I R I S

Inside the Mind ofa Hip-Hop Artist

I R I S Interviews the up and comingScottish Hip-Hop artist Konchis.

Ultimate Festival Issue forSummer 2013

The Hottest Commonwealth News.An inside view of the Velodrome and an interview with a Scottish athlete.

Christopher BrookmyreAn interview with

established author of “The Big Boy Did It and

Ran Away.”

AD-VERT

A note from the

editorn this era of the magazine in-dustry, we are lucky to havethousands of titles on the

newsagent’s shelves, but here youfind yourself picking up and read-ing our new little project, IRIS.Welcome to the very first edition ofScotland’s answer to young culturein a beautifully crafted magazineform.We’ve got a lot of exciting featuresand insights we want to share withyou.With a diverse group of writers, ouraim is to feed Scotland’s peoplequality articles on things that areimportant to Scottish Culture.We’re talking music, art, books andsport and the list goes on and on.

In this edition we have an amazingselection of articles you’ll want toread, including a keyhole insight toScotland’s hip-hop scene and an in-terview with Scottish authorChristopher Brookmyre.There is also a cool photo gallery ofwhat environmental art Scotlandhas to offer us, so check it out.I look forward to hearing yourviews, opinions and experiences.Please don’t hesitate to contact meat the e-mail address below.Welcome to the magazine youwon’t want to live without.

I

E-mail: irisyoungscottishculture@gmail.comTwitter: @irisscotculture@

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Gregor

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ContentsSummer’13

SPORTS

MUSIC

ENTERTAINMENT

FASHION&BEAUTY

23 Hip hop in Glasgow it does exist

60 Scottish Football For the outsider61 Common Wealth 201463 Velodrome and Emirates ArenaA tour of Scotlands newest sports fa-cilities.

59 Scottish Jewellery Behind thescenes of the business.

39 Christopher Brookmyre Revealsall about his new book. 43 Goodnight Mister Tom On stagein Glasgow45 Simon Higlett The Magic Flute49 Mark Andrews an interview withthe director of Brave53 Trance A review of a new DannyBoyle film

5 What’s on This summer9 Edinburgh Festival an insideview.11 Festival Drug Issues Just becauseit’s legal doesn’t make it safe.13 Metal Festival strange place forsuch a hardcore sound.17 Alice Frick Inside into EdinburghFringe19 Ultimate Scottish festival check-list What not to forget. 36 Ceilidh’s make a comeback37 Straight Edge What is straightedge?55 Young People and Charity 66 Independence You’re questionsanswered.

ART29 Photo Gallery Street art aroundScotland35 Graffiti Has it been accepted? 

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3rd - 11th May - Scottish Six Days Trial.An eight day motorbike ride takes place along scenicrouts of Scotland.Find out more: http://www.ssdt.org/

20th - 21st July - Wickerman FestivalEver growing, family friendly festival that supports thenewest bands on the scene, and promotes independent-music.

22nd - 28th July - SurgeCircus acts, street arts and physical theatre,what more could you want? And all in Glas-gow city center. As well as the events takingplace in venues, it also spills out onto thestreets.

2nd - 26th Aug - Edinburgh Festival FringeWatch and maybe even take part in artistic showsacross venues the capital city.Find out what you can go and see here: http://www.ed-fringe.com/whats-on

16th - 19th May - Southside Film FestivalThis volunteer run festival takes place on thesouth side of The Clyde and has done since 2011.

WHATS ON this summer ‘13

19th - 30th June - Edinburgh InternationalFilm Festival

This film festival takes place in various venues acrossthe capital, it highlights the newest, exciting film talent.

21st - 23rd June - Solas FestivalThis family friendly festival promotes the arts,

and helps bring the artist out in everyone! More here: http://www.solasfestival.co.uk

12th - 14th July - T in the ParkSince 1994 Ballado has been providing us with the

newest and greatest music of our time. This year actsinclude Rihanna, The Killers and Jake Bugg.

2nd- 14th August - Edinburgh Military TattooThis historic festival has taken place since the 60’s and isdefinitely something you do not want to miss. Sold out in

advance for the last decade, this is something you mayewant to plan for.

