Solas Festival Reveals More Programme Details for Perthshire event
Steampunk Inventors and a clutch of authors are coming to Errol Park.
Here at Solas Festival you’ll often hear members of the team saying that we’re more than a music festival. To prove this, joining our line-up this year will be a diverse selection of puppeteers, poets, performers and authors.
A new strand of the festival is a mini book festival - authors will be setting up camp to talk about their lives, adventures and other challenging personal journeys.
Performing Arts
Giving Solas Festival a big hand to open the gates on Friday are The Dab Hands. Three metres tall and lit like beacons, the puppets will bring fun, colour and dance music to the grounds. The hands are a little clumsy though, so please help them if you can, and give them a wee wave too.
The Young 1’z are a class of young people with and without disabilities who go to weekly dance classes run by Indepen-Dance. At Solas they will perform a ‘wake up workshop’ on the main stage, and will run family friendly workshops over the weekend.
Books
Kirsty Logan will be chatting about her latest work Now She is Witch, a queer medieval witch revenge quest. Also coming out this year is The Unfamiliar - a memoir of queer pregnancy and parenthood.
Esa Aldegheri’s non-fiction debut Free to Go is about an 18-month motorbike adventure. The story looks at different aspects of freedom and borders, interwoven with a tale of diminished liberties linked to motherhood, Brexit and pandemic restrictions.
Doctor and Writer Gavin Francis is the author of eight books. The Lost Art of Convalescence explores how - and why - we get better, revealing the many shapes recovery can take, and the failure of modern lives to make adequate space for the process.
Theologian, poet and a great friend of Solas, Pádraig o’ Tuama brings an interest in language, violence and religion to his work. His most recent poetry collection is Feed the Beast. Pádraig is also the host of Poetry Unbound - his podcast which has received over 10 million downloads since 2020.
Errol local Andy Jackson edited Perthshire 101: 101 new poems from 28 writers inspired by the history, geography and culture of Perthshire and Kinross-shire. The poems take the reader on a whistle-stop tour of the counties’ landmarks and legends. In his event, Andy will bring together some of the local writers featured.
Author Merryn Glover was the first Writer in Residence for Cairngorms National Park, where she lives. Her experiences of the area shape her latest book The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd. In Hidden Fires, Merryn follows in the footsteps of Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, exploring the same landscapes and themes across nearly a century.
Kids Activities
Solas offers an entertaining programme for festival-goers of every age.
Sprog Rock is an interactive live music gig for Early Years aged children and their parents and carers. Dance your heart out!
Wee Storybox with their drama and music skills will be bringing fairytales and eccentric Steampunk Inventors to Solas in ‘all-singing’ and ‘all-dancing’ sessions.
Instinctively Wild will be getting everyone hands on with nature - will you master bushcraft?
Clyde Built Puppet Theatre will also be bringing their family friendly shows to the festival.
There will also be a whole range of drumming, dancing, arts & crafts, and singing workshops, and even the chance to play and learn chess with our very own Grandmaster.
Music
We did say earlier that we’re more than a music festival, but, to be honest there are a few little music announcements which we’d like to make as well 🙂:
With a relaxed after hours set in the rustic Stables on Saturday night, friends from Ayrshire and North Lanarkshire Hunter & McMustard will be performing their ‘lowlander contemporary untrad’ songs. Just back from New York, after playing in Alan Cumming's Cabaret Club, Colonel John McMustard is the frontman of Colonel Mustard and The Dijon 5, and Colin Hunter is a singer songwriter. Their modern take on folk music has a social and global consciousness, which led them to writing and performing Born To Rewild - a walking gig theatre show which is also part of our family programme as well.
Sacred Paws don’t take things too seriously. You can hear this in the light touch they bring to their music, a blend of indie-pop full of fizzing world rhythms and bright horns. Catch them at Solas performing songs from their SAY Award-winning debut album Strike a Match, and acclaimed follow-up Run Around The Sun.
Band Aref Ghorbani, Calum Ingram & Friends features Aref Ghorbani - an Iranian classically trained musician; EYVE, a rapper and songwriter from Zimbabwe; and Calum Ingram who has played the cello since he was nine. We’re expecting music influenced by a blend of genres from some extremely talented New Scots.
Booked for a morning slot at Solas, the Vox Liminis: Unbound Community is a creative group with a diverse experience of the criminal justice system. Glasgow band Admiral Fallow has worked with them, and they will be performing songs and poems in the Stables.
Celebrated fiddle player Isla Ratcliff will be showcasing her debut album The Castalia, as well as a selection of new songs, with her trio: Juliette Lemoine on cello, and Iona Reid on piano.
Solas marching brass band regulars Brass, Aye? from Glasgow will be bringing their shiny gold look to Errol along with singing, dancing, and other carnival flavours.
Later this month we’ll release details about our workshop and panels programme, plus a few more music acts too!
Adult weekend tickets are now available for just £99 – plus booking fees – with under 12s free.
16-18 June 2023
Solas Festival
Errol Park, Perthshire
ABOUT SOLAS FESTIVAL
Solas Festival - Scotland’s midsummer festival - has been running since 2009. The all-age, weekend-long celebration of music and the arts is designed to entertain, inspire and challenge.
Our programme makes space for challenging debate with activists, writers and thinkers from across the political, cultural and religious spectrum. The festival offers a broad, inclusive, creative and entertaining programme for festival-goers of all ages in a safe environment; everyone is welcome.