesses across the Highlands and Islands, with the advent of accessible online selling this has enabled a low-cost alternative to setting up fixed premises and shops.
• Increase exports; perhaps this is more focused on large scale exports, but it should not be overlooked that there is a large international export of craft products from across Scotland to countries like America and Canada.
• Improve Scotland’s reputation; culture has to be at the heart of this, particularly if we focus on tourism reputation. The live arts, festivals, theatre and dance have a huge role to play in international relations.
• Improve skills profiles; it is my impression and experience of cultural sector practictioners that we continually improve or learn new skills in order to grow our organisations. Audience development and marketing are key examples of the skills development that the cultural sectors adds to the wider economy.
• Improve mental wellbeing; the positive impact that the arts, culture and creativity has for mental health and wellbeing is well known, organisations such as Artlink demonstrate this in abundance.
• Improved healthcare experince; I believe this refers directly to the level of care that you recieve, but there is an arguement for the whole experience including the environment and appeal of hospitals, doctors and dental surgeries. Having had direct experience of visiting a loved one in Hospital in both Inverness and Aberdeen last year really brought home to me how important it is to have visible positive messages and images for both patients and their visitors. Artwork can play a major role in improving both the aesthetics and environment, of course it then ties in directly to improving mental wellbeing.
• Improve people’s perceptions of the quality of public services;  this is important for all us who are and will be in reciept of public service funds now and in the future.
• Widen use of the Internet – a lot of focus has been given to the digitisation of arts organisations and providers in the last few years, being online nowadays is essential not just for communicating your message to people but to enable those who might not otherwise engage with you, (be it for reasons of geography, finance or confidence), be given an accessible route to do so, via the internet. While surveys show that more people in Scotland use and access the internet more then any other country in the UK, we are still hampered by decent broadband and download speeds, which ultimately hampers the digital opportunities of arts organisations.
• Improve people’s perception of their neighbourhoods – projects like Invergordon Off the Wall fit directly into this particular indicator, community cultural engagement is essential to improving people’s positive perceptions of their communities.
• Improve the state of Scotland’s historic sites – again you can probably interpret the word ‘state’ to mean many things, there is the obvious practical state of historic sites, building maintenance, accessiblity etc, but then there is the improvement in the ‘experience’ and widening the cultural experience within historic sites, although museums and heritage have traditionally been off the radar of the Arts Agenda, there is a major arguement for greater joined up working between historic sites, heritage museums and the arts sector, after all our work is informed by our culture and culture is history.

To read the latest National Performance Indicators publication click here

http://scotland.gov.uk/About/scotPerforms

The first was a new publication from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Entitled Great Crowns of Stone it’s an exhaustive–and exhausting–account of the 70 or so known ‘recumbent’ stone circles which are unique to the North East of Scotland. If you know of these at all, it’s likely that you’ll have seen such well preserved examples as Loanhead of Daviot or Easter Aquehorthies, but there are many, many more, some traceable today only by a single stone. The second is the National Gallery (of London)’s catalogue of its 50 or so 15th century Netherlandish paintings , a group which includes some of the finest gems in that wonderful collection.

As well as being superb examples of the bookmaker’s art, beautifully designed and illustrated, these two books have much in common. They both display a level of scholarship, and a thoroughness of research, which are simply astounding. Of course, both are ultimately team efforts, but one person—Adam Welfare and Lorne Campbell respectively—has had the mammoth task of pulling all this vast erudition into a manageable order. Of course, you don’t actually read such books: only a specialist in the same field could actually read every paragraph and absorb and understand the phenomenal level of detail. But working through each, reading key sections and dipping into others, still reveals more information than it would have seemed possible to accumulate on these two very different and distant subjects.

And yet what is the outcome of this immense scholarly endeavour, this herculean piling up of data? Only to conclude that, in reality, we know far less on either topic than anyone previously thought. Great Crowns of Stone goes carefully through all the past theories about these stone circles—that they were Druidic temples, burial mounds, observatories and astronomic calculators–and politely but firmly demolishes them all. These circles have been surveyed to within a fraction of a millimetre and, in many cases, excavated not once but multiple times, each successive excavation putting right some of the errors of its predecessor. Yet it seems we can make fewer definitive statements about the original nature and purpose of these evocative structures than at any time in the past two centuries.

Exactly the same seems to be true of the discipline of art history. Take not just the most famous painting in this catalogue, but one of the best loved paintings in any British collection, the so-called ‘Arnolfini Marriage’. The Introduction notes the disparity in our levels of knowledge: the first ever catalogue to the National Gallery’s collection, back in 1843 gave this painting just 6 lines; the present volume devotes 38 pages to the same work. The author knows more about fifteenth century interiors, furnishings, and fashion than would seem possible at this distance in time. He examines in astonishing detail the biographies of five separate Arnolfinis all active in and around Bruges at roughly the right time. And yet what conclusion does he come to? The male subject may not be an Arnolifi at all, and if he is, we can’t be sure which of those five he is, and we have no idea who the woman is.

Worse is to follow. He comprehensively debunks the theory, championed between the wars by the great art history guru Panofsky, that the double portrait celebrates a marriage, rubbishing all Panosky’s attempts to find marriage ‘symbols’ in the furnishing of the room. It’s not even a betrothal, just a plain ‘double portrait’. So, as with the recumbent stone circles, we are now less certain about this famous painting than at any time in the past two centuries.

I’m reminded of Eliot’s lines from the Four Quartets:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Nuclear physicists often deplore the lazy way that we lay people apply Heissenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty to matters outside the specific field of particle physics. The essence of the Principle is that the more you know about a particle’s velocity, the less you can know about its position, and vice versa. And that’s it. But it seems to suit the zeitgeist of the times to see the application of Heissenberg’s idea in all aspects of life. I even know of a music group which wonderfully calls itself the Heissenberg Ensemble because of uncertainty as to whether they’d hit the right note… (actually, they’re much better than that!).

Consider the vexed issues of climate change, or wind power. The mountains of accumulated data on these two vital and controversial subjects are now so huge that anyone who wants to can mine them selectively to tell the story he or she wants to tell. Manmade, or natural; vital renewable energy, or wasteful blots on the landscape. You pays your consultant and you takes your choice. And the Internet just makes it worse: instead of taking cognisance of the authoritative view of an established critic, of books, music, or theatre, we now must take an overview of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of separate opinions. The more data, the more uncertainty.

If this is a sobering thought, it’s one which, sadly, doesn’t seem to trouble many of our politicians, who continue to issue bold soundbites with a confidence often born of ignorance, an ignorance, moreover, that could often be overcome by a quick session of googling—pet cats and asylum seekers, anyone?

© Robert Livingston

From Skye to London via Inverness, I have seen work that has ranged from community knitting to dresses made from 20,000 pins, from exquisitely crafted jewellery to automata made from scrap.

Deirdre Nelson

Starting off in Portree in early September, the Bàta Brèagha / Bonnie Boat event and the Fish Exchange project saw the community create hundreds of knitted fish with Deirdre Nelson to raise funds for the RNLI; shop windows were filled with shoals for colourful silver darlings and £350 was raised at the auction on the 10th September. Visit the ATLAS Facebook page to see lots of the silver darlings which were produced as part of the Fish Exchange: www.facebook.com/atlasartpeopleplace

As Deirdre is also one of our mentors on Making Progress we took the opportunity to host a catch up meeting and exhibit work from some of our mentored makers in shop windows during a week which culminated in the Bonnie Boat event on the Saturday.

