Its Festival Time!

Regular readers will be aware of the pARTicipate project that we have been running at St Abbs for the past year or so, which aims to engage the public in the work of the National Trust for Scotland, through the arts.  Here at St Abbs we have been working mainly with the medium of music, and our main partner has been the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO).  You will have read before about the various fabulous events that have come out of this so far, but now the project is coming to its climax – the world premier performance of the piece of music that the Trust has commissioned from composer, Howard Moody, performed by the SCO.  This will be taking place on Thursday 24^th May, at the Volunteer Hall in Duns (see image above for details of how to get a ticket).  The piece will then be performed at two other venues as part of the SCO’s South of Scotland Tour 2012.

And if that wasn’t exciting enough, we decided that we should have some kind of mini festival on the run up to this world premier.  As this was a little bit of an afterthought, and it is a busy old time of year here at St Abbs, we haven’t had time to pull together all the potential events that could be part of a St Abbs Festival.  So we have just called it “The St Abbs Fest”, and who knows, if it proves popular in its embryonic form then maybe it will go on to become a regular thing and develop into a fully grown Festival in years to come!

The “St Abbs Fest” will start on Wednesday 16^th May and will run all the way through to the final concert of the SCO’s tour, which takes place in Castle Douglas on Saturday 26^th.  Events vary from guided walks to, to art exhibitions (including that of our Artist in Residence, Sarah Riseborough), to film shows and more.  Details to follow soon...