Nairn Festival programme – “Something for everyone and no compromise on quality”

The Nairn Book and Arts Festival runs from the 3^rd to the 8^th of September this year but the programme was launched last night in the Courthouse. Elizabeth Finlay opened proceedings last night, she said: 

“It’s a great pleasure to welcome you all this evening to the launch of the 10^th Nairn Book and Arts Festival programme. We are here tonight in this beautiful room thanks to the generosity of Provost MacDonald and Nairn Council, one of our chief sponsors. I’m really speaking on the behalf of a festival team because all this has been done by the various groups within our festival team and it has been a lot of work over the last year. So it is wonderful to be here this evening and really launch the programme.

We’ve listened to all of you and we’ve read the evaluation; we’ve spoken to many of you and to our visitors and we hope that we’ve come up with a program that has something for everyone and no compromise on quality, everything wonderful of its particular type. We’re indebted to our generous sponsors. We’re indebted too to the extra layer of diversity and creativity given by  the various voluntary arts organisations within the town that have become involved with the festival. The fringe is now really enmeshed with the total festival and that’s wonderful, and of course without our enthusiastic, perceptive, ever supportive audiences there just wouldn’t be a festival at all. “

Individual images of last nights programme launch on the Gurn flickr pages here.

Elizabeth then introduced Nicky Marr who gave an entertaining insight into the content of the programme. This was followed by a performance by Duncan Chisholm.

There is a special competition this year – for stories up to 140 characters long, that is to say ‘tweet’ size. This competition is making a few headlines out there especially on twitter itself where it was being retweeted by the twitterati late last night. 

There will also be a debate between Fergus Ewing and Danny Alexander on Scottish Independence. That could be quite a lively one and a must for all the Yes and No folk in Nairn – maybe some of the undecided will be there too. For further details of the programme go to the Nairn Book and Arts Festival web site.