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AROUND TOWN It’s all go in and around Scotland’s cities this issue with Creative Scotland revealing highlights from their 2012 programme. Traquair House in the Borders will host a celebration of Contemporary Scottish Printmaking between July and September, as part of a series of commissions reflecting its historic surroundings. Edinburgh’s City of Literature Trust plans to unveil building-sized projections as part of an enLIGHTen project, while elsewhere, plans are afoot to create the RockNess Express, a bespoke train service set to run from London’s King’s Cross, complete with music and Scottish food and drink. Closer to home, and after much to-ing and fro-ing the redevelopment of Edinburgh’s Caltongate appears to be picking up pace once again. Initial plans lost momentum when previous developers, Mountgrange Capital, went into administration in 2009. Now a new consortium hopes to produce new plans this year. Watch this space. Looking ahead, Edinburgh is set to take centre stage next August for more than just its bumper festivals, with politicians from around the globe set to meet in Edinburgh to discuss the role of culture and the effects it has on international relations. Ministers of Culture from nations attending the 2012 Olympic Games will be invited to the first International Culture Summit, to be held on 13 & 14 August. Scottish Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop said she hoped it ‘will allow culture ministers to share ideas, and solutions to challenges that we all face.’ BOOKS Here at The List we like to celebrate our own, and are as excited as the next man to get our
Rock on: Status Quo are gearing up to play at the inverness City Weekend in August
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ARTS AND CULTURE NEWS COVERED IN TWO MINUTES Channel HOPPER
hands on a copy of ex-List editor Mark Fisher’s The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide: How to Make Your Show a Success. Available from February, Fisher has spoken to anyone and everyone, from stars of the show to festival heads, in what promises to be a must-have for the Fringe-lover in all of us. FILM Three emerging Scottish producers are heading to the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, as part of a five-day residential training lab. Katie Crook, Anna Odell and Lynsey Stewart have been given the opportunity as part of the Creative Futures programme, which offers them the chance to pick up expertise and experience the international market.
M U S I C Boogie rockers rejoice! Status Quo has been booked to play Inverness next summer. The band will appear at the Northern Meeting Park, as part of the City Music weekend, on 24 August. Before that mighty rock-off, it’s all looking a little Fife-tastic, first with The Proclaimers headlining the Big Tent Festival, on 21 & 22 July (bigtentfestival.co.uk) and with the happy news that the ever-brilliant Fence Records have announced dates for their next Away Game festival, on Eigg, from 20–22 Jul. We. Cannot. Wait. VISUAL ART And finally, just when it seemed the NVA couldn’t get any busier or more inventive, it seems they are ever closer to restoring St Peter’s Seminary and Kilmahew Woodlands. Along with ERZ Landscape and Avanti architects, they have set out a 20-year vision for the development.
DISPATCHES FROM THE SOFA, WITH BRIAN DONALDSON
■ Adorkability. ‘Jess Daly’ has this in spades, and it’s the x- factor that led US executives to immediately order up a bunch of extra episodes after New Girl (Channel 4, Fri 6 Jan, 8.35pm) became the Fox network’s highest-rated autumn sitcom debut in a decade. At first glance, this relentlessly kooky affair looks and feels a lot like a messy pile-up involving Scrubs, Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother. Come the fifth or sixth glance, it looks and feels like those shows even more so, with a sprinkling of Samantha Who? on top.
Zooey Deschanel is the wildly emotional and freshly-dumped Jess, who somehow passes the interview to become a flatmate of three interchangeable single males. Their immediate task is to cure her of a Dirty Dancing fixation (oh, really?) and get her some rebound sex. The trio have a ‘douchebag jar’ which is added to each time one of them says something inadvisable. It fills up really rapidly.
It’s the kind of show where if someone says ‘you will not regret this’ you know the next scene has regret oozing from every pore. You know it will have around six flashbacks per episode and a ‘touching’, quasi-bonding finale each week. America may have lapped it up, but it could be one primary- coloured geekfest too far for us cynical Brits.
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5 Jan–2 Feb 2012 THE LIST 11