The Sanquhar Arts Festival returns for its third year, running for four days in the last weekend of August. After the annual festival’s debut during Spring Fling in 2019, it took the form of an online event last year. Supported by the Upper Nithsdale Tourism Partnership and sponsored by DG Council and EventScotland, the organisers of this year’s festival are able to offer a jammed packed programme of displays, exhibitions and performances to be held at various venues in Sanquhar’s Cultural Quarter.
Surrounded by beautiful countryside the Royal Borough of Sanquhar holds much of its history in the heritage craft of Sanquhar pattern knitting and boasts the Guinness world record for the world’s oldest working post office.
It is hoped that there is something for everyone at this event, and that art and craft isn’t just the topic for engagement, it is a chance for the rural community to celebrate all things creative and exciting about the area more so, now with Scottish Government lifting social restrictions.
The local Model Makers club, Mennock Rural Womens’ Institute, Sanquhar’s Sewing Bee and the local Art club will hold exhibitions in the beautiful, old Sanquhar Town Hall. Like a lot of venues, the Sanquhar Town Hall committee used the forced closure over the pandemic as a chance to renovate and upgrade the facilities of the historic building, which was built in 1905. The Town Hall’s interior has been painted and the toilets re-fitted, thanks to local funding streams. “It will be great to see local venues like our Town Hall alive with events again” said a Facebook user on the Town Hall’s page.
Yvonne Barber, Centre Manager for A’ The Airts Community Art Centre and Secretary for the Upper Nithsdale Tourism Partnership has been a driving force behind ensuring as many local groups and organisations are represented at this festival.
An aim of festival for the Upper Nithsdale Tourism Partnership was to engage as many local organisations and businesses as possible, by using local graphic designer Kirsty Young of Carrot Top Designs to create the programme booklet and asking the Burnside Tearoom to cater for the picnic as examples. “It’s important that everyone benefits from the funding made available from EventScotland” said event co-coordinator Mrs Barber. “A’ The Airts is very happy to start to welcome back events and activities in the Centre. We are pleased to be able to deliver the Sanquhar Arts Festival on the back of a very busy seven-week summer school. Some of the events are free and we urge advance bookings, as the weekend will be busy. The events are spread across many venues in the town and there is something for everyone. Public safety is still paramount; however, we hope that you will participate as people slowly come back together.”
As the festival is held over a bank holiday weekend, it is hoped that visitors to the region will participate and enjoy what Upper Nithsdale has to offer, with the Airts Café and High Street hotels open all weekend serving food and drink.
A’ The Airts main exhibition is by Moniaive artist Melville Brotherston, who sadly passed away April last year. His paintings are grand landscapes and sea scenes in oils, pastels and watercolour. His partner has provided a selection, from the over 400 piece collection, which are to be on display in the Centre’s top floor gallery. There will also be an exhibition of works by the Airts Patchwork Group on display throughout the Centre.
The Airts craft rooms will be host to a Woodwork workshop and a Floristry workshop, tutored by the local talent of Rob from Wagtails Wood Art, Kirkconnel, and Lynsey from Sanquhar’s High Street florist Memories.
Director of MERZ Gallery and Museum of Model Art, Dave Rushton, is one of the other driving forces behind making the annual Sanquhar Arts Festival happen. “This is an opportunity to celebrate the arts sustained and enjoyed quietly over a year and a half of lockdown. For MERZ and the Museum of Model Art it’s a time for creative optimism and innovation to survive both the pandemic and climate change. In the year following Brexit and with travel restrictions it is important to pursue international links and develop the network of friends engaged by residencies and sustained by digital means. “
Through Creative Scotland funding MERZ has been able to host overseas and national artists each year, with a different artist in residence each season. Converting the old lemonade factory on Queen’s Road into a gallery space and constructing accommodation alongside Mr Rushton explains, “For the many artists from Scotland, Europe and the US, Sanquhar offers a friendly and welcoming place in a beautiful setting to explore and work, to exchange thoughts and ideas.”