Craft Spotlight window in Portree, Sep 2011

Avril and I were then off to Helmsdale for 2 days of workshops with the Cultural Enterprise Office. Starting Out and Costing your Work gave us a chance to meet new makers and catch up with some established ones all in the inspiring setting of Timespan. It is always good at these events to network and make contacts and sometimes it feels that this is really what it is all about as we all know that being a maker in the Highlands can make you feel very isolated.

The noise level at lunchtime is always a good indication that things are going well!

No chance of peace and quiet at my next stop – London! Last year Origin relocated to Spitalfields market with a new date to coincide with the London Design Festival. Many makers were hesitant about the move and felt that the venue was not ideal. Not only that, the current economic climate makes taking on shows such as this a huge undertaking financially. In the good old days, makers could be confident that when they were selected for Origin they would go home having made lots of contacts, a full order book and having more than covered their costs.

Gilly Langton at Origin

Not any more, so it was with some trepidation that Gilly Langton and Eileen Gatt made the long journey on the sleeper train laden with work. Luckily for them it proved worthwhile and it was a real pleasure to see that their hard work had paid off. They both proved that having good images of your pieces, exquisitely crafted work and a beautifully designed stand are worth it – both were featured in the catalogue with Gilly’s image on the front cover and on all the posters!

Whilst in London I took the opportunity to visit Tent and 100% Design, both shows on a large scale featuring work that covered product design from small makers to large businesses.

Eileen Gatt at Origin

A real treat was to see the Power of Making at the V&A. I always love going to the V&A even when there are not large exhibitions on and this time I could only fit in the one visit.

45 minutes waiting in a queue to get in tested my patience but I consoled myself that it was really impressive that so many people were interested in seeing a craft exhibition! The 100 pieces celebrate the role of making in our lives and present an eclectic range from a life sized crochet bear, dry stone walling to new technologies.

Entrance to the V & A

I would like to go back when it was hopefully quieter as being herded round in a crowd was not ideal but at least I got the chance to view this inspirational show!

To complete my London trip I managed to go to the Royal Academy to see the stunning Degas exhibition, just to immerse oneself in the colour and line was a tonic after all the running around.

Home to the Highlands (always the best bit about going to London no matter what I have been to see!) and the change in weather was a shock but there was no let up in my travelling.

The Ganseyfest was an international celebration of the fishing heritage and gansey, the beautifully crafted patterned sweaters worn by fishermen. The Moray Firth Partnership is running a three year project focusing on the tradition of hand knitting in fishing communities and researching ways to introduce the craft to new audiences. This has included showing work at London Fashion Week and to forming a cooperative knitting group.

The two day event took place in Inverness on the 1st and 2nd October and was feast for both the enthusiast and the general public.

Helen Lockhart at Ganseyfest

Ganseyfest

Finally, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery completed my month by showing part of Lizzie Farey’s beautiful Spirit of Air exhibition alongside the amazing Sharmanka show of automata.

Work by Lizzie Farey

So 4 weeks of inspiration, innovation, exhaustion, many miles and many words.

Seeing such a range of work in such a short space of time really brings home the amazing work that can be called Craft by no other name. Craft overload? There is no such thing!

Enjoy it all when you can, here or further afield!

Pamela Conacher
5th October 2011

While the garish, neon-lit beach front of ‘amusements’ and casinos is just as ghastly (in a fascinating way) as on our last visit some 15 years ago, making the town seem a modest eastern counterpart to the hell that is Blackpool, things are nonetheless stirring in Scarborough. Just five years ago Scarborough Borough Council announced an ambition to make the town the creative centre of the Yorkshire Coast, launching the plans for what is now the Woodend Creative Workspace , so it shouldn’t be a surprise that in our day trip we were planning to take in a concert, an exhibition, and a play, rather than donkey rides and sandcastle building (though a little of the latter did get done as well).

First up was the concert, at the early hour of 11.00. On our travels, we rather pride ourselves on enjoying music fit for the location: Mozart in Salzburg, Strauss in Vienna, Flamenco in Seville, Zarzuela in Madrid, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra playing a home gig in Amsterdam. To that august list we must now add the Scarborough Spa Orchestra playing their daily (yes, daily) morning concert in the Sun Court of the beautifully refurbished Scarborough Spa. Celebrating their centenary next year, the Spa Orchestra proudly proclaim themselves to be the last seaside orchestra in the UK, though ‘orchestra’ is perhaps a rather grand term for a ten-piece ensemble (somewhat reduced from its original complement of 35 players).

Now, I normally run a mile from anything called ‘light music’, even though as a child I was a sucker for ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ on the ‘Light’ programme (now Radio 2). But here the mix was perfect. A warm, sunny day (the ‘Sun Court’ is, as the name implies, open to the skies), deckchairs to recline in, a clutch of highly competent and flexible musicians complete with red and white striped blazers, and some very skilful arrangements of tunes familiar and unfamiliar. It was all utterly charming and thoroughly enjoyable. And the audience for this, just one of the nine concerts the orchestra gives each week over the summer, numbered, by my count, well over 150. Well, the fact that the ticket price included lunch in the Spa Cafe was probably an added inducement. I may have been the only person in the audience under 60, but if I’d been spending the week in Scarborough, rather than just making a day trip, I reckon you’d have found me in the Spa Court most mornings, tapping my feet to ‘Zing went the strings of my heart’ or a medley from ‘Patience’.

Next stop was the Scarborough Art Gallery to catch an exhibition of prints by Howard Hodgkin. I’ve always loved Hodgkin’s boldly-coloured, life-enhancing, semi-abstract paintings. But we assumed that his ‘prints’ would be on a smaller, less ambitious scale. Nothing of the sort. The largest exhibits were six feet cross, made up of multiple, perfectly registered sheets, a terrific tribute to the skill of Hodgkin’s technician collaborator. Scarborough Gallery is a former private, albeit very grand, house, and the suite of rooms is just the right scale for these works, especially as the large windows (blessedly free from light-excluding blinds) afforded such marvellous views of the town as a counterpart to the artworks.

This was a truly glorious exhibition—as I said to Judith, I felt I’d died and gone to heaven. And it was clearly proving to be a big draw, as at least half a dozen other couples were going round at the same time as us.

When I looked at the visitors’ book I was surprised to see—though I suppose I shouldn’t have been—that the comments were roughly 50/50 favourable or negative, with quite a few of the ‘a child of five could do it’ variety. How to explain the sheer jolt of intense pleasure which Hodgkin’s work gives me? Perhaps people just try to read too much ‘meaning’ into these pictures. It seems to me that Hodgkin is really quite simple in his approach, celebrating the sheer sensory ‘zing’ (that word again) of existence.

