MARK MORPURGO of Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop sets the scene for a co-operative venture in Cowal

MUCH HAS been made at recent meetings and conferences of the idea that cultural and tourism groups would increase their effectiveness by increasingly working together in co-operation. The positive impact of this was seen in Dunoon with the ‘Gathering Around’ programme over the Cowal Games weekend.

Increasingly cultural groups who are keen to expand their audience development programmes are having to work together to try to cross-market their events for the greater good of their geographic area, and for the constituent groups involved.

Cowal Open Studios and Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop/Fiddle Folk are particularly pleased to announce the results of a new joint venture. As separate groups they already attract a number of tourists to the area, but they hope that a new joint initiative will give tourists an even stronger reason to come to the area, and give local resident’s who are fed up with the weather a good excuse to get out and about!

Brian Phillips

Elizabeth Bain, Fiddle Folk’s spokesperson, told me: “In previous joint ventures – for instance with Cowalfest, now a major walking festival – we have found that tourists may be initially attracted by the walks and then come to the concert as a bit of an afterthought, or vice-versa. We hope, and expect, that the same will be true for a concert linked to an artists’ studio trail.”

Work by Pam Glennie

The Cowal Open Studios weekend is a Homecoming 2009 event. This is now being expanded to include a key concert in Strachur, singing workshops, arts demonstrations and exhibits which have been arranged for 26 September.

Throughout the day there will be the opportunity to drop in (free) to Strachur Memorial Hall to view various arts workshops and demonstrations. Children can ‘get crafty’ with craft baskets and get some hands on arts and crafts experience, and you can all fill up on delicious home-baked cakes and snacks.

Whether you sing already, or like me are just an ‘in the bath’ singer, why not join in this innovative workshop run by Muldoon’s Picnic, a five-part harmony singing group with a highly eclectic repertoire ranging from folk-songs to world music; spirituals to barbershop; music-hall to sea shanties to Victorian parlour music.

In the evening there will be a concert, kindly supported by Western Ferries. Six international artists, including the multi instrument contemporary folk group Rallion, together with award winning harpists, will be on stage.

Rallion will perform traditional material with a twist, using ideas from many genres of music to great effect and setting toes a-tapping and hands a-clapping; whilst international harpists, Ailie Robertson and Tristan Le Govic, will be wowing the audience with their divine exploration of Celtic harp traditions.

Ailie Robertson

Rallion have played major folk festivals and at more intimate venues all over the world. They are a great quartet with vocals, fiddles, bodhran, whistle, guitar and bouzoki. They bring a wide range of musical influences together to create their powerful, persuasive music. Their new release should be out in time for the concert in Strachur.

They will be joined by two international harpists. Breton harpist Tristan Le Govic is a gold medallist from the Music Conservatoire of Rennes. Scottish clarsach player Ailie Robertson Ailie is a young artist taking her place at the very forefront of the new generation of Celtic harpists.

Allie was a finalist at the 2008 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Award, five times National Mod Gold Medallist and won first prize at the inaugural London Harp Competition. She has represented Scotland at the Pan Celtic Festival in Ireland and played at World Harp Congresses. She will join with Tristan in a cross-cultural collaboration illustrating the traditional music from both countries.

Work by Amy Neville

Last year’s Cowal Open Studios was a great success, both in terms of visitor numbers and the artists who were involved, with a group of 29 artists who got together to promote an artists’ trail around Cowal. Incorporating workshops, exhibitions and artist talks, with the ability to visit artists’ studios, the events were clearly a great success with more than 1300 visiting studios over the weekend.

Many artists work from a studio at home, often in the most beautiful, and sometimes apparently inaccessible places, so encouraging visitors – local and tourists – is not always an easy task, so co-operation is clearly the way ahead. The fact that 15 new artists have joined the group for 2009 clearly shows that there is a strong perceived benefit for them all.

Jenny Marshall (Stained Glass Artist)

A Homecoming grant has meant that they have been able to greatly expand their marketing efforts for this year’s events, especially outside Cowal. Jean Donaldson, Chair of Cowal Open Studios, told me: “Last year half of the visitors over the weekend lived outside Cowal, so the weekend clearly had a positive impact on local tourism and business, quite apart from being of benefit to the artists involved.

“The grant we have received from Argyll and Bute Council and Leader as part of their investment in Homecoming 2009 will make all the difference. We have produced more directories and programmes of events that are widely distributed through tourist offices, hotels and so on. But the grant will also bought us some time to look at expanding the potential for further workshops and exhibitions, and maybe even artists’ conferences and networking events.”

By linking visits to studios with Cowal’s outstanding landscape and views, COS believe that the Open Studios offer a really worthwhile addition to the Cowal events calendar: “So many of our artists take their inspiration from what they see around them, so the paintings and photographs we display help to promote the area in themselves!”, Jean continued.

Sarah Sumsion's hands through loom

This weekend is a rare opportunity for the public. As HI~Arts says, it offers residents and visitors to Cowal “unique access to a diverse range of working artists’ studios, with the opportunity to talk to artists about their ideas, inspiration and working processes, as well as the opportunity to buy original artworks and get a better appreciation of the artistic process.”

Robert Livingston, the Director of HI~Arts, added: “The open studio concept is a great way for artists to show what they have to offer, and to make them more visible in their communities. What better way is there of exploring this beautiful part of Scotland than by studio-hopping?”

Open Studios Weekend takes place from 25-28 September 2009 in venues throughout Cowal; Tickets can be reserved for the concert at Strachur Memorial Hall on 26 September 2009 (7.30 p.m.). FREE to schoolchildren, Adults £10 from mark@morvenlodge.co.uk or by phoning 01301 703559.

© Mark Morpugo, 2009

Links

• Cowal Open Studios

• Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop/Fiddle Folk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cowalfest 06 runs from 5-15 October.

© Michael Russell, 2006

Links

• Cowalfest