D&G Arts Festival – 2023
I loved being part of the team delivering the 2023 ten-day Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival. The 2023 Festival included everything from pop up opera to a giant wild cat puppet, Talisk and so much more right across the region from 20th – 28th May 2023.
We presented 26 events in 14 venues throughout the region, featuring 98 locally and nationally based artists and technicians, who performed for 2,151 people.
The Festival celebrated stories of communities at the heart of our region as well as bringing national artists into community spaces and performing arts venues with audiences attending in higher numbers than ever before.
In January 2023, I began finalising the programme that had been planned by the ever-amazing Lou Davies, General Manager before she went to travel the world with her husband Jason. I worked with the artists and venues to give the remaining shows a home making sure that we reached as many communities in D&G as possible.
As well as leading on the operational plans for the 2023 programme I worked with the brilliant Helen Eragona at Eragona Communications who took over doing the day-to-day marketing for the Festival while I managed the strategy for the promotion of the event and operationally organised the Festival. Helen did an incredible job and was a dream freelancer to work with.
From the launch of the Festival programme on 22nd March at The Usual Place, it was all go. We supported Rose Byers, a young musician and The Galloway Players to perform as part of our live Launch event and kicked off the Festival season with our funders, sponsors, community groups, partners, artists, venues and our network.
Logistically the 10-day Festival is no mean feat, covering the entirety of Dumfries & Galloway which is over 100 miles wide to managing over 26 different shows, managing a team of freelancers and venues and making sure that everyone is the in the right place at the right time.
But the event went off without a hitch and the months of planning were all worth it. The Festival included events including Oceanallover who performed their show Scales of the World in a pop-up performance on Kirkcudbright High Street. The piece invited audiences into an altered reality of unique costume, visceral dance, visual poetry and powerful music. This allowed us to reach new audiences that we wouldn’t have previously by being able to be at the heart of a community.
I also organised an event at the spectacular Crawick Multiverse, a large tourist attraction and land art installation and brought Cat Sith by Ludic Acid. Their show was a high paced acrobatic puppetry and physical theatre show that had kids and adults engrossed in a chase between the ancient mythical highland spirit and Sammy, a cat catcher extraordinaire.
I worked with A Play, A Pie and A Pint to co-present a week of performances across Dumfries & Galloway at the Theatre Royal Dumfries, Old Well Theatre Moffat and the Millennium Centre, Stranraer. The show was a family comedy about the dangers of letting your paranoia take control – ‘Leopards Ate My Face’ written by Grant O’Rourke and directed by Jo Freer. The show toured for 6 days with 2 performances in each location. We worked with the local communities to provide the hot pies, and this was very well received in each location and allowed us to support 3 local businesses.
Heading West again, we sold out another incredible night of music with chart topping band Talisk at the Stranraer Millennium Centre along with local sensations The Lucky Doves and Rose Byers. Talisk rocked the night with their ground-breaking folk sounds and their truly innovative signature style. And local success story, The Lucky Doves’ music keeps on giving and the group enchanted audiences with their fantastic folk/Americana/rock style. Rose Byers who the Arts Festival have supported from a young age at only 17, opened the show with her incredible vocals and was delighted to play on a line-up of her favourite bands. Rose stated that we had ‘made her world complete’ by supporting her to perform alongside her favourite bands and her idols and seemed fitting as her last performance with us before she went off to the Royal Conservatoire.
SHELF Comedy presented HAIR, their Fringe success show at the Theatre Royal on Wednesday and had audiences laughing out loud and was described as “queer comedy at its absolute best.” Audiences felt that it was poignant, powerful and funny and struck significant chords, by bringing gender non-binary experiences to life.
Scottish Opera were back touring the region again this year so audiences could experience opera on a miniature scale in their communities with versions of Die Fledermaus and Eugene Onegin. The public performances took place at the newly refurbished A’the Airts in Sanquhar and Glencairn Institute at Moniaive. They were originally due to tour their Opera Truck however due to rising costs they decided to provide us with smaller pop-up performances, and this proved an accessible way for us to engage local people with opera in a way that didn’t feel ‘daunting’ as it was a ‘taster’ and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
To close 2023 Festival, I programmed Scotland’s favourite Kilty Pleasure Craig Hill, he performed his eagerly awaited hilarious new stand-up show at Easterbrook Hall. Craig’s night did not disappoint, with audiences laughing out loud all evening.
The 2023 10 Day Festival incorporated everything from theatre and dance, to comedy, music and spoken word. I thoroughly enjoyed leading on the operations and managing a team of freelancers to deliver the marketing, tech and front of house for the regional event.
“Extremely fun! The festival team, venue and tech teams were fantastic, and the audience were wonderful.” Shelf presented Hair