We then wandered round some of the less touristy parts of town, and there’s clearly still a lot to be done for Scarborough: so many derelict houses, so many shops of the ‘Poundland’ variety, such a contrast with the much more prosperous Whitby just 20 miles up the coast. But if Scarborough is going to be regenerated through the ‘creative industries’, then at the heart of that process must be the Stephen Joseph Theatre, and the work of Alan Ayckbourn.

We were fortunate enough to have come to Scarborough during the premiere run of Ayckbourn’s 75th new play, ‘Neighbourhood Watch’. Let me refer you to the theatre’s website for the story of how, 15 years ago, the theatre opened after a massive conversion of a former Odeon cinema, to continue the tradition of ‘theatre in the round’ which Ayckbourn’s mentor, Stephen Joseph, had originally set up in the town’s public library.

Ten days into the play’s run, and on a sunny mid week evening, and yet the 400-seater auditorium was packed—so much so that Judith and I and our friends Fran and Wol had to take four individual seats, one on each of the four sides, which at least gave us plenty of scope for comparing notes afterwards. The play was funny, thought-provoking, and bang up to date in its theme of ‘do it yourself’ law and order, and the performances were pitch perfect. Ayckbourn sometimes gets unfairly labelled as a populist, traditionalist playwright (just as, in contrast, Hodgkin can be unfairly considered an obscure or elitist artist). But for me ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ did exactly what good theatre should do—engaged with real ideas and issues while thoroughly entertaining audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

So, a grand day out indeed. Scarborough is roughly the same size as Inverness, and with a similarly large rural hinterland. Our day out showed how, with the right mix of ingredients, arts of high quality can be accessible and engaging, and contribute very significantly to a town’s tourist appeal. All it needs is a few people of vision, and public bodies prepared to back that vision. The Spa Orchestra showed how effective a revitalised local tradition can be. The success of Ayckbourn’s play demonstrated that you can locate something of national resonance in a town that, as Nicholas Crane’s ‘Town’ programme on Scarborough kept emphasising, is at the end of the line. After a short English tour, ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ is off to New York to be part of the ‘Brits off Broadway’ Festival, and it’s already garnered four star reviews from two London broadsheets. Not bad for a ‘bracing’ holiday resort.

© Robert Livingston

Barriers

Let’s take a look at the possible barriers that could be facing your potential audience.

Time Considerations

1. When I am free, they are shut – Are your opening hours appropriate for your audiences? Can people who work long hours during the week or work anti-social hours still have access to your arts event/activity/venue?
2. I can’t make it at those times – Are your performance times the most accessible for your audiences? Can parents collect their kids from school, take them home and still have enough time to attend a performance? Do your finishing times fit in well with the local public transportation schedules such as the local buses and trains?
3. I am just too busy – a lot of the time individuals cite time constraints – they feel they don’t have the time to engage or participate. It might be that they are too busy to participate in the types of events you provide, but present them with something that they are genuinely interested in and I bet you they will find the time to get involved.

Cost Implications

1. It’s too expensive to travel to and from the venue – With rising fuel prices, and the reliance on private transport in rural and remote areas, the cost of travel is a real and genuine barrier to attendance.
2. The whole experience is too pricey – ticket prices are not really a barrier any longer, research and practical experience has demonstrated that ticket price is not as pivotal a barrier to attendance, as people are willing to pay as long as it is value for money. However, when you consider the whole experience and the cost implications then a night out to the local theatre can become a pricey affair. Additional experience costs include food and drink, travel, accommodation in some cases, time and of course the cost of buying the tickets (and if that is for a family of four it can obviously be a big financial commitment).

Location

1. I don’t know where it is – How accessible is your location for the diversity of audiences you currently or could be serving? If you are situated in a more remote or isolated area then considering how people travel to an area and how they can then navigate to your location is key in understanding what barriers are presented to people who do not have a local knowledge of your area.
2. I can’t see find the venue – How well signposted is your venue? Have you ever looked at your location from the point of view of a visitor who has never visited you before? The biggest and most practical barrier is signage. Is your venue well signposted along main roads for instance? Or have you offered a Google map on your website so people can locate you easily? How well signposted is the entrance to your venue? These small but practical issues can make a world of difference if you address them early in your marketing and communication plans.
3. The weather prevented me from attending – this is particularly appropriate for rural and more remote audiences who will experience harsher weather conditions, which through no fault of their own or yours, prevents them from attending your events, or simply puts them off from booking for fear of being stopped by the snow, wind and rain. Have you considered what kind of Rainy Day or Bad Weather refund you can offer, or how you can still involve those who were unable to attend by sending them a personal email with images from the event, the review, a programme, anything that thanks them for their commitment.

Lack of Accessible Information

1. There was no available information about the show – Are you communicating all that you can to your potential audiences? A major barrier to attendance is a lack of visible information that is available to people who are not already committed attenders. Not everyone is going to look to the same resources or places for information, and for non-attenders they are not going to be looking at all. So making sure the information you have is more widely accessible is essential to breaking down such a fundamental barrier to attendance and participation.
2. I didn’t know they did that – Have you clearly communicated all of the services you offer? It is easy to communicate to people who already come through your doors the diversity of services you offer, but how well are you communicating that outside of your doors? If non-attenders are not aware of the services you offer then you are unlikely to attract them to your offerings.

Transport

1. I can’t get there easily – Access to public transport is a big issue, particularly in more rural and remote areas. If your audiences can’t get access to public transport, or it is limited in terms of its service, then this can really hamper your ability to attract new or non-attenders to your offerings. Although there is little you can do about directly improving your local public transport services, you are in a position to help your audiences who do not have access to private transport. Proving information about public transport routes and times on your website to considering how the start and finish times for the performance fit with local public transport timetables, or considering how you can encourage groups of people to come together – car sharing, or sharing the cost of a taxi to and from your venue might be the simple solution you are looking for.
2. Where can I park? – We rely heavily on private transport, but does your venue provide adequate parking facilities? You may be restricted in developing or improving parking facilities, however you can always point out to your audiences where they can park locally, especially if you are trying to attract people out with your local area or tourists, the last thing you want to encourage is a build up of traffic and parked cars outside of your venue each night. Alternatively you can use you website to promote the available public transportation options. Perhaps there is an opportunity to partner up with a local restaurant or hotel who have available parking facilities, might they be able to offer your audiences a place to park for the duration of the performance? (You will need to consider what is in it for your local restaurant owner first though).

It’s not for me

1. I am not interested – The arts is not for everyone, much like sport or science isn’t of interest to everyone. It’s important to acknowledge that you can’t change everyone’s minds, but understanding that there are people who consider the arts as something on the periphery of their lives is important when you consider your marketing messages. If the subject matter or art form doesn’t particularly appeal to an individual, maybe the socialising element or the enjoyment of going out for the night is something that you should focus on communicating.
2. I have no one to attend with – for some individuals attending on their own is not an option, not everyone is as confident in attending an event solo, and feeling self-conscious is not particularly conducive to a good night out. There is also the added peer pressure which individuals (predominantly young people) experience in attending something which is not necessarily part of their peer group experience.
3. I wouldn’t understand it – knowledge and prior experience of arts and culture is a key element in creating attendance and repeat attendance. If your non-audiences do not feel they possess the knowledge or understanding to appreciate a piece of art or theatre, then they are unlikely to see their attendance at an event worthwhile or value for money. This is a barrier which can be addressed through providing more useful background information, particularly when showcasing an unusual or contemporary art form. Reviews and features are a great way of giving an insight into the artform, the event and the experience, using your marketing materials to give more information about the art form is another effective way of engaging those who might not otherwise consider attending.

