Papa Westray, Orkney, 6-13 February 2012 PAPA Westray’s small population of around 70 on the tiny Orcadian north isle keep their traditions alive but these generally take the form of a community dance to indigenous tunes or spooting when the moon and tide is right (harvesting razor clams on the beach). THE Papay Gyro Nights Arts Festival […]

Orkney Arts Society, Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, 3 February 2012 BEFORE the evening’s entertainment commenced I was stopped in the street by several people during the day who wanted to know what a foy is. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is “A parting entertainment, present, cup of liquor, etc., given by or to one […]

St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney, 11 December 2011 THE MEDIEVAL splendour of St Magnus Cathedral is the perfect theatre for this annual festive concert with its soaring red sandstone arches. WHILE  the powerful pillars flanking the nave are not so great if you are seated behind them, the atmosphere is still compelling. I was one of the […]

THE WINNER of the Birdwatch/Swarovski Artist of the Year 2011 Award has spoken of how experiencing nature and drawing from life led him to winning one of the world’s top wildlife art prizes at the Society of Wildlife Artists’ annual exhibition. ORKNEY-based artist Tim Wootton’s expansive and naturalistic charcoal piece entitled North Haven, Fair I…[Read more]

Royal Hotel, Stromness, and other venues, Orkney, 27-30 October 2001 THE YEAR of Scotland’s Islands has flung several performers, writers and artists our way in Orkney in the past months, and the Orkney Storytelling Festival has now reaped the benefit too. The Scottish International Storytelling Festival in Edinburgh has an island odyssey theme …[Read more]

Orkney Arts Theatre, Kirkwall, Orkney, 23 October 2011 IT was a shame the audience wasn’t bigger, but I can report that those who failed to turn out on a wet and windy night or were away for the school holidays missed a treat at the TMSA Young Trad Tour 2011 concert. THIS was the chance to see […]

Balfour Castle, Shapinsay, Orkney, 21 October 2011 AN evening out at an island castle was the stuff of fairy tales from the moment we stepped aboard the ferry to sail from Thomas Telford’s pier at Kirkwall Harbour. THE late engineer himself – in Victorian costume – emerged from the deck as managing director of EMEC, Neil Kermode, […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, 20 October 2011 THE premise of this tour and its ten events across Scottish Islands is that each features a locally based writer with two brought in from other islands. So in Stromness we had local Rosie Alexander, Pauline Prior-Pitt of North Uist and Gordon Dargie of Shetland. All three featured poets […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, 11 October 2011 NOVELIST Lesley Glaister spotted several published and many unpublished writers in the audience for her reading from her novel Chosen – her psychological thriller about religious cults and what happens when a family member joins a sect. This set the theme for her presentation, organised by O…[Read more]

Sandwick Hall, West Mainland, Orkney, 4 August 2011 ORKNEY-raised Ivan Drever returned to his home islands for his ‘world tour of Orkney’; a prelude to a forthcoming tour of Scotland in October. The former Wolfstone player is travelling solo, minus his Ivan Drever Band or his sometime duo partner, Duncan Chisholm. An enthusiastic home-grown aud…[Read more]

Orkney, 17 – 23 June 2011 THE theme for this year’s festival under the directorship of Alasdair Nicolson for the first time was: “the isle is full of noises”, taken from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which opened the show with a community production on a grand scale. We were thrown straight into the drama of the storm-tossed island […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 10 July, 2011 PHOTOJOURNALIST John Bulmer had made a name for himself in the Sunday Times as a pioneer of colour photography, transforming the gritty monochrome of cities in the north of England into pastel tones, when he came to Orkney in 1964 to work on a story, Britain’s Lonely Islands , with […]

THE St Magnus International Festival in Orkney has a new artistic director. ALASDAIR NICOLSON talks to Catherine Turnbull about islands, funding cuts and creativity.   ALASDAIR Nicolson chooses Orkney’s almost new Italian restaurant for our interview and ushers me to a table by the window. Last time I was in this place, in February, the composer a…[Read more]

Various venues, Orkney, 26-29 May 2011 IT’S a given that there is music pulsating from every nook and cranny in Stromness for nearly four days at the Orkney Folk Festival, but this year the pace was frenetic with artists lining up for – and sometimes giving up trying for – a coveted seat at the sessions in the […]