Luminate Festival 2015

Luminate’s fourth nationwide Festival hosted 424 dance, drama, music, visual arts and outreach events the length and breadth of Scotland to explore what ageing means to all of us.  

Programme highlights:

• Glas(s) Performance shared a new work in progress at Platform, Glasgow – Old Boy – exploring the relationship between grandfathers and grandsons. 
• Shedcase was a print-making collaboration between the Wise Guys group at Highland Print Studio, and a group of first-time artists from the Men’s Shed in Beauly. 
• Rambert led a dance workshop for older people during a visit to Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre, including the chance to learn an extract from Christopher’s Bruce’s iconic Rooster. 
• Tayside Silver Strummers: the massed ukuleles of the Dundee and Perth U3A groups performed in Dundee. 
• Broth by Donna Rutherford – a theatrical exploration of the experience of older people in Scotland, told through the tradition of soup making.  
• Trading Wisdom, a series of artworks from Inverkeithing artist Rosie Gibson, installed in shops and business along Inverkeithing’s High Street and inspired by ‘nuggets of wisdom’ from local older people. 
• Up, Up and Away, a bespoke participatory project for older people from All or Nothing Aerial Dance Theatre. Participants created and performed their own work involving trapezes and aerial harness flying, proving you are never too old to get air bound! 
• A pop-up exhibition of photographs entered as part of the first Luminate Photography Challenge – to create a portrait of someone from a different generation. The exhibition toured Scotland and also featured portraits by photographic artist Robin Gillanders. 
• An intergenerational queer cabaret for all ages and persuasions, in partnership with Dive and LGBT Health and Wellbeing and LGBT Youth Scotland .
• Second Wind: Poetry and Discussion with Douglas Dunn, Vicki Feaver and Diana Hendry, who were commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library to write poems as part of the Baring Foundation’s ‘Late Style‘ series.

Luminate, Scotland’s creative ageing festival, ran between 2012 and 2019.