Of course, as I mentioned in the introduction, there are numerous barriers that face audiences, above is only a selection. Some of the other barriers which have been identified by research and practical experience include:

Other Barrier’s to Attendance and Participation

• A lack of cultural diversity in the programme
• A bad past experience – either of the art form or the venue
• Unclear and misleading marketing messages
• Poor customer service
• The historical or past image of the venue/organisation.
• Relationship or family responsibilities keep me from attending
• Work responsibilities keep me from attending
• Physical or health limitations
• Language – particularly for those who English is not their first language.
• I don’t ‘Get It’
• My friends and family don’t attend
• There is a lack of facilities that meet my needs
• Lifestyle change I’ve just had a baby/moved house/ got married/ gone on an expensive holiday – there are obvious lifestyle changes which can impact on free time, disposable income and therefore the ability to attend.
• The number and/or age of my children – there might not be anything appropriate for them, or it might cost too much to take the whole clan.
• Local aesthetics – unfortunately the local aesthetics of the area can be a barrier, it can put people off. (This is probably more a significant barrier for those who live in more urban and city areas).
• Safety – this can be a concern for individuals especially when attending evening performances.
• Arts activities are boring
• I have never experienced an arts event before
• I am too old/young/middle aged
• The lack of quality and talent in productions
• The lack of choice in my area.

Questions??

Tomorrow I am off to Melrose in the Scottish Borders to talk to a network of venues and promoters in the arts and cultural sector about Audience Development (and a little bit on social media). While putting together the talk and presentation I made a list of some of the questions I would want to be asking my audiences on a regular basis. Below is a list of the initial questions that sprung to mind. As I mentioned in my blog post ‘Measuring the Success of your live event‘ I am working on putting some template surveys together for you to use, adapt, play with etc. This is the kick start to this process.

This is by no means a definitive list of questions, this was just a 30 minute brain storm, the answers will have to come later.

What is your postcode?

Your age group?

What is your gender?

Your Profession?

So after my initial meeting with Jen Cantwell in her cosy wee Forres studio we arranged that when the weather conditions were just right she and her partner/collaborator/sound technician/chauffeur Dave Martin would travel down and pick me up on their way to a day’s sound recording in Smirisary, near Glenuig. So one beautifully sunny Wednesday somewhere in the middle of July that is exactly what happened.

After a quick hello and cup of tea at mine we all piled into Dave’s car and hit the road, chatting all the way about anything and everything: the project, people we knew in common, zombie films, electric ceilidhs… and of course about how lucky we were to have such a cracking day for roaming around the countryside. Now I don’t know if it comes with being a mum or from juggling a conceptual knitting practise with a commercial sporran design practise or if you’re just born with it or a combination of all of the above, but I got a strong impression from Jen that she had just the right balance of being super organised but within that framework of organisation left a lot of room for playing it by ear and just seeing how it goes. So this was how I decided to approach making Jen’s film. I knew I wanted to document the sound recording process, reflect in some way the sense of place and exploration that Jen has running throughout her work and perhaps get a couple of shots of wee birdies larking around but other than that I was very happy to just see where the day took us.

And as it happened, not only did we go to Smirisary, we also popped into the Glenuig hall (where we bumped into Pamela) and the forest beside it and then, on our way home, into the Lochailort Post Office, which is without a doubt the best post office I have ever visited in my entire life. By and large the day’s events ran seamlessly (well, after I learned to stop crunching loudly through the undergrowth with my camera and tripod, scaring away all birds in a half mile radius while Dave was trying to record them…).

That night Jen and Dave dropped me back at my house  and I had the opportunity to go over the day’s footage before the next day of filming up in Jen’s Elgin studio and see how the playing it by ear had gone and where I thought I would like to go next. For this reason, the next day in Jen’s studio was very straightforward. It was also great to be able to see the audio to visual transition of the bird sounds, from twittery chirping birdie noises to the clean and crisp sound waves on a glossy screen to a multicoloured textured piece of knitted fabric. And after this, our second and last day’s filming, I left Jen to her seemingly infinite pile of work while I went back to my much more manageable process of putting together all our sound and video footage. And now it’s all done, three weeks on, I genuinely hope that the resulting wee video from our two days filming together adequately reflects Jen’s practise in a way that she’s happy with.

And so I’d just like to say thanks to Jen and Dave for a great day out (and for my Solero, yum ). I haven’t had a chance to pop into her exhibition but I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews so am very excited about taking a gander up this week!

It got me to puzzling over the appeal of zombies, in films, on TV, and now in outrageous rewritings of literary classics  After all, this version of the undead, that we’re all so familiar with, is a pretty new phenomenon. I’ve not been able to trace any earlier reference than the 1954 publication of Richard Matheson’s novel ‘I am Legend’, subsequently filmed with Charlton Heston, and more recently with Will Smith. Prior to that, as in the classic Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur movie ‘I walked with a Zombie’ the concept had stayed fairly close to its Voodoo roots.

Of course, it was George Romero’s stomach-churning 1968 movie masterpiece ‘Night of the Living Dead’ which defined the current model of the Zombie as a crazed, flesh-eating monster which attacks in hordes. In the mid-70s I saw this at our Student Film Society and was scared and disgusted in equal measure, though evidently not as much as the female students sitting on either side of me, both of whom left lasting weals where they had gripped my wrists in terror at key moments.

Romero was—is—a very canny film-maker who knew exactly what he was about. I’ve a fondness for his much less well known 1973 movie ‘The Crazies’ which is a devastating metaphor for the behaviour of the US army in Vietnam. Perhaps part of the appeal of zombies is that they are so blank, they can accept almost any layer of interpretation. The second movie in Romero’s original trilogy, for example, set in a shopping mall, has always been seen as a critique of American consumerism.

But now zombies are everywhere, to the extent of eclipsing vampires, whom I’ve personally always found more interesting. Vampires, of course, unlike zombies, have a long and rich folk heritage which Bram Stoker drew on (with a canniness equal to Romero’s) for his defining novel. I think Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ is an under-rated masterpiece even if, perhaps, an accidental one—Stoker may have wrought more effectively than he knew. At a time of mass immigration from the East, of new discoveries about germs and infection, of nervousness about the rise of the ‘new woman’ (exemplified in Stoker’s Minna Harker, with her stenography, the strength with which she supports her shattered husband, and her courage in confronting the Count, and yet at the same time she too has been ‘infected’), ‘Dracula’ pulled all these together into an incredibly potent, and still powerful mix. No screen adaptation has really captured that power, though the 1977 BBC adaptation, with its surprise casting of Louis Jourdan as the Count, for me comes closest, and it’s available on DVD.

A completely different set of metaphors is unpacked in Elizabeth Kostova’s intriguing 2005 novel ‘The Historian’ where the survival of the vampire through all the vicissitudes of the 20th century in the Balkans becomes a telling image of how the ideologies that have tortured that region—Fascism, Communism, Nationalism, Islamism—can’t be killed off by conventional means.

