Hospitalfield Summer Festival

Hospitalfield, Arbroath, June 18 to July 7

“We have a lot of events that happen over the summer period at Hospitalfield,” says Lucy Byatt, director at Hospitalfield, “and we made the decision last year to draw them all together into a festival. It enables us to develop that even more in future, to create something with even more complexity to it.”

Although Hospitalfield is perhaps best known in the artistic community for its series of working residencies and study opportunities, it’s also an estate dating back to the 13th Century, when the Benedictine order of monks built a hospital there, and its house and grounds are an ideal spot in the countryside for any member of the public to get away from it all. As such, the events over the next three weeks will offer many reasons to visit.

“The festival kicks off with the children’s procession (on June 18),” says Byatt, “which celebrates the older children at our local primary schools, Timmergreens and Muirfield, going on to secondary school. It’s a very nice thing to be doing because the children see that it becomes their turn in future years, as they get involved in designing the procession and then take over the whole space for lots of fun events.”

The following week (on June 23), musician and composer Andrew Wasylyk – who is a member of Idlewild – will be performing a suite of music he’s created using the inspiration of the views around Hospitalfield and over the sea, and some of the instruments which the house holds in its collection, including an Erard harp which will be played by Sharron Griffiths.

“Our open weekend is on June 29,” says Byatt. “We’ve commissioned the Athens-based artist Zoe Paul to create a new work in the studios here, which we’ve converted into a café.”

There will also be activities and workshops on the day, as well as more work commissioned by the Glasgowbased artist France-Lise McGurn.

“Everything comes to a culmination at our Beer and Berries event on July 7,” says Byatt.

“The Walled Garden will be open and there will be lots of discussions around it and around gardening, as well as the future of food production in Angus, it’s a very important strand within our programming.”

The summer festival finishes that evening with an as-yet-unannounced music event.

“It’s very important to us that people feel Hospitalfield is part of their community,” says Byatt, “but also that they feel it’s somewhere they want to travel to from further away. The artists and musicians we bring are really worldclass, and we want as many people as possible to experience that and to participate in it.”

hospitalfield.org.uk

A piece by France-Lise McGurn that is on show at Hospitalfield.