7th - 9th June - Rockness Music FestivalSteadily growing since 2006 Rockness has become oneof Scotlands biggest festivals. Ticket prices start at £99,

more info on their official website. Don’t forget yourwellies!

he festival has attracted hun-dreds of tourists visiting the sce-nic areas of Drumnadrochit and

Lewiston for the past three years.This year’s festival is said to be thebiggest one yet with a new film makingand editing workshop available for visi-tors of all ages.Trustee of the festival, Andrew Doigspoke of his excitement about the newworkshop:“This is the first time we’re doing aworkshop. We never really had the fundsbefore.”The festival has previously not had thefunds to create film making and editingworkshops for the guests but this year theNational Lottery Fund has helped them:“From the money we got from that we

put into getting a Cannon 600D cameraand the ZoomH4N sound equipment …so that’s going to give us the basics fordoing the film making.” With the help of festival organisers, An-drew did another film making workshopseparate from it last year. This is what

gave them the idea for introducing some-thing similar to the event in July, thehope of inspiring a new generation ofchildren who are interested in the film artform. The young people who attendedtheir film making workshop last year en-joyed certain parts of it:“They were all interested in making their

own film. It’s just the editing that putsthem off because editing is the hardestand the most boring part of film making.But with the film making, they all enjoythat.” The non-profit festival is still relativelysmall but has been growing more popularyear after year. The festival organiserschose to move it from September to lateJuly to really take advantage of thetourist population in the area. Andrew ex-plained how the festival had really grownfrom its first year and how the organiserslearned lessons along the way with a trialand error nature:“We did far too many things, far toomany screenings so, in our second year,we kind of had to cut back. We did itstarting on the Friday night and finishing

Monster MovieMad-Ness

The Loch Ness Film Festival; Scot-land’s newest film

festival is in it’s fourth year.By Rebecca Ryan

T

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up on the Sunday afternoon so it worksbetter.”

“We might get more tourists now be-cause we moved it tothe end of July. It’sjust a more busy timefor tourists.” The numbers ofguests who attend thefestival has usuallybeen in the 100-200bracket but Andrewhas noticed more peo-ple travelling further distances to visit thefestival:“We’re getting more people travelling upwhich is good because we think we arekind of in the middle of nowhere inDrumnadrochit so it’s good thatwe’re getting a lot of people com-ing from the Central Belt. We’veeven got people from Ireland anddown in England coming up, tak-ing a party with them.” The festival is not a competitivefestival as there are no prizesgiven out to films; their websitesays “everyone who makes a filmand wants to screen their film is awinner in our eyes.”This year, the festival is showingthree independent films; a psy-chological thriller, ‘Call of Baby-lon,’ an animated children’s filmabout a Water Haggis named‘Snap,’ and a mockumentaryabout a Jazz veteran, ‘ShepBaker: Glastonbury Fever.’ Thelast of these films was written anddirected by trustee Andrew Doig. The festival has attracted touristsalready involved in the area aswell as genuine film fanatics, with

film makers attending it every year. An-drew expressed real excitement in thisyear’s festival, anticipating meeting the

guests:“It’s always inter-

esting meeting newpeople and seeingnew films and see-ing the people whomade them. Notevery film makerwill attend but usu-ally we get a good

number of them who come up and it’s al-ways interesting to meet new creativepeople.” The Loch Ness Film Festival will runfrom 26-28 July this year.

“Everyone who makesa film and wants toscreen their film is awinner in our eyes.”

Many festivals in Scotland play host to all sorts of

shenanigans, the most recent being the introduction of

a lot of legal highs.

Just because its legal, doesnt mean its safeBy Niamh Milne

I n its ever so slightly warmer summer months, Scotland plays

host to some very popular music festi-vals. The most popular amongst young adultsare T in the Park, which takes place an-nually in Kinross, and in Inverness theRockness Festival also attracts thousandsevery year. These festivals take placeover the course of a few days, and manymusic fans set up camp at the venue inorder to take in the entire event. Fans areable to bare witness to a large number ofbands who take turns to entertain thelarge crowds. These highly social eventscan be a lot of fun for small and largegroups, however they can also be ex-tremely dangerous due to the huge num-ber of people, and the amount of alcoholand drugs some attendees choose to con-sume. Last year at T in the Park policeconfiscated around £25,000 worth ofdrugs during searches of music fans asthey entered the festival grounds. How-ever, despite an obvious police presenceat the festivals, including trained snifferdogs, many people still manage to bringin ‘legal high’ drugs, which have verysimilar effects to known illegal sub-stances. These are quite commonly foundat music festivals as they are easy to gethold of and easy to get into the venue.However, although these drugs are legalto buy and use, the NHS warns:“Although these drugs are marketed aslegal substances, this doesn’t mean thatthey are safe or approved for people to

