Creative PlacesCreative People

Current Projects

Dumfries and Galloway Youth Music Forum

Overall aim: Support and provide a voice for all people interested in music and young people participating in music in Dumfries and Galloway

1. Objectives:

• To broaden young people’s knowledge of current music practice nationally and in Dumfries and Galloway
• To extend their knowledge of the technical aspects of performing a live gig e.g. stage lighting, sound engineering.
• To develop their knowledge and skills in such areas as marketing, programming and the financial aspects of promoting live gigs performances.
• To increase young people’s knowledge about jobs in the creative and cultural industries.
• To expand young people’s work experiance in the fashion industry by nerturing links with local businesses. One Example of such co-operation is our work with I Love Cashmere.
• To increase the number of young people attending all genre musical performances across Dumfries and Galloway.

2. These objectives will be achieved by:

• Providing the young people with the opportunity to attend of a wide range of performances by leading professional musicians of all genres in other parts of the region.
• Providing opportunities for young people to meet young professional and aspiring professional music practitioners.
• Providing workshops in various technical aspects of music production.
• Giving the young people the skills to select market and promote live performances in professional venues that appeal to an audience of young people.
• Encouraging the young people to attend and participate in live musical performances across the region.

GaelForce 10

GaelForce is the doorway for the whirlwind of vibrant arts and entertainment that sweeps gorgeous Dumfries and Galloway all year round. GaelForce provides a small grant source for events and commissions in the region, which is administered by dgArts.

Explore GaelF orce for a rich diversity of festivals and events. The Eden Festival gets September off to a funky and family-friendly start. Or you can head for the hills up at Moniaive for the Michaelmas Bluegrass Festival. For book-lovers there’s the Wigtown Book Festival and for a big welcome to a small place head for fast-draw fun at the Creetown Country Music Festival.

A swinging October starts with Lockerbie Jazz Festival, but if your taste is renaissance, then The Galloway Consort will be making sweet music with viols, recorders and other medieval instruments. Poetry flows across the region with the arrival here of a succession of famous poets for Poetry Doubles.

And as the clocks go back put your best foot forward for Gatehouse of Fleet to enjoy The Fireside Hoolie. Finally, with the arrival of the winter, December brings The Feral Choir carolling in the villages.

GaelForce thanks its key funders, Dumfries and Galloway Council and Creative Scotland.

The Big Hill

This project, commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage and dgArts, was based in and around Cairnsmore of Fleet National Nature Reserve, between Creetown and Gatehouse of Fleet in Galloway. The Big Hill was led by Matt Baker, who is at the forefront of sculptors making site-specific work as a response to landscape and place. His new work at Cairnsmore of Fleet is the latest in a line of significant commissions that include the Three Graces in Inverness, Shinglehook at St.Mary’s Loch, Scottish Borders and major installations in Gorbals, Glasgow.Surfacemen by Oceanallover at Cairnsmore of Fleet

Matt created five site specific sculptures, which can be found in the nature reserve, and poet Mary Smith wrote five poems. Their work was inspired by the unique character of Cairnsmore of Fleet’s wild landscape and its local communities of Gatehouse and Creetown.

Mary Smith’s poems accompanying the sculptures were published in a leaflet which was distributed to the residents of Gatehouse of Fleet and Creetown. The poems can be heard on a podcast in the Cairnsmore Visitor Centre where there are also postcards giving cryptic clues to the locations of the sculptures. The stones in the sculptures are all from the slopes of Cairnsmore and although there are no formal signs to their location, visitors are encouraged to seek them out.

The sculptures at Cairnsmore were also the setting for Surfacemen , a site-specific performance written by Debbie Kent and directed and performed by Oceanallover. Surfacemen was commissioned by Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival.

Heroes

Heroes is an exciting new public art commission to support the regeneration of Dumfries. Award-winning public artist John Kennedy of Landlab has been commissioned to deliver this project about identity, reverberating from the medieval heart of Dumfries at the Midsteeple. It was conceived by Dg arts, who are managing the project.

This commission is part of a successful bid made by Dumfries and Galloway Council and the Chamber of Commerce to the Scottish Government for a wider capital regeneration project for Dumfries.

Heroes aims to celebrate Dumfries and Galloway’s rich history and cultural heritage through a series of art installations in the middle of town. The artist is working to create a pride in the town’s past, creating opportunities for him to work with the community to explore and imagine Dumfries’ sense of itself, generating citizenship and community pride.

John Kennedy is creating meaningful and visually exciting artworks, both temporary and permanent, which will display his high quality craftsmanship and imaginative approach to celebrating cultural heritage and placemaking. Award-winning Scots poet Rab Wilson is contributing text which John will incorporate into his design.

• home
• about
• events
• projects
• artforms

DGARTS 2016 - Contact : info @ dgarts.co.uk