• 3 months ago
The Scotsman Bulletin Thursday September 26 2024 #Arts

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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin for this Thursday.
00:04My name is Dale Miller.
00:05I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our arts and culture correspondent
00:10Brian Ferguson.
00:12Brian, as always, I know we're past August, but there is lots of arts and culture stories
00:18to talk about.
00:20We will get to that.
00:21We're just going to talk about the front page of the Scotsman firstly.
00:24And it was hard not to lead on the Middle East on the brink.
00:28UK troops sent in to aid evacuation, some going to be stationed in Cyprus, but there
00:38are calls for any British nationals also to get out of Lebanon urgently.
00:44That process is now taking place.
00:46A lot of concerns about Israel's involvement in the conflict and just where we may be going
00:52over coming days and weeks here.
00:54John Swinney, again, has spoken this morning about the issue calling for an immediate ceasefire.
01:01And those calls are clearly growing with pressure around some action being taken.
01:07We also have an exclusive from Martin McLaughlin on Police Scotland and a 500 million buildings
01:12bill that they'll have to cover or pay for for the money from somewhere.
01:17Brian, there was also a couple of great arts and culture stories.
01:22You can read them at Scotsman.com currently.
01:25Summer Hall, which looked like it was going to be a real risk.
01:29The building was put on the market.
01:32It sounded like we then had a good outcome, but it's not all roses by the looks of it.
01:37No, no, it never is, does it?
01:39Yeah, Summer Hall, for anyone who's not been there, it's huge.
01:44I mean, it's really described as an arts village by a lot of people.
01:47It's the old vet school the University put on the market about 15 years ago, and it was
01:54basically snapped up by a philanthropist called Robert McDowell, who has pretty much turned
02:00it into, I think it's a good case to be one of Europe's biggest privately run art centres.
02:08And it certainly has become one of the most important places during the fringe for mainly
02:14theatre. Baby Reindeer was famously premiered there as a stage show a few years ago and
02:20obviously just had huge success at the Emmys.
02:23But it's a really important place.
02:24All year they have some great theatre happening there and visual arts as well.
02:30It's one of the main places for kind of emerging artists to showcase their work.
02:35It has been privately owned.
02:37It's been running at a loss.
02:38Robert McDowell has, you know, it's a family trust that's run it.
02:43He apparently was overruled earlier this year by the, his brothers apparently wanted to
02:50basically put up for sale.
02:52He lost the argument, it went onto the open market.
02:55And I think at that time there was a lot of doom and gloom around it.
02:58It was destined to be at the centre of one of these long planning wrangles in Edinburgh where,
03:06you know, basically people try and salvage what's there.
03:08But, you know, there's inevitably developers suckling with the hope of turning it into student
03:15accommodation or a hotel, to me, seemed like one of the most likely things at the time.
03:20Anyway, the management team, it's quite a complex, it has been quite a complex story to unravel
03:27because the management team there basically set up a new charity last year and they are very keen
03:34to try and salvage as much of Summerhall as possible by negotiating a lease with the current
03:42owners, which will then allow Summerhall to kind of remain intact in the next few years,
03:48at least where there's a new development on the go.
03:51And they're very hopeful of negotiating with the new owners of Summerhall, whoever they may be,
03:57to stay in place and keep that place running.
04:00So that's the theory.
04:01In practice, unfortunately, they are going to need money to do that.
04:08From the outside, I thought it would be pretty straightforward for them to keep the show running.
04:13But the actual reality of running any venue or arts organisation at the moment,
04:18as many people are discovering right across Scotland, is becoming increasingly difficult,
04:25particularly with costs rising and securing funding as one of the main things.
04:30So one of the things the charity was set up to do was to kind of try and generate
04:36new funding for Summerhall last year.
04:38That now is going to be the main operating model for Summerhall,
04:42certainly for the next few years going into the future.
04:45But certainly no guarantees that they will be able to attract any public funding.
04:49So we are going out this week to supporters of Summerhall to say,
04:55we really need your help to at least get this place.
04:59And what I've tried to do is to make a relatively smooth transition
05:04into where Summerhall has been, where it is at the moment,
05:09which is largely stable over the summer.
05:13But they really want to try and ensure that it kind of remains at the same level in terms of
05:17what happens at Summerhall, the level of programming,
05:20the quality of what goes on there throughout the year, but also during the fins as well.
05:26So they've set a target of raising £150,000, which in some senses seems like quite a lot to me.
05:33But the big successful campaign to crowdfund for the film house cinema,
05:40which actually shut down for completely different reasons a couple of years ago,
05:47there was a big campaign that raised more money from the public.
05:50So I think they are quite hopeful at Summerhall of getting some kind of similar success.