use. It just means that they’ve not beendeclared illegal to use and possess. Theyare still normally considered illegal tosell under medicines legislation.”The risks of taking these ‘legal high’ sub-stances are multiplied when they are con-sumed with alcohol. These risks includereduced inhibitions, drowsiness, excitedor paranoid states, coma, seizures anddeath. The reason most of these sub-stances are classed as legal is becausethey have simply not been tested yet.This in effect makes them more danger-ous in some cases, as medical profession-als may not know how to treat a patienteffectively after consuming them. Therisk of taking these at music festivalssuch as Rockness and T in the Park iseven greater, as legal highs similar to theClass A drug Ecstasy is not only a hallu-cinogenic, but a dehydrator. Unfortu-nately, the feeling of thirst is what makesthe drug and its ‘legal’ counterpart sodangerous. The consumer will often drinkmany liters of water, a usually harmlesssubstance, but will drink it in excess,causing the blood to thin and organs tofail.There are three main types of drug: de-pressants, hallucinogens and stimulants.Depressants slow down the brain’s cen-tral nervous system, causing a person tofeel calm and relaxed. However if slowedtoo much, depressants can cause the heartrate to drop significantly, resulting indizziness and a loss of consciousness,and extreme cases they can even cause

death. Hallucinogens are conscious alter-ing. They can cause people who consumethem to see, hear and feel things that arenot there. Even the legal high versions ofthe drug are so strong that many peoplehave reported feeling like they were in adream like trance, and experienced pow-erful hallucinations. These usually comein the form of pills, which due to theircurrently legal status are often availableto buy online without any age restric-tions. The effects these drugs have on themind can be extremely dangerous, andmany people risk their lives by sacrific-ing their normal consciousness for thishigh feeling. Stimulants are slightly dif-ferent than hallucinogens, as they do notalter a person’s consciousness, but am-

plify it. Illegal stimulants include am-phetamines and cocaine, whilst caffeinestands among legal stimulant drugs. Ofcourse the effect of a cup of coffee nextto the use of cocaine is pretty incompara-ble, but they do stimulate the brain in thesame way, on different scales. Stimulantdrugs, like depressant drugs affect thecentral nervous system, although theyspeed it up. Often the problem with tak-ing these stimulant drugs is the effect ithas when leaving the body. After thealertness has been increased it will de-crease, causing fatigue, sickness and afeeling of severe depression.Essentially, it is not illegal to consumethese drugs, but it can be dangerous.

Just because its legal, doesnt mean its safe

owever, it is not the kind of place youexpect to see a heavy metal festival.Les-Fest is now in its second year with

an already growing fan base. Festival organiser,Dave Ritchie got the idea last year after theSonisphere festival was cancelled:“I always went to Sonisphere since it started

and it really kind of hacked me off. I had a daftnotion; I thought I’m just going to start my ownconcert with in the village of Lesmahagow. I’mgoing to put something on the weekend of Son-isphere and invite some of the local bands fromthe area to play.” Support for Dave’s idea grew quickly and be-fore he knew it, his festival was growing fast,with local bands keen to play and heavy metalfans anticipating a Scottish heavy metal festi-val. It was originally supposed to be held inLesmahagow but there was no place bigenough to hold the festival Dave had in mind.He was put in contact with the owner of theValley International Park, a garden centre andfamily entertainment setting with 90 acres ofland. As the demand and anticipation for thefestival grew, so did the confidence of the or-ganisers:“I just spoke to people, I just asked bands andthe local bands were all keen to play it. Once itgot out then loads of people got in touch andthen I got a call from the manager of the bandcalled ‘Attica Rage,’ a Glasgow band and atthat point they were kind of bigger than thebands I was dealing with and they asked to play

so, I was like ‘yeah,’ and that gave me the con-fidence to go and actually speak to otherbands.”The number of people who will visit the smallvillage for the festival is expected to rise from400 people per day last year to a thousand perday this year. The festival prides itself on beingScotland’s only heavy metal rock festival asmany people in the past have had to traveldown to England:“I was down at Hammerfest last weekend and

I go there and I meet half of Scotland at theseplaces. I think ‘why are we all coming downhere?’” The festival has not just attracted a Scottishaudience however, last year people from allover the UK attended. The tickets for the eventare sold online by Dave himself:“I see the kind of demographic and it’s really,really mixed! The people are coming from allover the country. It’s fascinating actually!” Hundreds of people are expected to flock toCrossford in the last weekend of June for thisfestival but Dave does not expect any troublefrom the visitors or any complaints from localresidents. Crossford is one of the smaller vil-lages on the Clyde and the Valley InternationalPark is the main attraction in the village, asidefrom its scenery. Residents last year were over-all in favour or the festival with some even at-tending:“There was one woman, who wrote to me [lastyear] to say ‘I live in the village and I believe

LES FEST 2013Crossford is a quiet little village on the banks of the river Clyde. With a

tiny population of 5000, it’s rolling hills and scenic riverside makes this

quaint village an idyllic place to live in peace.