So, apart from indulging myself, what is the relevance of all this to culture in the Highlands and Islands? First, that we perhaps don’t make enough of some of the darker folklore and traditions of the area, and here I’m going to offer a totally unashamed puff for my colleague Peter Urpeth’s strange novel about shamanism in present day Lewis, ‘Far Inland’ And of course in 1990 NVA’s life-changing Glen Lyon epic ‘The Path’ blended Highland and Eastern mythologies to unforgettable effect. As Peter’s novel hints at, and as the School of Scottish Studies recordings used in ‘The Path’ revealed, some very dark and primitive ideas and concepts remained current in parts of the Highlands and Islands until well into the last century.

Secondly, Open Book’s recent tour of ‘Macbeth’, which I caught in Eden Court a couple of weeks ago, reminded me forcefully that great art never loses its relevance. Without in any way making an overt point, Marcus Roche’s taut and energetic production, using just six actors, had huge resonance for the current situation in Libya and Iraq, where hated dictators cling on with increasing violence to the last remnants of their power. ‘Macbeth’ might at first have seemed an odd choice for the first round of the new North of Scotland Touring Fund, supported by Creative Scotland, LEADER, and HIE, but this production proved that playwriting doesn’t have to be new to be topical.

In stark contrast, just ten days later I decided to leave Illyria’s open air production of ‘Twelfth Night’, at Brahan Estate, at the interval. This was the sad case of a director who couldn’t trust Shakespeare to be relevant, and so rather than bringing out the play’s innate humour—and its poetry and romance—he had to get his laughs largely at the play’s expense, with pratfalls, crude sexual jokes, and laboured rewritings of Shakespeare’s words (‘and in sad cypress let me get laid’—I ask you!). In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a zombie had wandered on to the stage—an undead Benny Hill. Now there’s a scary thought.

We are in the business of providing an experience, one which is enjoyable and rewarding; however we don’t often measure this impact. When we talk about the enjoyment factor of live performance experiences we don’t necessarily mean that the event was entertaining, we want to look to all the types of impacts that an audience member might define for themselves as enjoyable. For instance audiences might be looking for a challenging and intellectually stimulating experience, which would be equally enjoyable for them as someone who was looking for the emotional and spiritual experience of attending an event.

It is about time we started looking to measure the intrinsic impact of the types of events we present to audiences, rather then whether we hit the numerical and demographic targets our funders so often ask us for. At the end of the day you might have been able to attract 100 people to attend your event, but what it 99 of those people did not enjoy the experience, have the arts made a positive difference in their lives that day? And are they likely to come back to your venue or attend another one of your events again? The reality is that repeat attendance will be unlikely, especially if they are first-time attenders. What we really need to know about our audiences is what they are interested in experiencing, or what they might need in advance of the event to truly appreciate the experience, even if they didn’t express an interest in that particular art form or event.

Audiences communicate impact as it is happening – their facial expressions, body language and audible reactions – have you ever thought of measuring how long audience applause lasts or how loud it is for your live performances? I have certainly been more likely to take a standing ovation and clap for minutes, even when my hands begin to hurt, when a live performance has been more then just enjoyable, but uplifting, compelling, and has hit right at the heart strings. On other occasions I have been witness to measly applause for a live performance that has been disappointing and unsatisfying – basically a polite applause to give you time to figure out where your closest exit is – surely that is a more reliable measure of the emotional and intellectual success for a live arts performance then how many men, women and children attended?  

In 2007 Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak of WolfBrown (consultancy agency for the non-profit arts sector) conducted a study in America to attempt to define and measure how audiences are transformed by a live performance. What I found both enlightening and encouraging is that there is a way to measure the success of a live arts performance without relying on the typical sales/attendance data and truly begin to get to the heart of why arts and culture is so important in our everyday lives.

The study ‘Assessing the intrinsic impacts of a live performance’ looks at how we can begin to measure the emotional and intellectual impact or benefits of live arts performances. Brown and Novak identify three levels of intrinsic impact:

1. The intrinsic impacts of an entire arts system on its community.
2. The cumulative intrinsic impacts or ‘value-footprint’ of an institution on its community.
3. The intrinsic impacts of a single performance on an individual.

These are surely impacts which we, as arts providers, strive to provide and measure, particularly as we begin to face a more challenging economic climate and funding, support and sponsorship becomes more difficult to secure.

Brown and Novak identified the key constructs that determine both the readiness of audiences to receive a live performance and the intrinsic impacts of a live performance. Basically, they outline how there are a number of stages or phases that individual audience members will go through in preparation of an event and the impact that event then has on them during and after the experience.

The study looks at how important the context, relevance and anticipation prior to a live arts experience is to the overall impact of an event on your audiences. The prior knowledge and experience of an arts attender influences their anticipation in advance of an event. Relevance is important in assessing how comfortable your audience is in receiving the type of art or culture on offer. And their anticipation will set the basis of their expectations – whether high or low.

In terms of the intrinsic impacts, the study draws on a number of constructs that help us to define how audiences engage with the arts experience, as it is happening. They look at Captivation, Intellectual Stimulation, Emotional Resonance, Spiritual Value, Aesthetic Growth, and Social Bonding. It is important to remember that arts experiences are multi-dimensional, and that not all performances should be expected to generate the impacts across each of these areas, and you must not assume that a live arts experience can generate these impacts in every individual you engage with. 

The full report itself is about 170 pages, so I won’t start an overview here, but you can download the report and the summary report of the study by selecting any or both links below.

• ‘Assessing the intrinsic impacts of a live performance’ by Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak Full Report 
• ‘Assessing the intrinsic impacts of a live performance’ by Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak Summary Report

Based on the findings in this study and another fantastic handbook ‘Capturing the audience experience’ (created by The New Economics Foundation, Independent Theatre Council, The Society of Theatre and Theatrical Management Association) I have set myself the task of drawing up some template surveys that you can utilise in measuring the impact of your own live events and experiences. I will post back here once they have been completed. In the mean time if you would like to talk more about measuring audience experiences then please do get in touch.

Family Friendly

The Family Friendly Iniative

– Making Your Arts Venue Family Friendly Getting Started. Imaginate (an arts organisation that promotes and develops the performing arts for children and young people in Scotland) was funded by the Scottish Arts Council to run the Family Friendly Initiative in 2003 over two years. The aim was to improve children and families access to and participation in arts activities by encouraging Scottish arts organisations to become more child and family friendly.

The guide produced gives a step by step  approach to making your centre, event, activity more family friendly.

Family-Friendly.net is the website which resulted from the Imaginate and SAC Family Friendly Iniaitive project. It is a vast resource of information and guides on how to implement your own family friendly initiative. Their Resource page offers free downloads including:

• Consulting with children and young people
• Making your arts venue user-friendly for families with children and young people with disabilities
• Arts for All published by Mencap (is a charity that campaigns for children with learning disabilities)
• Making your venue family friendly – getting started
• Marketing to families
• Family friendly checklist and action plan.  

