As part of my dissertation, I am organising an event for Book Week Scotland called Queer The Record. We’ll be looking at images from the Saltire Society archives, and producing creative responses to them. I was really lucky to be awarded an Emerging Programmer grant to put on the event, which means I’m able to comission a workshop facilitator and an illustration to help us promote the event.
The Saltire Society are a membership organisation who promote engagement in Scottish arts and culture by way of local groups, bursaries and awards. They are celebrating their 85th birthday this year and plan to celebrate with a publication of creative reflections to their archive material, which I will help to edit.
Next week I will meet with Michael Lee Richardson, a fantastic writer from Glasgow who will facilitate Queer the Record, to finalise the plan for the workshop. Although it’s nerve-wracking putting on an event on which real money has been spent, it is a real luxury to put the content planning in such capable hands – I don’t need to worry about that!
I’ve also been pleasantly suprised by the bookings we have had. Originally I released only 10 tickets – it’s important to both of us that there is chance for individual discussions and feedback, which is hard in larger groups – but we have just released a few more places as the places filled up so quickly.
Huge thanks and appreciation goes to Garry Mac for such a fantastic image – it was a joy to work with him and see what he came up with in response to a far from specific brief! You can see more of his work here