H

By Rebecca Ryan

you are holding this festival, I won’t complain ifyou give me a ticket,’ that’s what she actuallysaid! So, I gave her two tickets and she camealong and had a really good time!” Most of the events will be held inside meaningthis festival will not be mainly outdoors like oth-ers. The setting itself makes this festival veryunique:“It’s just a family friendly, trouble-free, a reallybeautiful place. It’s in the banks of the Clyde,there’s a forest up on the left hand side. It’s a re-ally nice site.”The age range last year was very diverse withthe youngest guest being just three years old andthe oldest 64. There are hotels in the surroundingarea that many of the guests stay at rather thancamp on site:

“You can’t get a hotel round here around thatweekend now! Or a bed and breakfast, or any-thing! So, I must have done something good forthe community.”Many of the bands who played at les-Fest lastyear were relatively unknown, local bands fromthe surrounding area, this year the organiser hasgained the confidence to approach larger bandsbut has also booked bands who have grown fa-mous since. Dave began organising this year’sfestival as soon as the first Les-Fest was over. Hepersonally goes to watch each band live beforehe decides to book them. Last year, he booked aband from Manchester called Scarlet Riot for thisyear’s event:“I saw them live and I thought they’ve got real

potential, not my kind of music but, they’re

going to do really well. So, you book them andthen you hope things will happen for them. So,you now get into the spring of this year andthey’re getting daytime Radio 1 airplay, they’regetting Kerrang! front covers and articles andthey’ll just go right up there.” Dave Ritchie chose to personally evaluate all thebands he books for the festival to make sure theguests are not too disappointed with anything.Despite now having some big bands in the line-up, he is proud of the fact that that the majorityof bands will be local and undiscovered:“Our festival is much more about substanceover style; I think the music is good. There arenot a lot of really flashybands because it is just good,solid, professional musiciansand a lot are unsigned, whichis something we want to con-tinue with.” Planning for an event twelve

months in advance proved tobe very difficult, determiningwhether or not bands wouldstill be popular in a year oreven if a band would become more successful inthat year was a tough task. Dave proved to belucky with the booking of Evile:“Their album comes out in May and that’s spoton for us because they’ll be all over Metal Ham-mer, they’ll be all over Kerrang! All the kind ofrock press and it will be publicised that they areplaying in Scotland and that’s their only Scottishdate. So, that alone will sell out the Friday nightno problem at all.” Evile are the biggest band to play at Les-Festand their booking has attracted attention fromfans all over the world. Online heavy metal fo-rums and fan pages are now talking about thesmall festival in Scotland because of Evile:“It makes me laugh if you Google the [festival]name it comes up now every day and there’s en-tries all over the world because Evile have done

a press release and it’ll say, it’s really bizarre,that they’re doing London, Belfast, Cardiff andLesmahagow!” There are a lot of plans in store for the festivalover the next three years but it will still be heldin Crossford for the foreseeable future:“The plan at the moment is to keep it withinCrossford because it is a good site. The site thatthey own there is vast and there is quite a lot offlat land there so there is scope to grow it anddevelop it. Genuinely, if we got to a 7,000 perday type festival, I’d be really happy with that.That’s where we would be comfortable, just atthat kind of level.”

Next year is when some changeswill take place in the festival.These changes will make the fes-tival accommodate a larger vol-ume of people and will convert itto being a primarily outdoors fes-tival:“We’re putting a stage outdoorsfor about ten thousand people.I’ve got plans. This was a daftidea but, because it worked, it’s

kind of giving me he confidence to really got forthis and make it into something decent becausethere’s nothing up here!” Last year, Les-Fest won the best musical eventof the year at the Scottish Music Awards. Sincethen, there have been a lot of bands asking toplay at the festival rather than Dave askingthem. Now that Les-Fest is an award-winningfestival, Dave considers it to be a proper festivalin the music business:“I think last year they [the music business] justthought I was a joke because they thought‘you’ll never, ever pull this off, we’ve been inthe business for years and you can’t cobblesomething like this together in ten or twelveweeks.’ But, we did and we won an award andI’m just very driven and very motivated. This iswhat I want to do for the rest of my days.”