The Family Friendly Toolkit (2006) was produced by Arts Council England in partnership with Network (an audience development body based in the UK) to devise a national family friendly framework for the arts and cultural sector. This is a really practical guide designed to support arts organisations seeking to build relationships and connect with families, making it easier for families to take part in the arts, as audiences and participants.

The toolkit also provides an introduction to the concept of being a family friendly organisation, an Audit to assess how you support families, tools for getting started, facts and figures about family friendly audiences and tried and tested ideas to develop your work.

What to do with the kids? was set up in 2004 as a useful resource for parents on the web. It is an online listing of all the information that would be useful and of interest for families with children. This is a great resource to discover the breath of activities on offer for families with children. This site would make for a fantastic markting tool to help promote your activities across the UK. You can add your own event as well as an attraction, the site offers a really comprehensive database of venues across the UK.

Glow – There has been alot of discussion around Glow, Scotland’s online education community, and a number of arts and cultural organisations have worked successfully through the Glow network to engage with young people. Glow is ‘The world’s first national intranet for education which is transforming the way the cirriculum is delivered in Scotland.’ It has been designed to break down ‘geographical and social barriers and provides tools to ensure a first class education for Scotland.’ (Glow website)

Glow has been designed to engage with pupils, practioners and parents, it is the advent of virtual learning for all. All 32 Scottish local authorities now use Glow, with the purpose of enhancing the quality of learning and teaching in the classroom, through supporting the Cirriculum for Excellence. Glow provides a National Directory, where users can find others within similar areas of interest or expertise, to collaborate across the country and make connections with others to improve learning as well as teaching.

In 2010 ten arts organisations were selected to deliver projects in partnership with local authorities, teachers, learners and new media/technology companies. These ten included Citizen’s Theatre, Drake Music School, Feis Rois, Horsecross Arts, Imaginate, Scottish Youth Dance, NVA, Street Level Photoworks, Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Art Gallery, and the Visible Fictions Theatre Company.  These ten organisations formed the basis for the Co-Create Glow Arts Project and was set up to be a ‘pioneering new iniaitive to bring arts education resources online for schools across Scotland…[with the] potential to enable artists, performers, writers and schools to work and learn together in new ways, developing practice and demonstrating the key role the arts and creativity play in supporting the Cirriculum for Excellence’. For mroe information about the Co-Create project and Glow visit the LTScotland website: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/ and http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/usingglowandict//

I was down in Inveraray to visit that remarkable open air museum, Auchindrain Township which gives a unique insight into the way Scottish rural communities lived and worked before crofting. Auchindrain’s Development Manager is an old friend and colleague, Bob Clark. Back in the early 90s Bob had been working for the Scottish Museums Council (now Museums and Galleries Scotland) when I was working for the Scottish Arts Council, but we hadn’t seen each other in the intervening years as our careers had taken us in different directions.

In the two years he’s been at Auchindrain, Bob’s already started introducing the arts on to the site as a powerful tool in helping to interpret its history. The Walking Theatre Company produced a site-specific piece that included the (true) story of Queen Victoria’s visit to Auchindrain, and co-opted the present Duke of Argyll to step out of the audience to play his ancestor greeting the Queen. And Bob’s had local fiddlers playing informally, outside one of the cottages as they might have done when the site was still a living community. He’s even had the local shinty team learning the old skills of their predecessors in order to be able to play on an ordinary rough field that had not had the benefit of years of heavy-duty rollers to smooth out its irregularities!

Twenty years ago, Bob and I were effectively the means of liaison between our two national agencies, and that kept us pretty busy. This was a time when the relationship between the arts and museums sectors was a particularly close one. Large and small museums the length and breadth of the country were willing bookers of a wide range of touring exhibitions which were being created and circulated by SAC client galleries and arts centres. Such exhibitions were often a godsend to museums in helping them to encourage repeat visits, or develop educational projects. In my previous role as Director of the Crawford Arts Centre in St Andrews we’d regularly produced such exhibitions, touring them to museums from Kelvingrove to Shetland. It was a helpful source of income, but more importantly it would justify the expenditure of funding and resources on the exhibition in the first place, and knowing it could have several showings would make it worth investing in a printed catalogue or some audio-visual aids.

But the links between arts and museums went much further than just circulating exhibitions. Scottish Arts Council funding, for a few years, supported a wide range of innovative arts projects in museums, from performances by dance, music and drama companies, to artists’ residencies, and from new commissions to creative learning projects, in schools and with adults.

It was something of a halcyon period in Scottish culture. When the SAC helped to bring a new nationwide photography festival , Fotofeis, into being, many museums were ready and willing to be involved, and indeed some of Fotofeis’ most successful projects were hosted in regional museums like the Dick Institute in Kilmarnock. The climax of this inter-agency collaboration was the preparation of the Charter for the Arts in Scotland, published in 1993, and led by the SAC, but with full participation by the Scottish Museums Council, and also by the Scottish Library and Information Council. That ground-breaking document, the result of copious consultation, set the agenda for arts funding in Scotland for the next decade.

And yet, it didn’t last. By the mid 1990s the dedicated funding schemes had dried up, and, on the whole, museums stopped being venues for imaginative arts events. The process of Museum Registration (now Accreditation) came to dominate the thinking and the time of many Museum Directors and Boards. The rise of the Curator meant that SAC-funded galleries were often more concerned with offering highly distinctive programmes that boosted their own identities, and the interest in sharing touring exhibitions diminished. I think we were all the losers.

Of course, it’s not all bleak. The National Galleries of Scotland have had a long-standing outreach programme, and the Exhibitions Unit of the Highland Council has been one of their most consistent partners, resulting in such treats for Inverness as the Venus Rising exhibition back in 2005  . More recently the Artist Rooms programme, a collaboration between the Art Fund, the Tate, the National Galleries of Scotland, and collector and curator Anthony d’Offay, has brought some of the finest 20th century art not only to Inverness but also to Helmsdale, Thurso, Stornoway and Orkney.

Our own Crafts Development programme, led by Pamela Conacher, has had a highly successful partnership with the Highland Council Exhibitions unit, resulting in substantial summer programmes of exhibitions, small and large, in Inverness Museum and Gallery, both this year and in 2010. Those seasons have given terrific opportunities for those makers involved in our Making Progress mentoring programme, not only by showcasing their own new work, but also by putting it in the context of some of the best contemporary crafts from across the UK.

Detail from Caroline Dear's 100 Ropes, Making Progress Exhibition July 2011

My short tour of Argyll this week also included my first visit to Dunollie, the home of the chiefs of the Clan MacDougall since the 12th century. Most people who know of Dunollie at all would know of it only as the broken tooth of a black keep which the Mull ferry passes as it leaves Oban harbour. But just inland is a fine mansion dating back to the 18th century, the earliest part of which dates from 1745, and will shortly open as a museum and visitor centre .  The Project Director, Catherine Gillies, has bold and ambitious plans for involving the arts in Dunollie, as an absolutely integral part of their remit. So perhaps the pendulum is swinging back once again, and we’ll soon have as productive a relationship between arts and museums as existed twenty years ago, back before Bob Clark or I had any grey hairs.

© Robert Livingston

Flags of the European Union

“Culture and creativity are important drivers for personal development, social cohesion and economic growth.” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Back in 2007 the Education and Culture Directorate-General of the European Commission commissioned the TNS Opinion & Social to carry out a survey of public opinion on culture and its value within Europe. 26,755 people across the EU were interviewed across the 27 member states, including residents in the UK.

