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.

We held several one-off events in summer and autumn – we unfurled the new Girvan flag in a ceremony at Stumpy, we held a Scratch Night in Girvan Academy theatre and we had a second opera night in November.

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!