Day 75 – 26.9.2015

Culture Day in Forres.

What a day ! And when I was asked to summarize it – I said “too short“. Findhorn Bay Arts had organised the Culture Day.

On Saturday 26 September 2015, the streets, parks, shops and public buildings of Forres will come alive with a carnivalesque explosion of art, music, film and dance, talks and tours and much, much more.

Artists from across Moray will join hands with local businesses and community groups to offer an array of exhibitions, performances and loads of free have-a-go activities, showcasing the abundance of creative activity taking place on our doorstep all year round.

Culture Day runs from 11am til around 5pm when Culture Night kicks in, taking us through to the witching hour, and the cafes, restaurants, bars and takeaways of Forres will be open throughout.

And the description was painting a good picture. We left home right after 11 am and stopped at the first venue right around our corner, where we learned a new way of recycling old unwanted books. The one on the left is mine and the one on the right is Alina’s. We had so much fun, all four of us. And Jo, from No Books were harmed, was so much fun to work with. Her art is crazy. We spent our first hour in there already.

So you can imagine that six hours all together aren’t really that much time. We left her workshop, crossed the street into the park and found the next exciting thing.

Velocity from Inverness were offering an activity that I could do alone for hours without a break. They had converted a bike into an Actionpainting machine. It was so much fun. Both girls loved it. Have a look at the video, I made from Alina’s piece of art and Lara’s looks equally amazing. At the end of the day we went back to collect the dried pieces of art and both of them made a second one, only this time they gave the paint right at the end a real spinning which made the paint fly!

Afterwards we stopped at a place where they did a kind of knitting. The way they did it reminded me of something Lara had learned in school that they called finger knitting. So I wondered if the lady there would be interested in Lara giving her a demonstration. This actually turned out to be a hug success. People stopped, got interested and started trying it out. It was so funny. And the good thing is that the artist is also going into schools and this kind of project she can easily do with kids of all ages at a very very low cost. So Lara turned into a teacher, explaining things in English, showing, correcting and helping. Alina was her assistant and helped a few people too.  When we left there it was already after 1 pm and we hadn’t seen 10%.

We just walked along the High street, stopped, listened to concerts, looked at art exhibitions, were the only listeners at a book reading, visited quickly a museum, grabed some lunch and then walked into the church and listened to some beautiful music. The Reelers Rant played a range of traditional Scottish music and one of them sang a couple of songs. OH MY GOD, she had the voice of an anger. It was so unbelievable beautiful.

What can I say, time run out and far too early it was suddenly 5 pm. We went home, had a little break and then intended to listen to some more traditional Scottish music. Only we hadn’t considered the Scottish law forbidding under age children into a pub. So sadly and funnily we stood outside a pub and listened to some really good music.

No Books were harmed