Days Out, Previews

Mary King’s Ghost Fest

8 May 2008

Back once again with the paranormal behaviour! The annual scary celebration of ghouls, ghosts, things that go bump in the night and (even more terrifyingly) perma-tanned television psychics, resurfaces through the ectoplasm. Night vigils in Edinburgh’s…

O2 Undiscovered

8 May 2008

Tell ya, kid. These days, everybody wants to get into showbiz. O2 Undiscovered, which lands in Glasgow this fortnight, is the latest in a fast-growing succession of hands-on networking events offering the public a chance to meet and get advice from…

Women in Afghanistan

8 May 2008

This is Malalai Joya, often called ‘the bravest woman in Afghanistan’. Not yet 30, Joya has not only stood and been elected to the new Afghani parliament, but has stood up against corruption within that establishment. She’s currently suspended from her…

The Budungo Trail

24 Apr 2008

In Edinburgh a group of extrovert housemates have just moved into a new high tech environment where they will be under almost constant supervision by the public. For the next few weeks experts predict squabbles, group bonding and excessive personal…

Clemens en August

10 Apr 2008

The thing about fashion is it’s just too readily available these days. When everybody’s wearing the same labels, how can you really be sure you’re setting yourself apart from the crowd, eh? Answer: by buying from a label that only sells for three days a…

Boys-only cocktail classes

27 Mar 2008

‘If you want an interesting party sometime,’ the American novelist Robert Fulghum quipped, ‘combine cocktails and a fresh box of crayons for everyone.’ Today I’m doing the next best thing: I’m joining a cocktail class aimed at getting men back into the…

Scotland’s craft community

13 Mar 2008

Click, click, click. For the past few years, the needles of crafters up and down the country have been spinning a revolution. A very quiet, civilised revolution, granted. Productive. With minimal bloodshed, and lovely accessories. Okay, that might be…

A+E Quiz

13 Mar 2008

Hello, sensitive cultural types. Quite like wielding your massive brain for an audience, but feel that there’s just too much of that baffling sporty stuff in your average pub quiz? Well, the Arts and Entertainment Quiz may well be the event for you. The…

Stop the War demonstration

13 Mar 2008

It’s exactly five years since the invasion of Iraq. Still feel you’ve got something to say about it? Haste ye along to Blythswood Square and join the Scottish leg of one of the biggest international protest marches since the original invasion. The…

Leonard Cohen

28 Feb 2008

There’s no particular reason why Glasgow poetry promoters Vital Synz are holding a Leonard Cohen Supper this fortnight. It’s not the great songwriter’s birthday, and he’s still, as far as we know, in rude health. He is being inducted into the Rock…

Kimono Mackintosh

28 Feb 2008

Yeah, sorry, we couldn’t resist. Kimono Mackintosh, Glasgow’s festival celebrating the art of the pretty dressing gown goes into its second year, with a stretched out programme of events. Look out for art and orgami workshops, traditional dance…

Mark Wallinger

28 Feb 2008

A talk by 2007 Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger (pictured. No, really, that’s him! In the bear suit! Artists, eh?), as he takes up the position of Artist in Residence at Edinburgh College of Art. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, Mon 3 Mar

Speed climbing!

14 Feb 2008

Ever fancied finding love at 100ft? Boldly going where almost certainly no one else has gone before and combining popular 00s social activities speed dating and rock climbing, this post-Valentine’s Day event for lovelorn cliff face enthusiasts begins…

All glimmers in limbo: Tramway

14 Feb 2008

Glasgow’s Tramway has a rich, varied history that closely mirrors the city’s development from a noisy industrial town to a centre of arts and culture. The building began life as a tram terminus (the clue’s in the name), housed the Museum of Transport…

Holocaust Memorial Day

17 Jan 2008

For most of Scotland, the end of January means Burns Night. Whisky, tradition and rousing renditions of ‘A Man’s A Man For A’ That’; a time for national nostalgia and a noisy assertion, however fleeting, of equality. Perhaps it’s fitting then that a…

Neue Liebe

17 Jan 2008

Pulling together a host of well-meaning, spiffily-clad and shamelessly talented Edinburgh bohemian types in the brand new surroundings of the Voodoo Rooms, Neue Liebe, performance-poetess-about-town JL Williams’ (pictured, right) cabaret evening, is…