Our festival ismuch more about

substance overstyle; I think themusic is good.

PAGE 15

The award nomination came as a surpriseto Dave and he still does not know whooriginally nominated him. The award wasgiven to the event with the most onlinevotes:“I was flattered and I was very proud… Iknow that once we were nominated it wasan online voting type thing so you obvi-ously plug it the best you can.” Since winning this award, Dave has takenadvantage of what he has and advertised theevent as an award-winning festival. Thisyear, he wants to make the festival not onlybetter by means of more bands and biggeracts, he also wants to make it more profes-sional and make the overall event run assmoothly as possible:

“We’re going to invest a little bit more thisyear in infrastructure and how it’s laid outand barriers and fencing and just to keep aproper demarcation so people know whereto go. We need more stewarding so peopleunderstand where they’ve to go. It’s verymuch a homemade thing at the moment butso was Wicker Man.”Dave acknowledges that his festival is a

labour of love and is more to do with thelove of music rather than making money:“I’d like to break even this year, I’d be

quite pleased. It’s just I’m a fan of music,I’m a rock fan and if I can stick somethingup here that works and that people comealong to them I’ll be delighted by that.”

Les-Fest runs fromJune 28-30, 2013 atthe Valley Interna-

tional Park in Cross-ford.

Scan the QR Codebelow to take you tothe official website.

PAGE 16

dinburgh’s Fringe Festivalis a wonderfully diverse cel-

ebration of culture from all overthe world. With a mixture of com-edy, drama, poetry and music it at-tracts a very large and varied crowdto hundreds of different eventsthroughout the month of August. Theroots of the Fringe can be traced back to1947 when eight groups of theatre perform-ers visited the capital and performed withoutan invitation during what was known then as theEdinburgh International Festival. During the follow-ing years the number of performers who showed up inthe capital increased, and by 1958 the Festival Fringe So-ciety formed, setting the stage for what was to become thelargest arts festival in the world. Anyone is welcome to per-form in the Fringe Festival if they are able to find a spot todo so – the Royal Mile in Edinburgh’s old town area isbustling in the height of the Fringe, with street performers,buskers, magicians and human statues trying their hands atmaking a name for themselves during Edinburgh’s busiestmonth.Enjoying these shows doesn’t always have to break thebank though, and Edinburgh’s ‘free fringe’ shows are oftenthe highlight of many people’s visits to the city, with a lot ofartists performing purely for the love of what they do. Thissummer the free fringe will be boasting the return of Aus-trian comedienne Alice Frick, who has made the Scottishcapital her home since the summer of 2009 when she per-

Edinburgh Festival an insiders view

Alice Frick tells us allabout EdinburghFestival from the

comedians point ofview.

By Niamh Milne

E

formed her first shows in the country.Scottish culture is portrayed throughout themedia in various different ways. At the moment,Disney Pixar’s ‘Brave’ is attracting interest inthe country, with its depiction of medieval Scot-tish culture and untouched country side, moun-tains, castles and clans, but it is not mentionedin the film that the landscape of the country haschanged somewhat since the period in which thestory is set. This can be said for other popularfilms set in Scotland, such as ‘Braveheart’ and‘Waterhorse’ which have been seen by manyacross the world. Films like ‘Trainspotting’ writ-ten by Edinburgh’s own Irvine Welsh paint lessof a rosy picture of the country, but perhaps amore realistic one. Ispoke to Alice Frickto find out if usScots live up to ourforeign stereotypes.“Before I came toScotland what Iknew about thecountry was twomain things: it hasan amazing land-scape and ex-tremely coldweather.” Alicesays, and for the most part she is not wrong.“My parents came travelling here when theywere younger and they told me some of theircamping stories and I used to dream about visit-ing too. They say Scottish people are veryfriendly, and they are the friendliest I’ve evermet. I love that you greet the bus driver here andthank them when you get off; I’ve never seenthat happen in another country. I like that youcan always get a smile when you walk down thestreet here, especially during the Fringe whenthere are so many people around. I tried smilingat strangers once when I was visiting Londonand people looked at me like I was crazy.“I think I was a bit shocked to find that Edin-burgh was such a modern city, with buses andtrains and shops everywhere. I must have beenexpecting to find everyone wearing kilts and

