A CULTURAL summit to discuss ideas about borders and migration is to be held at a major arts festival in Perthshire this summer.
The Solas Festival – the midsummer festival of ideas, music, theatre and writing – includes a wealth of Scottish cultural talent including folk band Lau, novelist James Kelman and playwright David Greig.
The festival, which has been running since 2009, has the theme of Home this year, and takes place from June 23-25 at The Bield, a venue for spiritual retreat at Blackruthven, near Perth.
This year's edition of the festival, for which the Sunday Herald is media partner, also involves two international collaborations, pairing Scottish artists with collaborators in Palestine and Ghana.
The music at the festival, which features White, C Duncan and Lau, also presents the results of one the collaborations – the fruits of Scottish hip hop artists Declan Welsh and Louie Bhoy's trip to Palestine to perform at the Bet Lahem Live festival, where they toured the West Bank and collaborated with Palestinian artists.
Both will talk about their experience at the festival and a film about their trip, made by Iain Hendo, will be screened.
The festival also includes the international premiere of a new work by the Noyam African Dance Institute of Ghana, directed by the lead choreographer of the National Theatre of Ghana, Nii Tete Yartey, created in collaboration with refugee artists in Glasgow and overseen by languages Professor Alison Phipps from Glasgow University.
Henry Bell, the festival's programme co-ordinator, said: "We very much hope to be able to bring the Palestinian artists to Scotland during the festival for the world premiere of the work.
"There is a funding application in to make it happen, but then there is the question of visas and getting them out of Palestine and into the UK, which are not givens, but we are working on it and hopeful."
The festival's series of talks, a key part of its programming, will take place "against a particularly fraught global landscape" a festival spokesperson said.
Phipps will curate a strand of talks and performance events engaging with the current refugee crisis, while land activist and Green MSP Andy Wightman hosts a series of discussions on democracy, ecology, the local and the global.
David Greig, playwright and the artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, will "explore whether true democracy is possible in a world without art."
The festival will also include the Sunday Herald Big Debate, a panel discussion taking on the issues of the day, featuring contributing voices from the newspaper and Scottish public life.
The topic – and the panel – will be announced shortly.
The festival will also include a new strand, for performance, headlined by Scottish dance performer Claire Cunningham, whose critically-acclaimed solo work investigates issues around disability and cultural difference.
James Kelman will reading from his novel The Dirt Road while Helen Sedgwick, novelist and physicist, discusses her acclaimed debut novel, The Comet Seekers, and Tawona Sithole will lead a late-night poetry event with Seeds of Thought.
The full festival lineup will be announced shortly.
Early bird tickets are currently on sale, priced £95 for a full weekend pass (£120 on the gate). Day tickets, priced £45, will be available nearer the time.
Children under 12 go free – camping is available to all weekend ticket holders at no extra cost.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here