A very warm welcome

How to be happy. What whiskies to drink. How to be wrong. And how to write. How to be green. And to have green fingers. Who came before us. Where be monsters and why love hurts. Why the financial world stopped turning. How to juggle (and not just financially). How to be a pilgrim, an explorer, the perfect host. These are just some of the things you can discover at this year’s Wigtown Book Festival.  But, just as importantly, you will find good company, fine food, wonderful bookshops and some of the most beautiful countryside in Scotland. We hope you stay a while.  Adrian Turpin, Festival Director

Wigtown Ink

For writers, by writers – a festival within a festival.  Fresh for 2010, Wigtown Ink is a festival within the festival celebrating new and established literary talent from within Dumfries and Galloway, as well as offering advice and inspiration to writers at all stages of their careers, wherever they come from.  For more info please click the link: http://www.wigtownbookfestival.com/pdfs/WigtownBookFestival2010.pdf

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.  All events and commissions which were successful in gaining GaelForce funding are tagged with the GaelForce logo on our Events page.

GaelForce 2010 Guide (PDF)

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 Oc tober 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.