‘It was the revolutionary fundraising model that swept Barack Obama to power – and it could help arts bodies in Britain stay in business.’ Are you constantly looking for the right funding route but coming up empty handed? Are you looking for alternative routes to fund your project that doesn’t rely on public bodies? Would you like [...]

I DON’T know about you, but I can’t remember a slower start to the year in the arts in these parts, certainly not in the last decade. EVEN the normally reliable Eden Court could only muster two stage shows in the whole of January, and one of those was the end of the run of their annual [...]

THE YEAR of Creative Scotland 2012 gets underway on 1 January. Depending on how you look at it, though, the latest Scottish Government-sponsored extravaganza is an odd notion. DOES it mean that we in Scotland need official permission to be creative, and cannot be so any other year? Does all the myriad creativity that has flowed [...]

Bogbain Farm, Inverness, 18 December 2011 IT’S NOT smart, it’s not shiny, it’s not that comfy and parts of it are at the ambient temperature of the snow covered fields outside. But it has a welcoming warmth that the best appointed venues cannot match, and venue manager and bottle-washer Bruce MacGregor programmes with a beautifully tuned musician’s [...]

Cromarty, Black Isle, 2-4 December 2011 CROMARTY is a small town perched on the tip of the Black Isle, known to most people because of its regular mention in the shipping forecast. That may be changing, though as with every passing year, the Cromarty Film Festival’s reputation grows and grows – this year it was third on [...]