riding horses while playing bagpipes and hidingfrom the Loch Ness Monster, when they weren’tall hunting wild haggis of course.”Where did these stereotypes come from? Thestrange thing is there is a lot of truth in thesefabrications, but the truth has been exaggeratedand distorted to the point of fantasy. It is true;sometimes Scots wear kilts, and sometimes theyalso wear kilts while riding horses. There aresome people in Scotland who are lucky enoughto be musically skilled and posses the ability toplay bagpipes, but they are unfortunately in aminority. The Loch Ness Monster and the wildhaggis though - I think we play on those onesfor fun, in a wild story telling, sibling style

manor – like whenthe eldest tells theyoungest that theirprominent goose-bumps mean forsure that theirtransformationinto a goose is im-minent, we like totell our enchantingand exciting talesto tourists, andthey have donewonders for Scot-

land’s tourism industry.All year round in the capital there are daily andnightly walking tours of the city, that talk aboutEdinburgh’s history. The most popular of whichis the underground tour, where visitors are giventhe opportunity to explore the vaults under thecity and be scared senseless with true horror sto-ries from Edinburgh’s past.

Tickets for Alice Frick’s upcom-ing shows at Edinburgh FringeFestival’s full 2013 schedule are

available at: http://www.ed-fringe.com or follow them on

Twitter to keep up to datewith the box office: @edfringe.

This is your ultimate Scottish festival guide to 2013. Our must-have top ten will help you through your weekend, let you overcome the

horrible weather and help you have an even better time with no worries.

This may sound silly but people have been known to forget the most important item for staying overnight at a festi-val. The tent! You might not get a lot of sleep over due to all your festival shenanigans, but it is definitely smart tohave somewhere to go when you’re all danced out and need a half an hour nap or simply want to get away from thewet weather. It is definitely advised that you get a tent that can with stand all weather; whether it be rain, snow orglorious sunshine you need to make sure it does everything. It is definitely worth spending a few extra pounds on adecent tent especially when it means not having to kip in a sleeping bag which is soaked through.

No.1

Wellies! If you are from Scotland you will know that our weather is pretty predictable. If your festival happensto fall on the only week of sunshine we get in this country then congratulations to you, but you may not be solucky. From the dearest pair of Hunter willies, to the cheapest George pair it shouldn’t matter as long as yourfeet stay dry and much free. Plus, it’s somewhere handy to put your phone, ticket or money.

Yet again, here comes the bad weather but you’re safe thanks to our ultimate guide suggesting you take ananorak or even a bin bag with holes for your head and arms to fit through. Yes, girls this is aimed at you, youmight want to show off your new high waisted denim shorts, or your cute new crop top but what is the pointin showing them off if they have been utterly destroyed by the horrible weather, alcohol stains and mud. Weadvise you definitely consider this.

No.4They’re back! Bum bags are back in fashion, here at IRIS we usually em-brace trends coming a second time round, but this one really should havestayed in the nineties. Never the less a bum bag is great to have with you

at a festival. It keeps your ticket, money, phone and anyother personal belongings on you at all times, and on yourfront where you will definitely notice if someone is tryingto steal something; unless you are very, very drunk whichis very likely!

By Emily Lang

This is your ultimate Scottish festival guide to 2013. Our must-have top ten will help you through your weekend, let you overcome the

horrible weather and help you have an even better time with no worries.

This may sound silly but people have been known to forget the most important item for staying overnight at a festi-val. The tent! You might not get a lot of sleep over due to all your festival shenanigans, but it is definitely smart tohave somewhere to go when you’re all danced out and need a half an hour nap or simply want to get away from thewet weather. It is definitely advised that you get a tent that can with stand all weather; whether it be rain, snow orglorious sunshine you need to make sure it does everything. It is definitely worth spending a few extra pounds on adecent tent especially when it means not having to kip in a sleeping bag which is soaked through.

No.2Wellies! If you are from Scotland you will know that our weather is pretty predictable. If your festival happensto fall on the only week of sunshine we get in this country then congratulations to you, but you may not be solucky. From the dearest pair of Hunter willies, to the cheapest George pair it shouldn’t matter as long as yourfeet stay dry and much free. Plus, it’s somewhere handy to put your phone, ticket or money.

No.3Yet again, here comes the bad weather but you’re safe thanks to our ultimate guide suggesting you take ananorak or even a bin bag with holes for your head and arms to fit through. Yes, girls this is aimed at you, youmight want to show off your new high waisted denim shorts, or your cute new crop top but what is the pointin showing them off if they have been utterly destroyed by the horrible weather, alcohol stains and mud. Weadvise you definitely consider this.

