Girvan Arts Festival 2026
29th – 31st May
Save the date
Girvan Arts Festival 2025
What a Weekend!
The 4th Girvan Arts Festival surpassed all our expectations – the forecasted rain stayed away, and the Community Garden buzzed with festival goers soaking up the music and the atmosphere.
The festival got off to a fantastic start with the opening of the Art Exhibition at the McKechnie institute, and it was nice to see so many people admiring the wonderful paintings and jewellery on display, and also taking a first look at the children’s brilliant Tattie Fest drawings and paintings.
A very busy writer’s workshop kicked off the Saturday, and sell-out crowds heard about a first class farm shop, then three very different authors spoke about their books – Cliff McCabe entertained us with tales of his Glasgow tenement childhood, Brian Lavery gave a riveting talk about the Hull Arctic Trawler disasters and the women who fought for fishermen’s safety rights, and the one and only Denise Mina talked about crime writing, feminism and what made her the writer she is today.
Eight wonderful poets entertained us at ‘Words by the Sea’ the spoken word event that gets better every year, and the Bookshop Band delivered a wonderful performance that married their love of music and reading, with seamless grace.
Sunday saw artist Rod McCance open up with tales of his globetrotting artistic life and his famous artist great uncle, then Jim English from Kay’s Curling enthralled everyone with his talk on producing Olympic Curling Stones from 60-million-year-old Ailsa Craig granite.
World-class guitarist Preston Reed’s performance was astounding, and it was great to hear his speak about his life in music, and why he plays the guitar as a percussive instrument. This was followed by Tony Morrell’s poignant talk about his wife Margaret’s 20-year project that culminated in publication of her seminal book about Turnberry Airfield’s part in two world wars, published shortly before her death.
In between all the events, there were musical interludes provided by talented local musicians, and artistic activities for festival-goers to try. For the finale to the whole weekend, the festival decamped to the Girvan Valley Church to listen to Soprano Colleen Nichol and Tenor David Douglas from the Scots Opera Project put on a spine-tingling performance of Opera pieces from the cinema, mixed with familiar songs from the musicals.
The Girvan Arts Festival has now become a stalwart of Girvan’s growing list of brilliant events, with something for everyone and encouraging visitors to come to Girvan. Bring on the 2026 festival!
Photos and film to follow!
As part of our ongoing collaboration with Girvan Academy, pupils from the school volunteer at the festival, helping out in all sorts of ways including, this year, running the arts & crafts stall for the day.
We also ask one of them to be a ‘roving reporter’ interviewing speakers, festival-goers and the organisers, as well as giving their experience at the festival. This year it was Declan’s turn, and you can read his report here.
If you’d like to be first to hear about upcoming events and projects, join our mailing list over on our Contacts page.
OTHER NEWS!
Girvan Community Flag Project
Scratch Night!
We didn’t know what a scratch night was either, but we have commissioned local drama graduate Fraser Kirkland to produce and direct one for Girvan Arts Festival.
Here’s the premise:
you give a handful of budding playwrights a chance to write a scene, we provide a stage, actors and a director for them to see their work come to life. They can then ask the audience, the actors and the director for feedback on the performance.
It’s a chance for writers to develop their craft, for actors to showcase their talent and for the audience to see the working end of putting on a play.
We hope that this will come to the stage sometime in late summer 2025
The GAF Debate
When the arts are under so much pressure, we hope to host an occasional debate about the future for grass roots art and culture, about which we are extremely passionate.
The first of these debates will hopefully take place in late summer or autumn of 2025, ‘Do we need libraries in a digital age?’
As part of our collaboration with Girvan Academy, the debate will be contested by teams made up of an adult from the community paired with a pupil from the school who will passionately argue their case.
The audience will get a chance to vote on the question and decide the winners.
Let’s not forget 2024!
We’ve had a couple of one-off events since the Art Festival in June – our Comedy Night at the Harbour Bar in late November was a fantastic evening and our Local Author event at the Go Girvan Christmas Market was a great success too. The 2nd comedy night took place in February, such was the demand for more!
