June & July 2015
So June and July have been very busy months, with workshops at two festivals in Scotland as well as for Irish-language Summer Schemes in Northern Ireland, and the work as part of Mull's first Festimull, organised by Comar Arts, Tobermory, being my absolute highlight! My work included well-attended bilingual Gaelic workshops in Circus Skills, Graffiti Art and Lantern-making and fantastic images by their professional photographic documenter, Sarah Darling, are below.
It was also really lovely too to see likely distant relative, Atty McKechnie's name up in An Tobar, the Tobermory Arts Centre, as one of those helping to establish it, with more stories kindly shared by his very close friend, Professor Sir Tom Devine & his wife, Catherine, afterwards. No better way to end my latest Mull Adventures than a trek to Shiaba in lovely sunshine, followed by Sir Tom's adamant affirmation that it is indeed 'the most significant site in the Western Highland'.
I should possibly also mention I've been developing a bit of a penchant for balancing of late, or Equilibristics, to call it by its fancier formal Circus name. An Tobar, where Comar is based, is a great venue, and since I brought along a couple of my favourite props.. .well, you can see what happened...
I'm also still continuing with the development of Gaelic Rap, started last year through the initiation of the Inter-Gaelic Rap Development Project, kindly funded by Iomairt Cholm Cille/The Columba Initiative & Bòrd na Gàidhlig (Scots Gaelic Board). Now seeking Scottish-based collaborators, I not only had the privilege of performing at the Boom Bap Hip Hop Tent at Borders-based festival, Audio Soup, but also featuring as one of the artists highlighted by The National newspaper. You can read all about it here, and hopefully some wonderful collaborations will be forthcoming over the next few months.
I continue to work as a professional stilt performer though, and my very popular Rainbow Bubble Fairy character received some lovely images from a 1st birthday party I was asked to perform at recently. I'm delighted to be taking the Rainbow Fairy back to Northern Ireland again next week, where she has performed many times, before finalising contracts on my biggest and most exciting projects to date!
