Category: Arts Politics

  • Somewhere in the #GlasgowEffect stooshie, there’s a non-subjective question…

    If you’re involved in the arts in Scotland and you don’t live under a rock, you’ve probably heard of The Glasgow Effect by now. No, I don’t mean the phenomenon whereby people from Glasgow have an unusually short life expectancy, but the art project of the same name by Ellie Harrison. Over the past day and…

  • Thoughts on yesterday’s Edinburgh Performing Arts Development meeting

    Yesterday I went along to the Edinburgh Performing Arts Development meeting at the City Art Centre. EPAD is a project run by Lucy Mason and Nicholas Bone to bring those involved in Edinburgh’s performing arts together, get them talking to each other and finding practical ways to share resources and match up means and needs. It feels…

  • A theatremaker’s plea: do shut up

    I know better than to waste my time arguing with lazy clickbait articles. I do. It’s just… sometimes I can’t resist. The piece of lazy clickbait in question is this article in The Telegraph, courtesy of Douglas McPherson. He is a theatre critic. In the theatre he toils not, neither does he spin, as someone…

  • A response to Desire Lines from a grassroots theatremaker. Looooong.

    It’s taken me a while to gather my thoughts and decide how best to write about Desire Lines.   For those of you who, by dint of not being attentive Edinburgh arts folk, have not heard of Desire Lines, it is this: http://www.desirelines.scot. It’s a project started by a handful of people working in the…

  • A belated write-up of Creative Scotland’s Open Session in Edinburgh

    It has been over a week since the Creative Scotland Open Session in Edinburgh. I’ve been meaning to write about it since then, but every time I start a draft I get exasperated and abandon it in favour of the work I actually get paid to do. The official write-up of the day is here,…

  • A plea to Creative Scotland and its board

    It’s been a while since I posted about the Creative Scotland stooshie. In December the board requested a bit of time to consider what to do next. I know it’s only the end of January (probably the beginning of February by the time I finish writing this), but considering how swiftly events moved towards the…

  • Fin Kennedy’s Quest to Educate Ed Vaizey

    I’m sure many of you have already seen this blog post by playwright Fin Kennedy. It’s the kind of post that makes me really happy to see another passionate, proactive theatremaker out there, but it’s also the kind of post that makes me want to break things when I see how little some politicians understand about…

  • A Response to the Creative Scotland Board Meeting Report

    The statement from Creative Scotland’s board gives me cause for hope. Like many artists I was expecting a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the scale of the problem, perhaps even denial that there is a problem in the first place. Instead we got a statement that was respectful, refreshingly low on empty corporate-speak and even showed…

  • A lengthy round-up of what people are saying about CSstooshie now

    Creative Scotland is the arts blogger’s gift that keeps on giving. How appropriate, as we head into the festive season. But there are gifts and gifts, and this one feels like one of those annoying noisy battery-devouring things where once you start playing, you somehow can’t stop. Perhaps that’s just me. I’m a bit tired…

  • Some thoughts on Artists Open Space

    It’s taken me a while to get round to writing up my thoughts on the Open Space at Waverley Gate. What with directing and producing two shows concurrently, this is the first spare moment I’ve had to write things down! With any luck, I’ll get round to answering some of the emails I’ve received in…