No.5 Now on to the fun stuff. UV Paint is a musthave; especially for those of you planning togo to T in the Parks notorious Slam Tent. Theblack lights will definitely show off your artis-tic abilities, it’s also the one time you’re al-lowed to finger paint yourself from head to toeand not get looked at like a lunatic. You canusually buy this at any festival at the stalls andsmall market places dotted around the arenas.

PAGE 20

No.6 Stay clean and looking good. Take toiletries with you. You will definitely regret it if you don’t. Toilet roll, baby wipes and toothpaste willbe your savior over the coming days. The famous porta-loo’s at festivals are famous for being ‘minging’ so we advise you take a lot ofyour own toilet roll, also baby wipes up your nose will be your best friend in this scenario. Hand sanitizer is also a good shout for a situa-tion like this; you may want to bathe in it when you get home as well. So buy lots of it.

No.7Keep your friends close by, especiallyif one of you loses your phone. If thereare seventeen of you going you are notexpected to stick around together in agroup for the full event, but having abuddy system is possibly your bestbet. If you get hurt, sick or just wantsomeone to dance with at the front ofan Arctic Monkey’s set, having a part-ner in crime makes sure you have thatperson there beside you whenever youneed them.

No.9 A hat and sunglasses. These will either aid you in the war us Scottish people have against the sunor it will hide you’re disgusting, tangled hair and black bags under your eyes. These ultimate festi-val accessories will definitely become attached to you for the full festival.

Stay clean and looking good. Take toiletries with you. You will definitely regret it if you don’t. Toilet roll, baby wipes and toothpaste willbe your savior over the coming days. The famous porta-loo’s at festivals are famous for being ‘minging’ so we advise you take a lot ofyour own toilet roll, also baby wipes up your nose will be your best friend in this scenario. Hand sanitizer is also a good shout for a situa-tion like this; you may want to bathe in it when you get home as well. So buy lots of it.

No.8Stay hydrated. Along with your expected dustbins and sledges full ofalcohol, make sure you have a few large bottles of plain old drinkingwater. It will definitely help to keep you hydrated and on your feetall weekend. Along with this, it would be a good idea to take packsof cereal bars, cheese strings or anything small and mega sugary tokeep you going for the full time your there.

A hat and sunglasses. These will either aid you in the war us Scottish people have against the sunor it will hide you’re disgusting, tangled hair and black bags under your eyes. These ultimate festi-val accessories will definitely become attached to you for the full festival.

No.10Last but not least, remember a camera. It could be the worst mistakeyou make not documenting your entire goings on throughout yourfestival experience. To make sure you are able to look back andlaugh at all of your photographs. Just make sure that if it is an ex-pensive camera you keep it locked away in your bum bag!

PAGE 22

ip-hop has a massive following in Scotland.One might argue the biggest stars in music are

hip-hop artists, look at the likes of Jay-Z.What we might not know as a country though, is thatnot only do we have our own hip-hop artists, but astyle that can help you experience the genre like younever have before. Hip-hop isdriven by a lot of social energyand passion.What Scottish hip-hop provides isnot only grimy beats and some-thing different to listen to, but ad-dresses local, social issuesrelevant to Scottish listeners. Whatwe are given is something to relateto. Jordan Carey, who goes by thename ‘Konchis’, is a young Scot-tish hip-hop artist and producerhoping to make living by doing

what he loves, performingand producing music. He gives a key

insight into the Scottish hip-hop scene and how

he came intothis

underground world.“I grew up around a lot of early UK/US hip hop andReggae because that’s what my mum and dad wereinto. He is also a member of ‘2 Tone Committee’,who were not only one of the very first hip hop crewsfrom Scotland, but also one of the first to put out

tracks on vinyl, so I've alwaysbeen surrounded with hip-hop cul-ture and the music makingprocesses that go along with it.When I was about twelve or thir-teen, I started getting into writingverses and production had alwaysbeen the thing I was most inter-ested in so it was a kind of naturalprogression from there.”With a musical upbringing, Jordanto this day spends most of his timeworking on it some way or another.“Today I make a lot of instrumen-tal stuff, 90's style boom bap will

always be my favourite but I'm also really into themore electronic experimental stuff which I've beenexploring for a while now under the alias of Jetsam. Iam 1 of 21 members of Glasgow rappers/producersknown as The Being Emcees. My Dad introduced meto them at a fairly young age and being able to learnfrom and be encouraged by the local artists that i lis-tened and drew influence from the most was and con-

tinues to be an amazing experience. I do a lot ofwork with crew member Physiks; we met in

school and started making music a few yearsafter. Today we play gigs regularly and have

supported a variety of US and UK artistsincluding Lords Of The Underground,

Souls Of Mischief, GrandmasterFlash, Contact Play, High Focus,

Defenders Of Style, Rhyme Asy-lum, Sonnyjim, Children Of

H

Hip Hop making a huge impact on Scotland The past five years has seen the genre become somewhat more ‘main-stream’,with songs getting played daily on radio shows and across multiple TV channels.