The survey was designed to look at how Europeans conceive the idea of culture, their involvement in cultural and artistic activities, their opinions on the value of culture and the barriers that they face in accessing cultural activities.

Although the survey was conducted back in 2007, the information and the findings give an illuminating look at Culture across Europe, which can help to inform you if you were considering touring a production across Europe, or considering a wider audience development initiative locally. I’ve highlighted below some of the key findings from the survey, the full document can be downloaded from the Europa website. http://ec.europa.eu/culture/pdf/doc958_en.pdf

Key Findings

People were asked ‘What comes to mind when you think about the word ‘Culture?’’ They answered:

• 39% Arts – performance and visual, architecture, painting, galleries etc.
• 24% Traditions, Language, Customs and Social or Cultural Communities.
• 24% Literature, Poetry, Playwriting, Authors.
• 20% Education and Family Upbringing.
• 18% Knowledge and Science.
• 18% Lifestyle and Manners.
• 13% Civilization
• 13% History
• 11% Museums
• Under 10% said Leisure, Sports, Travel and Fun, Values and Beliefs and Other.
• Only 2% of people said they were not interested in Culture, and only 1% said they thought Culture was elite, snobbish, posh and boring.

‘Culture’ was found to be associated closely with Creative activities – in the form of arts and literature – as well as describing your social and cultural community, it is encouraging to see so few negative reactions to culture.

There was a wide range of answers across countries, some of the more interesting statistics to emerge were: 

• 39% of Italians and 36% of people from Spain said education and family upbringing came to mind.
• In Spain 36% said Education and family upbringing, both much higher then a EU average of 20%.
• In Cyprus 43% said lifestyle and manners (only 18% across the EU).
• While in Greece 38% of people said civilization came to mind (only 13% across the EU).

These types of insights begin to show you the divergence across European countries and how closely resident’s attitudes and opinions on Culture are tied to their historical and social identities.

The Survey also asked people ‘How important is culture to you personally?’ They answered:

• 31% Very Important
• 46% Fairly Important
• 17% Not Very Important
• 5% Not at all Important
• 1% Don’t Know.

This means a huge 77% of all Europeans feel culture is important to them personally. Culture, regardless of how it is defined, occupies an important role in the lives of many Europeans.

• In France and Italy 88% of people said Culture was important to them personally.
• In Poland 92% of people said Culture was important to them personally.
• While in the UK 67% of people said Culture was important.

The survey found that urbanization exerts an influence on people’s opinions, with a higher proportion of urban based respondents indicating the importance of culture in their lives (80%) then in rural villages (72%).

The survey also asked people about their cultural consumption habits over the last 12 months (2006 – 2007). Typically these lists include mainstream media such as TV and radio, which can at times dominate survey findings, although little is different here, the survey did strive to ask respondents to indicate their consumption of Cultural TV and Radio programmes.

The following were the most popular forms of cultural activities:

• 78% of people watched one cultural TV or Radio programme in a year, 46% watched more than 5 programmes.
• 71% said they read one book, 37% said they had read more than 5 books in the last year.
• 54% had visited a historical monument once, 12% had visited 5 or more times in the last year.
• 51% of people had been to the cinema once in the last year, 17% had been more than 5 times.
• 41% of people had been to a sporting event in the last year, 15% had been more than 5 times.

Interestingly performing arts, visual arts, heritage and music did not feature in the top 5 responses despite ‘Arts’ being the predominant answer when people were asked what ‘Culture’ means to them.

• 41% of people visited a Museum or Gallery in the last year, only 7% visited more than 5 times.
• 37% of people attended a concert in the last year, only 5% had been more than 5 times.
• 32% of people had been to the theatre in the last year, 4% had been more than 5 times.
• And only 18% of people had attended a Ballet, Dance or Opera performance, with 2% having attended more than 5 times in the last year.

These are quite revealing statistics when you considered that the majority of people said Arts were what came to mind when they think about culture, that 77% of all Europeans feel Culture is important to their lives, and yet attendance, particularly repeat attendance, is very very low. Only 5% of people attend the theatre more then once in a year compared to 46% of people who will watch a cultural television programme. This can give a real insight into the habits of European cultural consumers, and perhaps hint towards the attitudes around active engagement – ie. getting out of the house to partake in culture as opposed to sitting in front of the TV.

The survey found that participation was highest among the youngest, more educated and urbanized respondents across the EU. There was a marked decline in participation as people get older:

• In cinema 82% of 15 to 24yrs old will have attended the cinema, 53% of 40-54yrs old ands only 24% of 55yrs+ have been to the cinema in the last year.
• 52% of people aged 15 to 24yrs have been to a concert in the last year; where as only 27% of 55yrs+ have been to a concert.
• While in theatre there is less of a decline; 35% of people aged 15 to 24yrs have attended the Theatre, 32% of 25 to 39 yrs, 33% of 40 to 54 yrs and 27% of 55yrs+ have attended the Theatre.

The Commission also wanted to know about the active involvement in cultural activities on an amateur basis, as an individual, as part of a group or in a class.

The most popular activity was found to be Decorating, Handicrafts and Gardening (36% of EU respondents) and 38% of people had not taken part in any of the artistic activities suggested. The next most popular answers were:

• 27% photography or made a film.
• 19% dance.
• 16% artistic activities such as painting or graphic design.
• 15% singing.
• 12% written something.
• 10% played a musical instrument.
• And 3% acting.

Artistic participation was highest in Sweeden with only 7% not taking part in an activity. Whereas in the UK 26% of people had not taken part in an artistic activity. In Portugal a huge 73% of people had not taken part in an activity.

Participation in artistic and creative activities was generally found to be higher amongst the younger age groups, except for handicraft, decorating and gardening which was lowest amongst younger age groups.

The last question I will feature here looks at the barriers faced by respondents in accessing culture. They were asked ‘Sometimes people find it difficult to access culture or take part in cultural activities, which of the following, if any, are the main barriers to you?’ The survey found that:

• 42% of people said their lack of time was a barrier.
• 29% said it was too expensive.
• 27% admitted a lack of interest.
• 17% said a lack of information about the activity was a barrier.
• 16% said that limited choice and poor quality of activities in their area prevented them for participating.
• 13% said a lack of knowledge or cultural background was a barrier.
• Only 8% said there were no barriers, 3% other and 1% said they did not know.  

The survey concluded that 9 in every 10 people find at least some difficulty in fulfilling their creative lives, and that 3 in 10 people lack the interest or the money to engage. The responses varied across the socio-demographics of the respondents. It was found that men were more likely then women to cite a lack of interest (30% and 23% respectively) and women (31%) were more likely then men (26%) to cite expense as a key barrier. 44% of 15 to 24 year olds said a lack of time prevented them from participating in culture.

What the survey has shown is that there are varying levels of engagement and participation in culture across countries, gender and age groups. Education levels played a significant role in determining the level of engagement in culture equally, finding that people who had more years in education had a higher level of engagement. The report explains in more detail the specific breakdown by socio-demographics, and gives an interesting look at how these key aspects aide our attitudes towards culture, and ultimately how we then value culture.

