Community made arts festival great
The Perthshire community excelled itself in getting involved in this year’s Perth Festival of the Arts.
The ten-day event in May reached audiences locally and around the world through a unique part-live and part-online programme.
Festival administrator Helen MacKinnon said: “As well as reaching audiences around the world, this year’s festival brought new arts experiences to local people of all ages through the means of technology.”
The festival’s inaugural drive-in cinema at Scone Palace launched a successful partnership with Rotary in Perth.
Rotarians from Perth’s three clubs – Perth, Perth Kinnoull and Perth St Johns – pooled their resources to support the festival with a large team of volunteer stewards.
The festival’s outreach activity also connected local schools into the arts reaching over a thousand children.
Fifteen classes joined best-selling children’s author Abi Elphinstone for a talk and live Q&A over Zoom, inspiring young people to learn more about creative writing and create character ideas.
Meanwhile, a partnership with Children’s Classic Concerts brought an activity project to schools in the run-up to the release of a new concert film, Wonderland, at the festival.
Children enjoyed musicmaking, movement and imaginative writing as part of the project.
The festival, which encourages people of all ages to participate in the arts, saw the 2021 ‘online offering’ as an opportunity to connect with older people living in residential care.
Working with Kincarrathie House, the festival provided access to online concerts. The care home created a schedule of festival events in its weekly activities programme as well as running drop-in viewing.
Karin Skeet, activities coordinator at Kincarrathie House commented: “The residents were very impressed with the quality of the performances and the expertise of the musicians.
“Performances stimulated discussion and we heard conversations about learning to play musical instruments and recollection of music teachers.”
Helen MacKinnon thanked all the funders, artists and community organisations such as Rotary who supported PFA in this unique year.