Queer Mutiny

17 Jan 2008

ALTERNATIVE GAY NIGHT Forest Café, Edinburgh, Fri 18 Jan The dark nooks and free’n’easy hedonism of gay venues such as the Polo Lounge and CC Blooms aren’t for everyone. Queer Mutiny and Queeruption groups are springing up across the world. Their…

Burke and Hare-themed events

4 Jan 2008

‘Up the close and down the stair/But and ben wi’ Burke and Hare/Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief/Knox the boy who buys the beef . . .’ Everyone gets a bit rueful round about this time of year, don’t they? A lot of poring over old mistakes, a…

St Andrew’s Day

29 Nov 2007

Around this time of year, a flurry of twee tartan tat begins to take over our streets and schools. Gym halls fill up with tinny, taped ceilidh tunes, canteens are plagued with watery tatties and sloppy neeps, and supermarkets surrender to dusty displays…

Winterfest Glasgow

29 Nov 2007

2007 is the first year that Glasgow has consolidated all of its wintry activities under one festive umbrella, the secularly-named Winterfest Glasgow. The main action happens at either end of Queen Street, with Glasgow on Ice (pictured) taking over the…

Glasgow grins and bares it

29 Nov 2007

Celebrate your cellulite this Christmas! Professional ego-booster Gok Wan is in town for the live How To Look Good Naked roadshow. Two audience members will get the full-on nudie glow, and a host of hairstylists and make-up artists will be doling out…

On the Buses

29 Nov 2007

In the run up to International Human Rights Day on Monday 10 December, Edinburgh and Glasgow bus passengers just need to look up to do their bit. After a series of workshops run by Oxfam Scotland and the Scottish Poetry Library, five poems written by…

Scotland vs Italy

15 Nov 2007

This is it, folks. The big one. The day when our nation discovers if we can turn 400+ years of entrenched pessimism into something beautiful. No, we don’t think we’re overreacting about this at all. Get your lucky rabbit’s foot out, let your epidermis…

Scottish Opera Unwrapped

15 Nov 2007

Go behind the scenes of Scottish Opera’s latest productions, The Barber of Seville and Seraglio, with all-new evening sessions designed to ease even the staunchest aria-phobe into an appreciation of all things operatic. Talk to the performers, meet the…

Spiders - Eight-legged freak out

15 Nov 2007

A spider fear is an embarrassing thing to admit to. They don’t bite, they don’t sting, they’re almost blind, and yet I find the sight of one running towards me distinctly unsettling. I’d like to be one of those people who scoops them up in her bare…

Britannia Panopticon Theatre

18 Oct 2007

The area around Glasgow’s Trongate has pulled its socks up somewhat over the last decade, but tucked in among the upmarket restaurants catering for the Tron Theatre’s well-heeled audiences and glossy bars spilling over from the Merchant City is a…

David Lynch and Donovan

18 Oct 2007

David Lynch, and Donovan. Together at last. If your mind hasn’t blown itself yet, try throwing some transcendental meditation into the mix. No, not a strange Twin Peaks spoof. Lynch actually will be speaking in Edinburgh and Glasgow this fortnight, in…

Oxjam Clothes Swap

18 Oct 2007

CHARITY EVENT Swapping all over the world Oxjam Clothes Swap, Buff Club, Glasgow, Tue 30 Oct, 8pm. Ah, remember back in the gilded past of our youth, when nobody spat in the street, and putting on a fundraising event was a simple matter of arranging…

Lorca

4 Oct 2007

The life and work of Spanish poet, painter, pianist, composer and revolutionary Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898–19 August 1936) is celebrated in this evening of film and music. A screening of Humberto López y Guerra’s hour-long 1976 documentary…

Mental Health Arts and Film Festival

20 Sep 2007

Ahead of Scotland’s first Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, Kirstin Innes spoke to organiser Lee Knifton about dialogues, drama and positive mental action

An Audience With . . .Nick Nairn

6 Sep 2007

Up until now, the most terrifying moment in Nick Nairn’s career was during the height of the recent foot and mouth crisis, when he interviewed the First Minister live on the BBC programme Landward. However, Nairn likes to push himself, and so to kick…

Behind the scenes at Scottish Ballet

6 Sep 2007

As Scottish Ballet gears up for a move to its new permanent home in Tramway, the company is throwing open the doors and inviting the public in to see exactly what they do when not putting on performances. As well as demonstrating how they intend to…

