The Weirdness Returns

by Sarah Grant, 30 Jul 2009

The forthcoming RE:IMAGINING THE CENTRE event is starting to gain interest amongst the local community and further afield amongst the arts community.

I have been tasked with assisting with promoting the event, which is a pleasure for me as it allows me to get my ‘arts boost’ out with my day job as a marketing advisor. I have been discovering the world of social networking as a means of promotion and have of late been twittering, face booking, myspacing and of course – blogging, for RE:IMAGINING and I have to say it’s been quite fun. I check my emails in the evening to get updates on what the artists have been getting up to, or what the organisers have been planning and use these snippets of information to update the various online mediums.

‘Sundog’ duo – Jennifer Cantwell and Annie Marrs – whom are the creators of the YARNBOMING event have been great in sporadically sending me photo updates of their guerrilla knitting crusade around the town. I received an email late the other night with no title, but just simply an attached image of a graveyard headstone covered in red yarn [see images]. This gives us a taste of what is to follow………

And on our Twitter and Myspace site we are starting to stir up an interest and encourage a dialogue amongst our ‘friends’. Much excitement occurred the other day to find that Yoko Ono …..yes, THE Yoko Ono, is following IOTA on twitter! [links to sites below]. Do you think she would come along in September? This led me, encouraged by artist Jennifer Cantwell, to actively pursue celebrities via Twitter. It may be somewhat optimistic to presume that Alan Cumming, Ewan MacGregor and Gerald Butler alongside a collection of predominantly male celebrities [yes….we are being somewhat selective in our target market!] would come to RE:IMAGINING but why would they not?!…..we had actresses Sue Pollard and Joanna Lumley in the Old Town a couple of weeks ago! The secret is out, Inverness is the place to be!

The IOTA project and artists involved have stirred up a collection of national press of late, with the article in The Scotsman weblink in April and resident artists DUFI street art featuring in last week’s Sunday Herald weblink. GANGHUT’s show at the DCA [Dundee] is this months recommended best show to visit in hip Scottish culture magazine The Skinny.

Our areas definitive cultural magazine [ICA] will feature the RE:IMAGINING event in next month’s issues describing it as ‘The Weirdness Returns..’ and recollects the starting point in 2006 when IMAGINING the Centre took place.

So watch this space, or if not this space our myspace, twitter or facebook page. Our new website will also be live at the end of this month and will disclose more information on the exciting events that will take place in September!

www.invernessoldtownart.co.uk
www.twitter.com/invernessart
www.myspace.com/reimaginingthecentre