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Director's Report

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For the 13th West End Festival, nearly 400 separate events were held, and the biggest - the Opening Parade and Street Party (Scotland’s Mardi Gras) was held on Sunday 15 June in good weather with another huge public turnout. The feedback from this has been the most positive yet, and criticisms about drinking in public (which was not invented by WEF!) seemed less than before. The police, once again, showed admirable judgement in what they tolerated and what they didn’t.

Participating groups came from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cumbria, Brighton, London and Toulon. This proves that the West End Festival is one of Glasgow’s most widespread international events of this sort. The standard of the costumes in the parade on the theme of “Nature” were excellent, including a giant caterpillar and some drumming ants who were unfortunately stranded in the Botanic Gardens!

Theatre and dance was well represented: Shakespeare’s Globe in “The Winter’s Tale” was accounted as better than their 2007 “Romeo”, although the audiences have been markedly smaller, which is a disappointment! Theatre Found’s “Antigone in New York” was well received as the tramps in the play blended seamlessly with the real down-and-outs in Kelvingrove Park! Lindsay John gave a unique solo performance in front of the Art Galleries on Parade Day.

The local gala days, headed by the Gibson Street Gala, Holyrood Gardens, the Coach House Trust, the Friends Of the River Kelvin (FORK) day and the Kelvingrove Street day around the Goat bar were all well attended and showed the value to the community of having such a focus. People are keen to belong to something and WEF provides opportunities like this every year for communities to get together. I would include in this the Glasgow Mela which was held again to coincide with WEF on the middle Sunday. Woodlands and Kelvingrove come to life with a good crowd, in a mellow atmosphere where people of different ages hang out together in a tolerant and civilized fashion. How different to the day before in Kelvingrove when the Junior Orange Lodge camped at the Gibson Street end of the park and provoked drunken street fighting the like of which I have never seen in 22 years. Which Glasgow do we want?

Other highlights were a very strong music programme at Oran Mor: Teenage Fanclub kicked off the festival with 3 sold out nights: Justin Currie was in awesome form for those lucky enough to get a ticket, and the unexpected hit was the wonderful Orkestra Del Sol who have a big future!

Michael Tumelty writing in the Herald gave several concerts the thumbs up, including a rave review for the Mendelssohn Octet by the Alba and the Tejes Quartets. More of this kind of thing next year, without a doubt.

The Kibble Palace and the Hunterian Art Gallery proved themselves excellent venues for smaller concerts and India Alba and the Madrigirls at the Kibble, and Gavin Marwick’s Bellevue Rendezvous and the young Rostov on Don Jazz Academicians shone brightly. It was a pity these lunchtime concerts were not better attended, but it was a start. The newly refurbished College of Piping in Otago Street also welcomed WEF concertgoers for the first time.

Elsewhere public opinion picked out the successes of the Lobey Dosser Day, “Who Stole My Sausage?” (a play for dogs), a superb Samba Showcase at the QMU, the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland, Ev Hogarth from Top Tier in her one-woman show, Charles Kennedy MP, lots of belly dancing (!), Walton’s “Façade” at the Kibble, the Poetry Café, Bar Brel’s excellent hosting of the Fete de la Musique, Chris Dooks’ Day of Drones in the University chapel, many sold-out Walks and the Vintage Buses on the last Sunday as part of the Parade of Wheels.

My own personal thanks to people who put extra care and attention into the many areas of organising what is now Glasgow’s biggest event: John Kerr, Scott Fyfe, Gary Lathan, Scott Downie, Ewen Donaldson and his staff, Maggie Devlin, Noel Bridgeman, Doug Summers, Lorn Macdonald, Mungo Campbell and his staff, Rev Stuart MacQuarrie, Angela Hair, James Young, Adrian Carroll, Linda Sweenie, Shaun Woods, Lynne Scobbie, Teresa Lowe, Eric Craig, Robin Morton, Tom Cullen, Morven Glendinning, Anne Hogg, Jerome Richalot, Ann Laird, Colin Beattie, Sandy Gourlay, Jamie Webster, Paul Cassidy, David Maclennan, Ian Black, Carrie Westwater, Ninian Perry, Dave McGeachan, Tommy Sheppard, Aileen Colleran, Jim MacKechnie, Katrina Brodin, Andy Cudden, Brian Currie and his staff, David Messer, Laura Carter, Lynn Hutcheson, Alan Miller, Martin Gray and the ubiquitous Pat Byrne.

And also to the people that run venues and actually put on shows and events under the umbrella of WEF. I hope you will come back for the 14th WEF and I hope many more will join you in the future.

Next year it’s the Year of the Homecoming and there’s no tournament soccer. If the weather is an improvement on June 2008, then we will all be happy Glaswegians.

Michael Dale
Festival Director
3 July 2008