Karine Polwart on Thank You For the Music

6 Sep 2007

When choosing eight Scottish songwriters to profile, the BBC Radio Scotland series Thank You For the Music wisely eschewed yer flashier, more tabloid-friendly Tunstalls and Fratellis, focussing instead on low-profile, home-grown indie and folk heroes…

Edinburgh Mela

23 Aug 2007

Post-Festival blues? Mosey on over to Pilrig Park, which is preparing to twitch again to an insistent, persistent bhangra beat. This year the massive, weekend-long inter-cultural festival has pulled performers from Tibet, Iran, Nepal, China, Brazil…

Kapow!

1 Aug 2007

Henry Northmore talks to project curator Mel Brimfield about the cross-genre, multi-platform Comic Book Project

Hitherto Craft Workshops

2 Jul 2007

WORKSHOP With every high street in every town selling the same thing, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd these days. Fortunately, Krista Blake is helping youngsters in Glasgow cut a dash this summer, with unique accessories made with their own…

Spinal Chord

2 Jul 2007

Through the side door and up the stairs of a church hall on Great Western Road, there’s a room where people fly and mermaids hang off bars. A trapeze hangs from the rafters by the big stained glass window, stopping about six feet above the floor. On the…

Big in Falkirk

Callendar Park, Falkirk, Sat 5-Sun 6 May. Free.

23 Apr 2007

‘Nine or ten years ago, if I’d said to you “come and see a show in Falkirk” you’d have laughed at me.’ Neil Butler, Artistic Director of the Big in Falkirk festival, which has been running in Callander Park since 2001, is quite used to this particular…

Beltane Fire Festival

Eternal flame

9 Apr 2007

(Photo: © Two Truths) In 1988, a small group of enthusiasts, led by Angus Farquhar of industrial rockers Test Dept, approached the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University, for funding. They wanted to stage an outdoor performance…

Mission in Action Fashion Fundraiser

Mission In Action Fashion Show

9 Apr 2007

Fashion Fundraiser ‘Living in this country, we’ve just got no concept of how hard it is for people out there,’ says Annalese McDermott, director of Edinburgh modelling agency Stolen, and co-founder of the UK branch of Mission in Action. Mission in…

Murmur

Right hear, right now

26 Mar 2007

Right here, at the foot of the Walk, is as far down as I’ve ever got into Leith - Saturday morning trips to the newly-opened Waterworld with a childminder, scoffing at my little brother’s friends taking on the wave machine. I left Edinburgh at 18…

Ceilidh Culture

Various venues, Edinburgh, Sat 24 Mar-Sun 15 Apr

13 Mar 2007

ROOTS FESTIVAL Edinburgh’s Ceilidh Culture, the council-led celebration that runs for three weeks around Easter, brings together the city’s traditional arts under one umbrella. Eclectic sounds range from the percussion-driven dance grooves of the…

Deerstalker

Rural rat race

12 Mar 2007

If you go down to the woods this month, be sure of a big surprise. Unless, of course, you are one of the 500-plus loons who have already signed up for the Deerstalker, an assault course through the countryside, forests and hills around the Borders…

Miso Funky Market

Sun 18 Mar, Oran Mor, Glasgow; Sat 24 Mar, The Cav

12 Mar 2007

FAIRS 'We just got fed up with craft fairs where all they sold was knitted egg cosies,’ says Claire Brown, co-founder of the Miso Funky Market, the Shangri-La of Glasgow’s growing hipster craft community, which branches out into Edinburgh this month.

Edinburgh Moonwalk

26 Feb 2007

Anyone out for a quiet stroll across the Meadows in Edinburgh might be in for a surprise, as 8000 women (and a few men) from all over Scotland descend on them, wearing decorated bras and pink baseball caps. This is the Edinburgh MoonWalk - not a genteel…

Chinese New Year

Gung hei fat choi!

12 Feb 2007

Chinese New Year falls on Sunday 18 February this year, and this time it’s the turn of the Pig (or more properly the Boar). Chinese communities in Edinburgh and Glasgow will be celebrating throughout the week - the two biggest and most spectacular…

Pirates!

Arrr, Jim Lad!