05:56But I think because it's been quite a complex pitch, and I think a lot of people,
06:01they were admitting this to me yesterday,
06:02a lot of people think that Summerhall has been completely saved,
06:06whereas now they've slightly changed the messaging to say,
06:09look, we really are facing a bit of an existential crisis here,
06:12and we do really need the support of the public.
06:16I think in the background there will be a realisation that
06:21relying heavily on the Securing Creative Scotland funding
06:24is not really a wise strategy for any organisation at the moment,
06:28because of the pressures and the demands that are going to be on that
06:33whenever they are able to make funding decisions in the next few weeks.
06:37But the Scottish Parliament heard last week that
06:41there's a real urgency for the government to at least commit
06:46set out at least a budget to allow Creative Scotland to make those decisions
06:51sooner rather than later, because as the weeks and months go on over the winter,
06:55organisations are going to start to run out of money, basically,
06:58or really feel anxious about being able to survive well into next year.
07:06Brian, as well, we also reported yesterday that the People's Story Museum on the Royal Mall,
07:11as well as the Queensferry Museum, looks set to shut or scale back their hours drastically.
07:17These are obviously small public museums run by the Edinburgh City Council,
07:22but they are trying to save money.
07:24It is the landscape we're currently in,
07:26and certainly concerning for all those that love arts and culture.
07:30Brian, just quickly, you've written about a new BBC documentary
07:34on a Scottish child singing star many of us may know,
07:38or a lot of our readers and viewers may have heard of.
07:41Is the documentary worth a watch?
07:43It certainly is, yeah. I've seen it twice now.
07:47It's a hugely compelling documentary by the same team that did one on Gail Porter,
07:54that had big success at the Scottish Baths a few years ago.
07:58Lina Zavarone, for people of a certain generation, will be a hugely familiar name.
08:05A lot of younger people will probably never have heard of her.
08:08Certainly, they're describing the programme as a documentary
08:11about Scotland's forgotten child star.
08:14She was a little girl who was discovered singing in the Isle of Bute.
08:20Her parents were really musical.
08:21They basically took her to the pubs that they sang in,
08:26and basically she got into singing along with them
08:30in some of the local pubs on the Isle of Bute.
08:32There was a Scottish singer and record producer who was over there on holiday,
08:37in 1973.
08:39Basically, he already had a big track record in the music industry,
08:44and he put it in touch with this couple who were music industry managers and agents.
08:52Very quickly, they got her on a big TV show at the time,
08:55very much one of these 1970s equivalent of Britain's Got Talent,
09:03or The Voice, that show called Opportunity Knocks.
09:05Lena Zavarone, basically, had huge success in that,
09:10propelled her to fame at the age of 10.
09:15She was a huge star.
09:15She went to America.
09:17The couple who were looking after her took her to Hollywood.
09:20She met Frank Sinatra really quickly after being on Opportunity Knocks,
09:24and performed at the White House, and was the youngest of her person.
09:28I think she still is, to have a top 10 album in the UK.
09:33Unfortunately, as a lot of people will remember,
09:36the Lena Zavarone story basically became a very sad one.
09:40She had prolonged problems with an eating disorder and depression,
09:46certainly throughout all of her adult life.
09:49The documentary basically goes into how far back those eating disorder problems went.
09:55We'll be hearing a lot more about that over the weekend.
09:59There's quite a bit in the documentary that hasn't really come out before about
10:08the way she was treated, particularly when she was younger,
10:11and then when she was really on TV in Britain, and the impact that had on her life, basically.
10:21She died at the age of 35, but hadn't really performed.
10:26Really, her career ended when she was 18.
10:29So in her adult life, she had these really difficult illnesses to deal with,
10:34but also, a big bit in the backdrop was she just wasn't really fit or able to perform.
10:40So it's a really kind of tragic story.
10:43Some people will remember a Fringe show from last year.
10:48Really interestingly, the actress who played Lena Zavarone on stage
10:53is actually in the documentary.
10:57She gives voice to Lena Zavarone, so the producers have done a really good job
11:02of going back over a lot of her interviews throughout her whole life, really.
11:07Again, that's very sad from some of the initial interviews she did,
11:11but she gave quite a lot of interviews, particularly towards the end of her life.
11:17It's really interesting the way they've done that,
11:19and it really does bring that story back to life.
11:22It's on Sunday, October 6.
11:26It'll be launched on BBC Scotland.
11:28You can read the latest about both of those stories,
11:30including the situation with Summer Hall at scottsman.com.
11:33Please follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram,
11:36and go out and support local journalism and buy a copy of the paper.
11:40Tomorrow, we will have all the latest on the situation in Israel as well.
11:44Thanks for joining us.
11:52Bye.

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