Being a director of TWTC means I get to look at the overall strategy of the business, most of the technical aspects of its internet presence, and I also do all of the design work, including the books.
On Saturday last, intrepid explorers made an extraordinary find in the River Ruel, just yards downstream from Dunans Bridge. On the sun-dappled riverbed, as if basking by a natural pool, the huge stone turtle was discovered by noted playwright and owner of Dunans Castle, Sadie Dixon-Spain. As she was later to remark, it is “an epic turtle”.
To purchase Sadie’s latest play, “The Alloway Rap”, please visit ScottishLaird.com
Delighted to announce that the first print run of Sadie’s play for voices, The Alloway Rap have arrived and are now available for sale here in a commemorative edition for Scotland’s Year of Homecoming 2014.
This is the first in a series of Sadie’s plays that we will be publishing over the next couple of years. We’ve several on the blocks, all telling stories of communities and clans across Scotland, and all of them, like this one, will have pictures of performance, audiences and venues.
Special mention for Kilmodan Primary School who were an integral part of the play’s development.
As proprietor of Dunans Castle and also as a director of The Walking Theatre Company, not to mentioned being publisher of ForArgyll.com, on Wednesday [18th June 2014] I spent an interesting few hours in the company of assorted artists, creators, curators, social entrepreneurs, producers and third sector professionals, all wanting to progress the idea of a cultural assembly for the Creative sector. Continue reading A Cultural Assembly for Argyll: the Case for taking Ourselves Seriously
For the last couple of years the TWTC website has been using a theme from Pagelines which has served us well. However, we started to hit its limits when the number of pages on the website exceed the menu functionalities capacity (128 pages, I think!). So it was back to the drawing board, or rather back to adapting one of WP’s venerable themes. Twenty Twelve lent itself readily and along with a sliding image plugin and some nifty CSS work, the website now looks spiffing and works properly…
… well mostly, Firefox, is good, but the webkit browsers Safari and Chrome are not rendering the sliding images at the correct width. I’ll be working on this over the next few days so check back then (those of you with webkit browsers that is!)
This poster is one of two that TWTC asked me to design for their projected tours in the UK and North America this year. We had a lot of fun selecting the images of the performers – yes its Colin Little as Long John Silver on the right there – and iconic elements of the Scottish landscape. The tartan is of course ‘Dunans Rising’ from the ScottishLaird project!
The image was created using illustrator and the main font is called ‘Another’ – ‘Futura’ is of course the other.
Today, all along River Fyne there was the sound of Kilmodan Primary School pupils encouraging fry to live well and prosper having reared them in their classroom over the last couple of months.
Colin MacDonald and Andrew Barker from the Ruel Improvement Association and Argyll Fisheries Trust, along with the latter’s biologist, a delightful Orkadian called Daniel Brazier, were on hand to help teachers and pupils get the most out of the opportunity to experience the rapine environment, which included sampling the river’s microfauna (see pic above).
There should be more about the project on the Glen of the Red River blog tomorrow from the children.
… artwork for the cover of Alloway Rap. Notice the signal black, white and orange – no where have I seen that before? The TWTC logo possibly?
The font is ‘Cracked’ by the way and it was drawn in illustrator.
Getting really very excited about publishing the Conservation Plan for Dunans and the Alloway Rap by Sadie.
Bringing Sadie’s modern version of Tam O’Shanter into print form for a new audience. The book will be another month or so in production and then be ready to download and/or buy as a hard-copy. Can’t wait – and the soft proofs I have onscreen now are looking really lovely. Properly readable too for a P1-P7 Cast. Pictures when the boss approves them!
Looking at the next four years and how we expand the business while ensuring the values of mobility, flexibility, professionalism and profitability remain in tact. Hopefully get it finished by tomorrow evening
