New Website for Fresh Start for the Arts

from Fresh Start

Fresh Start has a zingy-looking new website – it’s still under development but we hope you will find it an increasingly useful source of information about the project. Something you might like to take a look at is the video, which features some very positive comments from culture secretary Fiona Hyslop about the D&G arts sector.

In the coming months we hope to add a variety of pages and features to the site which will be of value to those involved in the sector, and also for local people and visitors who would like to find out more about what’s going on. But we’ll also be continuing to keep people in touch through the Commonty.

We were really pleased with the way that Brighteye Design and Branding interpreted the brief for the website. The design, colours and typography fully capture the notion of freshness.

Likewise, Purple Box made a great job of the video, which uses lots of the footage created for Ms Hyslop’s recent visit to D&G and which shows just what Creative Scotland funding has achieved in the region. Amy-Dee Tighe also made a vital contribution, stepping in at the last moment to film an interview with Ms Hyslop at Clatteringshaws Dam for the launch of the Place Partnership and the Environmental Art Festival Scotland (EAFS).

On the subject of EAFS – the region’s four Arts Hubs are continuing to come up with impressively imaginative ways of using the grants awarded by Fresh Start to get involved (these grants themselves are only possible thanks to LEADER’s financial backing for Fresh Start). This week the Annandale and Eskdale Hub unveiled “Tidemark” – a festival creative writing project which focuses on the sea, sky and landscape round the Solway Firth shore at Powfoot.

Author Vivien Jones, who is leading “Tidemark”, says she’s hoping that writers at all levels will get involved, as well as those who are looking for an inspirational and supportive opportunity to help them start writing. It will involve several sessions at the end of July and in early August, starting with a walk along the shore and then developing a new booklet and doing a public reading.

It should be lots of fun – so if you’d like to know more, or book a place, contact Vivien by e-mailing vivien@freeola.com  or telephone on 01461 700396.