This is a great document to use for supporting your own market research, or to give a overview of how culture is viewed by different countries. Although the sample was very large, 26,755 people were interviewed, it is important to bear in mind that this was a EU wide study, and of those 26,755 people interviewed 1,310 were from the UK (which represents 0.002% of the UK population). To see all the figures for the UK I complied the stats into a document called European Cultural Value Statistics EU vs UK that you can download here.

http://ec.europa.eu/culture/pdf/doc958_en.pdf

As described on their website Culture Segments is…

‘A new, sector-specific segmentation system for culture and heritage organisations. The system is powered by data from Audience Atlas UK, and draws upon a decade’s leading-edge practice helping our clients to truly understand and meet the needs of audiences for arts and heritage.

‘The principle objective of Culture Segments is to provide the sector with a shared language for understanding the audience with a view to targeting them more accurately, engaging them more deeply, and building lasting relationships.

‘Culture Segments is designed to be more subtle, granular and sophisticated than existing segmentation systems. This is because it is based on people’s cultural values and motivations. These cultural values define the person and frame their attitudes, lifestyle choices and behaviour.

‘The segments are distinguished from one another by deeply held beliefs about the role that art and culture play in their lives, enabling you to get to the heart of what motivates them and develop strategies to engage them more deeply.’

I must confess, this is really exciting stuff, especially for marketers and those offering to sell a cultural experience. Ultimately we always want to know why people engage, attend, participate or consume culture, but often we are left with data such as 53% of women said they would attend the theatre, 2/3’s of teenagers who attend the cinema live in urban areas, people who live in KW6 are busy families who want to attend family events…etc etc etc. We kinda know this already, you see it when people buy their tickets, when they show up for the performance, or when they leave a post on your Facebook page. What it doesn’t tell you is Why! Ultimately cultural consumption is based on your own motivations to be part of culture, and your postcode, gender, age or occupation can’t really tell marketers or audience development the real motivations behind the engagement or lack of engagement.

What Culture Segments does is explain Why people engage, participate, buy and consume culture in the UK. Morris Hargreaves McIntrye is sharing the products of their year-long analysis, in manageable Persona’s – you can find these on their website http://www.lateralthinkers.com/downloadculturesegments.html. However here is a short overview of the types of cultural attenders, why they attend and how you can then use these to motivate attendance or participation or spending or donating or….. the list will go on.

First off some Stats

• 85% of the UK (16+) population are in the market for arts, culture and heritage – that amounts to 42,688,100 individuals.
• Between them they spent a total of £13.6 billion on arts, culture and heritage in 12 months.
• 73% state their spending on arts, culture and heritage will stay the same or increase in the next year.

The Culture Segments

Enrichment

The enrichment segment is characterised by older adults with time to spare who like spending their leisure time close to the home. They have established tastes and enjoy culture that links into their interests in nature, heritage and more traditional art forms.

They know what they like and their visits to cultural organisations are driven by their own interests and not those of others, or what is considered to be new or fashionable. Their cultural consumption fits with their interests in heritage, gardening and nature. These personal interests, along with the desire to experience nostalgia, awe and wonder, motivates them to engage with culture.

Essence

The essence segment tends to be well-educated professionals who are highly active cultural consumers and creators; they are leaders rather than followers. Confident and discerning in their own tastes, they will act spontaneously according to their mood and pay little attention to what other’s think.

The arts and culture are an integral, even essential, part of their life. Rather than a social activity or form of entertainment, culture is a source of self-fulfilment and challenge, a means for experiencing life. They are inner-directed and self-sufficient, actively avoiding the mainstream.

Stimulation

The stimulation segment is an active group who live their lives to the full, looking for new experiences and challenges to break away from the crowd. They are open to a wide range of experiences, from culture to sports and music, but they do like to be at the cutting edge in everything they do.

This segment wants to live a varied life of novelty and challenge – partaking in a wide variety of art forms and taking risks with their cultural consumption. As early adopters and innovators, they are keen to break away from the mainstream, to try new things and to ensure they remain the ones in the know amongst their peer group.

Release

The release segment tends to be younger adults with busy working and family lives who used to enjoy relatively popular arts and culture, but have become switched off as other things have taken priority in their lives. Consequently they feel they have limited time and resources to enjoy the arts and culture, although they would like to do more.

This segment is preoccupied with meeting life’s demands and seeks opportunities for relaxation and socialisation in their leisure time. They need to be encouraged to view culture as a social activity and an alternative means to taking time out from their busy lives. The arts and culture can offer them a means of staying connected to things that are current and contemporary – keeping them in the loop.

Expression

The expression segment is in-tune with their creative and spiritual side. They are self-aware people who have a wide range of interests, from culture, to community, to nature. They lead an eclectic lifestyle, trying to cram in as much as possible to make the most of their free time.

Open to new ideas, they pursue challenge, debate and intellectual stimulation through their cultural engagement. They enjoy being part of a crowd and seek communal experiences. The arts offer a means of self-expression and connection with like-minded individuals who share their deeply held values about the world.

Affirmation

The core of the affirmation segment comprises young adults, often studying or looking after family at home, for who the arts is one of many leisure choices. They welcome cultural consumption as a way of improving themselves and developing their children’s knowledge. They are looking for larger, non-specialist events and activities, as they offer a low risk means of satisfying their needs.

The arts and culture also provides this segment with a means of validating themselves with their peers. They care what others think about them and as a result want to be seen to be engaging with cultural activities, not just popular entertainment.

Perspective

The perspective segment is fulfilled and home-orientated. The arts and culture are low among their priorities, however their spontaneous nature, desire to learn and make their own discoveries provides a focus for engagement with them.

This segment is optimistic and prioritises their own needs above others. Whilst this means they are highly contented, their horizons have become somewhat narrow. Nevertheless, they do see some forms of culture as providing the opportunity to broaden their horizons.

They tend to gravitate to a limited ‘day out’ focus in their leisure time, based upon a small number of habitual interests. Beyond this their cultural-consumption is one-off and generally led by others.

Entertainment

The entertainment segment tends to be conventional, younger adults for whom the arts are on the periphery of their lives. Their occasional forays into culture are usually for spectacular, entertaining or must-see events, and compete against a wide range of other leisure interests.

This segment looks for escapism and thrill in leisure activities. They are largely socially motivated to attend, looking to pass the time in an enjoyable way with friends and family.

The entertainment segment prefers to stick to the tried and tested and are not looking to be challenged or take risks in discovering something new. They do not want to try new things that are not well established, strongly branded and with popular currency.

Of all the segments only the Entertainment Segment likes to and wants to be marketed too!  

To read all about the individual personas you have to download this pdf http://www.lateralthinkers.com/CultureSegments/CultureSegments.pdf it’ll give you the background you need to consider who your audiences are.

What these very concise overviews gives you is the sense of how varied our current, potential and non-attenders are. That arts and culture plays and important part in each of these segments lives is encouraging, and now you have been given an insight into how you might craft your message, your events, or your offerings to acknowledge their differences in attitudes, opinions, motivations and most of all Interest!

 http://www.lateralthinkers.com