1 THREE outdoor installations will be unveiled at an outdoor event tomorrow to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Scots poet Hamish Henderson. A giant portrait of Henderson has been created over a hectare of hillside at the Spittal of Glenshee. It has been made from jute by Perthshire based artist Martin McGuinness. A light installation will feature poetry written by Henderson, Perthshire poet Jim Mackintosh and local young people while a 2.5 metre light portal has been designed by Dundee’s Biome Collective.
2 A BRAND-NEW photography exhibition featuring images of Scotland by renowned photographer Martin Parr has just opened at the newly redeveloped Aberdeen Art Gallery. Think of Scotland explores leisure, landscape, food and community with Parr’s characteristic twist. Also on display is Aberdeen at Leisure, a new series of portraits of the city by Parr commissioned by Aberdeen Art Gallery to celebrate its landmark redevelopment. The exhibition is on until February 23.
3 FORGET 1966 – the main football event of the decade was in 1967 when Celtic headed to Lisbon for the European Cup with 10,000 supporters providing back up. The fans lived on borrowed time and borrowed money, arriving in Lisbon with a fistful of escudos and a heart full of hope. A full cast of 10, plus live band, recreate the humour, passion and occasional calamity of those days in A Play of Two Halves by Ian Auld and Willy Maley at Airdrie Town Hall on Friday.
4 FROM next Saturday until the end of January it is possible to walk the streets of Edinburgh on an augmented reality tour created by Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Full of poetry, history, invention and memories, audiences will be led through the backstreets of the Edinburgh’s Old Town with images of the streets coming up on the screens they are holding which appear to merge real time with days gone by. Sounds from the headphones will further merge the two worlds.
5 THE amazing migration of whooper swans to Scotland from Iceland has begun and from now until the end of march they can be seen at the WWT Caerlaverock Wetland Centre in Dumfries and Galloway. Mute swans, ducks and geese can also be seen at the feeds while the Sir Peter Scott Observatory has a touchscreen where visitors can find out more about the individual whooper swans out on the Whooper Pond.
6 EDINBURGH Castle is one of the most iconic of world monuments with almost two million visitors every year, and yet its medieval form has remained a mystery. Recent historical research and archaeological investigations have begun to reveal how different the castle looked to Robert Bruce and the Stewart kings and on Thursday archaeologist Peter Yeoman will talk about how the castle we see today was fundamentally changed as a result of the devastating sieges of 1573 and 1689.
7 TO mark the end of Margaret Tait’s (pictured) centenary celebrations, writer, actor, director Gerda Stevenson will give a talk on Tait’s multifaceted and uniquely distinctive creativity at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh tomorrow (Monday). Stevenson won a BAFTA award for her role in Tait’s only feature film, Blue Black Permanent (1992), and will reflect on this collaboration, considering also Tait’s influence on the younger generation. Stevenson’s talk includes readings from Tait’s poetry and prose, and excerpts from her remarkable films.
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