Helen Grant: This August, expose yourself to Art!

Not long ago, I blogged about the upcoming Crieff Arts Festival 2015, which takes place on 22nd and 23rd August. The Festival will include art exhibitions, live music, literary events, arts and crafts workshops, street theatre and a display of traditional weaving. Over the last few days, a top secret squad of artists whose identities I could not possibly reveal *cough* descended on the empty Drummond Hotel and created a colourful display of butterflies (see pic) to hint at the arty delights to come.

If you're within travelling distance of Crieff and fancy coming along to join the fun, you can find the Festival programme here: programme - it's still a work-in-progress with events being added and times being amended to fit in as much as possible, so if you are interested in a specific event, do check back for updates.

In my previous blog post about the Festival, I mentioned the author event at Strathearn Artspace, and I'm now able to give a few more details about this. The event title is Writers Live. It kicks off at 10am with John Bray and his children's book Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams. John will be followed by local authors Peggy Hewitt and Margaret Bennett. After a break for lunch, Hazel Buchan Cameron will read from her new book Just go in: from council estate to country estate. Hazel will be followed by poet Patricia Ace. I have attended one of Patricia's previous events and can say that it was excellent!
I am scheduled to appear at 1.45pm to read from my Forbidden Spaces trilogy of urbex thrillers set in Flanders.

The final item in the Writers Live event is the talk about publishing that I mentioned in my previous blog post about the Festival. This is the bit that should interest anyone who has an unpublished manuscript sitting in a drawer at home, and is wondering what to do with it. I was originally intending to do this talk myself, but the amazing Helen Lewis McPhee has offered to speak on the topic so I am very happy to be in the audience instead. Helen Lewis McPhee has worked with Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communications, and, currently, Canongate Books and Gonzalo Menez, so she has lots of professional experience and expertise to offer. This is your chance to come and ask questions, so don't miss it!!

You can drop in to hear specific authors at Writers Live, or you can stay for the whole event, which is expected to finish at 3.15pm. If you then fancy relaxing and listening to some live music, Writers Live is followed at 3.30pm by a concert by Crieff Community Band offering traditional Scots music and song, with support from Nigel's All-Stars.