12 Feb 2007

Filthy, rum-soaked blaggards prone to shaving people’s chests with rusty razors they might be, but there’s something romantic about pirates, salt air and the lure of the high seas that keeps us Hooked. Robert Louis Stevenson created the granddaddy of…

Make Your Own Kind of Music

29 Jan 2007

Last year, the Your Sound networking event (aimed at local unsigned bands who want to get in touch with the media and music industry) produced we are the PHYSICS (pictured) and The Dykeenies. It’s quickly become an essential date in the industry…

Stop the War Scotland

Glasgow University, Sat 10 Feb

29 Jan 2007

CONFERENCE Rival MPs, senior citizens, human rights activists, students, artists, prisoners, religious leaders, journalists, aid workers, members of the Armed Forces and ordinary single mothers from Glasgow. The Stop the War Coalition has forged…

Glasgow Science Centre

Going up

12 Jan 2007

Have you ever wanted to take in the whole of Glasgow at a glance? Scotland’s tallest building, the 127m high Glasgow Tower adjacent to the Science Centre at Pacific Quay, has reopened to the public, offering some of the most beautiful views over the…

January Clear out

12 Jan 2007

COMMUNITY EVENT ‘I just liked the idea that people could get together and do something for free,’ says Bob Hamilton, organiser of the January Clear Out at the recently refurbished Pearce Institute in Govan. The Clear Out is a whole day of films…

Dress to Dye For, A

Coats of Many Colours

19 Dec 2006

Three inventions - the sewing machine, synthetic dyes and the cage-crinoline - had a huge impact on fashion and society. Find out how these changed life (and in some instances brought death) in Victorian Britain, and how the colour mauve had an…

Really Wild Show, The

The Really Wild Show

19 Dec 2006

A last chance to see the work of one of the world’s leading conservation photographers. Scottish-born Colin Prior has travelled from the parched Atacama Desert to the icy spires of Pakistan’s Karakoram Mountains, creating a record of the last remaining…

Glasgow School of Art Postgrad Fashion Masters

Glasgow styles better

11 Dec 2006

Eley Kishimoto, Julien Macdonald and Matthew Williamson all trained in textile design before they began putting together fashion collections. GSA’s postgraduate fashion Masters is one of the only textile-based fashion design courses in the country, and…

Storytelling

Tell me a story

11 Dec 2006

FESTIVE YARN-SPINNING We don’t have much time for folklore these days. The oral tradition of storytelling, while it has contemporary parallels in performance poetry and the sprawling narratives of rap, seems anachronistic in an age of YouTube and…

St Andrew's Day

Various events, Glasgow & Edinburgh

11 Nov 2006

PATRON SAINT CELEBRATION Andrew was not Scottish, and what we know of his life comes from religious texts. Born a Jew in Bethsaida, Galilee, he and his brother Simon Peter were fishermen, and when Jesus came calling, he became one of his first (and…

Wrestling

Grappletastic

26 Oct 2006

Wrasslin’ madness abounds, as World Wrestling Entertainment’s Smackdown and RAW events hit Glasgow. They’re sold out already, but the Pavilion Theatre is tagging itself into the ring with a night of American Wrestling in between. Gone are the days of…

Latin lessons

10 Oct 2006

A collision of Hispanic hoedowns hits Glasgow this fortnight, with the Centro Español Lorca’s annual celebration of Spanish culture, La Feria Latina, following Dance House’s Argentinian Tango in the City festival. The former is an open day of music…

Conversation Pieces

Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Tue 10 & Thu 19 Oct

28 Sep 2006

TALKS SERIES Glasgow Royal Concert Hall’s popular lunchtime talks series returned at the start of October with Joan Bakewell discussing her inspirational broadcasting career and life as a woman in her seventies. This fortnight, strapping lads…

Kids Go Free

28 Sep 2006

Parents with put-upon purses will welcome Historic Scotland’s October initiative: under-16s are welcome - gratis - to their sites across Scotland, if accompanied by a paying adult. Edinburgh Castle also hosts Ghostfest, noon-4pm all month, where wizards…

Antiques Roadshow

18 Sep 2006

Raid the attic and dust off your priceless heirlooms, the BBC’s antique experts are in town! You won’t be allowed in unless you have something to be valued. And no, taking your granny along just because she fancies Michael Aspel, doesn’t count.

Pole in One

31 Aug 2006

Pole in One How to get on the latest fitness craze - poledancing