Tag: culture

A cultural feast in Glasgow

Oran Mor Entrance

* The Commonwealth Games open in Glasgow one year from today. Here’s my personal take on the Games build up, based on a recent research trip on commission for a couple of magazine stories – more of those later.

Thursday lunchtime and it’s a full house.

I’m at Oran Mor [pictured above], the arts centre, whisky bar and entertainment venue at the pulsing heart of Glasgow’s West End.

Visitors to the Botanic Gardens, located across the road, are basking in a rare outburst of tropical Glaswegian weather. But it feels deliciously cool downstairs in the crypt beneath the bar.

Around me people are tucking into their pints of lager and scotch pies, a diverse crowd of regulars, trendy West End types and a couple of Chinese students, who looked somewhat bemused by the thick local patois.

We are all gathered here for a West End institution: A Play, a Pie and a Pint.

The lunchtime theatre was started by Scottish theatre stalwart David Maclennan in 2004. Oran Mor today commissions and produces 38 original new dramas per year, and stages them six days per week, commissioning the largest amount of new theatre in the UK.

Glasgow is gearing up for a big year in 2014 with the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games at Celtic Park a year from today, and the accompanying cultural programme, Festival 2014, running from May next year onwards.

This lunchtime drama, however, offers a truly gritty Glaswegian introduction to the city.

The show today is a summer pantomime, an adult take on the traditional “He’s behind you.” Entitled A Bit of a Dick … Whittington, it’s more Mock the Week than Mother Goose with sweary, satirical swipes at Russian oligarchs and bedroom tax.

The crowd whoops appreciatively as a wee Jimmy Krankie soundalike runs circles around an older man dressed as a pantomime dame.

Two ladies of a certain age close to me join in vocally with the heckling in between gulps of their fizzy lager.

We troop out into the sunshine afterwards, blinking as West End’s heady mix of yoga studios, trendy coffee shops and self-consciously cool vinyl-only record shops jolt us back to reality en route to Hillhead subway station.

Scotland’s key medal hope among the 17 sports included in the Games is lawn bowls.

But a lunchtime performance at Oran Mor confirms that, culturally at least, Glasgow is poised to take the gold.

Gazetteer

Oran-mor.co.uk

Peoplemakeglasgow.com

What’s your take on Glasgow and the Games? Post your comments below.

* Liked this, try this also, A fact-finding trip to Glasgow.

Story of the day: St Dwynwen’s Day in Wales

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Today was St Dwynen’s Day in Wales and I’ve been appropriately otherwise engaged until now.

I’ve covered this story several times for different publications. Today’s link is to a piece for the Daily Telegraph.

Here’s an extract:

Wales celebrates St Dwynwen’s Day, the Welsh equivalent of St Valentine’s Day.

Lovers may exchange gifts of love spoons or love poetry-engraved jewellery; some may get down on one knee on Llanddwyn Beach in Anglesey; others may cast their unrequited wishes into her ancient well as lovelorn disciples of Dwynwen have done for centuries.

“In Wales, for love see tragedy,” says Angharad Wynne, a heritage consultant, as we meet in the island’s hub, Beaumaris, to explore a triumvirate of love-inspired Welsh folk legends.

“I think the poignancy of Dwynwen’s story rather appeals to the Celtic soul,” she adds.

Read the full story, On the island of true love.

How have you been spending St Dwynwen’s Day? Do you have other Welsh folk legends to share?

Post your comments below.

* Update: A second story appeared after this post for the Daily Mail.

Read the story, Valentine’s Day the Welsh Way.

Story of the Day: bringing culture to recession-hit Portugal

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While most of us wake up to snow this morning, I was thinking back to a trip to Portugal this time last year.

It was chilly out of the sun but the sky was clear, the vinho verde cheap and the first flowers of spring in bloom.

I was in Guimaraes, northern Portugal for the start of the European Capital of Culture programme. Sadly, the event was less than blooming when I visited for the Sunday Telegraph.

Recession-hit Portugal had to take a deliberately low-key approach to its moment in the cultural spotlight and I wasn’t convinced about the organisers’ ability to arrange a piss up in a port cellar.

In the end, I got the feeling the whole thing died a slow, visitor-free death. Let’s hope for better things from Marseilles this year.

Anyway, here’s an extract:

Guimarães? You may well ask. The former industrial city in northern Portugal’s less-explored Minho region hardly trips off the tongue.

There are no direct flights from Britain, no well-trodden route similar to the Douro Valley wine trail to the east. Culturally, too, the north of Portugal is known primarily for Porto, some 37 miles (60km) south-west of Guimarães, with its imposing Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art and buzzy, after-dark street life. Guimarães is an enigma.

But for Carlos Martins, the CEO of the Guimarães 2012 Foundation, hosting a scaled-down, post-austerity event is the very thing that sets the city apart.

“We have more chance to surprise people as a small-scale city. The challenge is greater, but then so is our commitment,” says the former academic with an interest in cultural geography.

Read the full story, Europe’s Cultural Enigma.

Did you visit Guimaraes last year? Aside from the weather, was there much to enjoy?

Post your comments below.