Featuring in MERZ’s lineup for this year’s festival is Derrie Pearson. A recent Glasgow Art School graduate in architecture and since July has been the MERZ ‘ARTITECT’ in residence. Originally from Kelloholm, she now lives in Copenhagen. Derrie has been working on the design of a small off-grid studio in the small wood at MERZ, exploring how self-sufficient buildings might be constructed from recycled and ready-to hand materials, including local clay, tyres or reclaimed timber. Derrie has been working with young model makers to explore how they would envisage living in and around Sanquhar as climate change dictates that we ‘change places’.
The festival will open with a collage unveiling on Friday night, with a large outdoor piece by Denise Zygadlo and Amy Marletta. The installation is a delayed celebration of May’s World Collage Day, thanks again to COVID19 restrictions. Trained in textile design Denise moved from London to Dumfries in 1980 and her recent work is collage-based, from small paper-cuts to large transfer prints on canvas, exploring her interest in the relationship between the human body and cloth. Since 2019 Denise has collaborated with Amy Marletta to put together 3 exhibitions of their individual collage works. In December last year their Museum of Model Art’s exhibition ‘As The Moon Sees lt‘ featured a tribute to the Dada artist Hannah Höch, the celebrated pioneer of photomontage.
MERZ also welcomes ‘Life Under Lockdown’ a dynamic mixed media exhibition. A series of unique works capturing fragments of lives lived under lock down by seven Scottish based artists. From painting to engraving, text work to photography, fibre art to scale model making, they depict moments, observations and responses to this unprecedented period of uncertainty.
Land art and open-air venue, Crawick Multiverse, will host a series of musicians playing everything from rock, reggae and indie through to trad, classical and opera during the Saturday and Sunday. With some major construction over the past year, the site now sports ‘The Coalface’, a specially designed eco-friendly visitor facility.
The Tolbooth Museum exhibition ‘Spotlight on Sport’ contains trophies and stories of the Crawick Wheelers Cycle Club. This, by coincidence, links with the ‘Celebration of Cycling’ event held by KPT Development Trust held on the same dates. So the region is spoilt for choice when it comes to celebrating cycling this festival weekend. On Sunday, weather permitting, Sanquhar’s Queensberry Square will be the location for a pop-up pump track for cyclers of all ages. The Sanquhar Cycle Project and the Crawick Wheelers club were able to join the Sanquhar Arts Festival, as their planned event was postponed during the Summer of 2020. The plans for the original pop-up track event, funded by Propel in 2019, has sat waiting for the region to open up again. Sanquhar Cycle Project Co-ordinator and committee member of the Crawick Wheelers Club, David Weir said “With this event it is hoped cycle coaching events and further engagement with the community about the needs of cyclist in the Upper Nithsdale will take place. We thank the Upper Nithsdale Tourism Partnership for the inclusion in the festival weekend programme.”
“I am delighted that Sanquhar Arts Festival is back stronger than ever, particularly after a period of uncertainty.” Said Rose Murdoch, Chair of Upper Nithsdale Tourism Partnership. “Although slightly later than previous events – which were always held in May – this year’s Arts Festival promises to be a fantastic event with a wide range of activity aimed at all age groups and interests. Special thanks for the development of the programme must go to the Upper Nithsdale Tourism Partnership Arts and Culture Sub-Group led primarily by MERZ Gallery and A’ The Airts”.
For families attending the weekend festival, the popular and talented Poppy Brown will present a traditional Punch and Judy show. Poppy has been a weekly face of the Airts Summer School programme and it is hoped the performance can take place outdoors on Saturday afternoon. Also showcased outdoors at MERZ will be Mark Zygadlo’s mobile wooden windmill and a Praxinoscope, an early film animation device.
An adult only event with be a cinema for one! Inside a MERZ caravan there will be a X rated film screened on a loop from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Spooky Stories by the Mostly Ghostly Team, a Hip-Hop dance group named Cultured Mongrels will be performing pop-up performances and a movie about Audrey Hepburn will complete the line-up of the festivals theme, ‘something for everyone’. With the Sanquhar Arts Festival being an annual feature for the Upper Nithsdale community and visitors, it will be weekend not to be missed.
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