Date set for St Duthac Book And Arts Festival with hopes high for another cultural cracker in Easter Ross
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AS the committee of the St Duthac Book And Arts Festival work on plans for next year’s festival in Tain and the Easter Ross Peninsula, there is not much they want to give away yet – except the dates, September 11 to 18.
It will be a week earlier in 2023 than this year’s chairman Catherine Williams reveals.
But they have already been working on the line-up of guests, though don’t want to give any names away yet.
Catherine said: “Planning started as soon as the last one finished.”
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But with the festival’s debut coming last year in the aftermath of Covid with its restrictions, it has meant this year’s festival has had more of a chance to take off without numbers being limited in venues.
Attendances seem to reflect that.
Catherine said: “In first year we were very much constrained by just emerging from Covid. We were advised by each of the venues in the first year about how many people we could have and that was very limiting. We had to be distanced, we had to wear masks and have hand sanitisers and everything. Our audiences were more constrained because of that.”
They had 16 authors last year and increased the number of authors, poets and storytellers to 22. This year 546 tickets were sold online, 324 orders for tickets plus people who walked in the door at the events.
“We had so many sellouts this year, far more than we could possibly have hoped for. The local people and tourists alike came along and really supported us which is great because then we know we can carry on and do it all next year.
"It’s important to us that we include everyone, so all our venues are chosen with care so that they are accessible to all. We like to have a spread of venues throughout the Easter Ross Peninsula area. Some people can’t get to some things because they don’t have their own transport, so hopefully they will be able to access something nearer to hand. And I think that works very well.
“We were delighted this year to get some funding from Museums and Galleries Scotland and the Year Of Stories 2022.
“VisitScotland put a link to our festival on VisitScotland and that helped us and we collaborated with Balnagown Estate and they linked with our website and that went out to people coming to the estate. And hotels and castles in our area said they had all benefited from our event with people coming for a meal asking to be finished by 7.10 because they had a book festival event on at 7.30! We definitely had a kick-on to the local tourism market in the locality.”
And some of the events put on by people taking part in the festival's events has led to other things.
Catherine said: "As a direct consequence of the festival, one of the workshops we did with Vee Walker on memoir writing has seen her being asked to do a regular workshop at Tain library and we are very pleased about that. Also, Carol Janes opened her house and workshop for visitors – she does crafting with fishing line. She opened her gardens and as a direct result of that a group of working age people came to her and asked if she would start a class in the evenings – because they were working they couldn’t make it along to the daytime workshops. So we were delighted to hear that."
One of the highlights Catherine revealed, was this year's pop-up bookshop which she said worked particularly well.
"The pop-up bookshop with art gallery was a huge success every day and was a focus for the festival. People would be coming to an event but would just come in to the pop-up bookshop, either beforehand or afterwards. We had lovely comments about the events they had just been to see.
"And we had five artists exhibiting their work, very varied, from linoprint to photography, charcoal and pencil to paints. So that was lovely, seeing the room all set up.
"For the pop-up bookshop and gallery within it, we do very much want to thank the owners and management of The Royal Hotel who gifted us the space. They said ‘We want to do something for the community too, so working with them was just lovely and the Clan Ross Room at the hotel proved to be an excellent venue."
Keep up to date with announcements for next year’s event at the festival website: stduthacbookfest.com