By Gregor Crawford

ip-hop has a massive following in Scotland.One might argue the biggest stars in music are

hip-hop artists, look at the likes of Jay-Z.What we might not know as a country though, is thatnot only do we have our own hip-hop artists, but astyle that can help you experience the genre like younever have before. Hip-hop isdriven by a lot of social energyand passion.What Scottish hip-hop provides isnot only grimy beats and some-thing different to listen to, but ad-dresses local, social issuesrelevant to Scottish listeners. Whatwe are given is something to relateto. Jordan Carey, who goes by thename ‘Konchis’, is a young Scot-tish hip-hop artist and producerhoping to make living by doing

what he loves, performingand producing music. He gives a key

insight into the Scottish hip-hop scene and how

he came intothis

underground world.“I grew up around a lot of early UK/US hip hop andReggae because that’s what my mum and dad wereinto. He is also a member of ‘2 Tone Committee’,who were not only one of the very first hip hop crewsfrom Scotland, but also one of the first to put out

tracks on vinyl, so I've alwaysbeen surrounded with hip-hop cul-ture and the music makingprocesses that go along with it.When I was about twelve or thir-teen, I started getting into writingverses and production had alwaysbeen the thing I was most inter-ested in so it was a kind of naturalprogression from there.”With a musical upbringing, Jordanto this day spends most of his timeworking on it some way or another.“Today I make a lot of instrumen-tal stuff, 90's style boom bap will

always be my favourite but I'm also really into themore electronic experimental stuff which I've beenexploring for a while now under the alias of Jetsam. Iam 1 of 21 members of Glasgow rappers/producersknown as The Being Emcees. My Dad introduced meto them at a fairly young age and being able to learnfrom and be encouraged by the local artists that i lis-tened and drew influence from the most was and con-

tinues to be an amazing experience. I do a lot ofwork with crew member Physiks; we met in

school and started making music a few yearsafter. Today we play gigs regularly and have

supported a variety of US and UK artistsincluding Lords Of The Underground,

Souls Of Mischief, GrandmasterFlash, Contact Play, High Focus,

Defenders Of Style, Rhyme Asy-lum, Sonnyjim, Children Of

“It reflects a lotof the negativetruth that soci-

ety tries toconceal”

Busta Rhymes.

Hip Hop making a huge impact on Scotland The past five years has seen the genre become somewhat more ‘main-stream’,with songs getting played daily on radio shows and across multiple TV channels.

PAGE 24

PAGE 25

The Damned, Jehst and MicallParknsun. We've got a few festi-val slots lined up this year too,one being Boom Bap Festival inPeterborough, a 3 day bender ofthe finest Hip-Hop UK widealongside Edinburgh Mc's SeanEl and OneOz representing Scot-land. Working on a few projectsjust now too, an album withPhysiks and an album with fel-low Being crew member Gaspwho also runs Badmouth rap bat-tles at Glasgow's 02 ABC. Alsoworking on expanding my liveset up so I can take the instru-mental experiments to the nextlevel.”It’s obvious the hip-hop scene isevolved around connections andfriends. When asked about hisclosest connections in music, Jor-dan says:“2 Tone Committee and TheBeing, but the scene is so nichethat everyone knows each otherso its like one big extended fam-ily. Having said that the scene isexpanding rapidly and there havebeen major breakthroughs interms of acknowledgement ofhip-hop with a Scottish accent.Hip-Hop is close to everythingfor me, with the obvious excep-tions of friends and family. Theculture is amazing and the senseof community is unparalleled,and through making music I'vehad the opportunity to meet a lotof my childhood heroes as wellas making new friends and meet-ing new people who share thesame views. There’s an insaneamount of undiscovered talent uphere.”Basing himself in Glasgow, itwould be easy to assume that the

hip-hop scene gathers round oneof the big cities in the country,though it is explained that thereare artists in every corner ofScotland, as there is everywherein the world. Just about anywhereyou can think of, Jordan guaran-tees there’s a fairly large hip-hopcommunity. As Scary Spice in BoSelecta once said, “you just haveto look for it”.Scotland can take a few leavesout the well written pages ofEnglish hip-hop books, with Jor-dan explaining that there's just asmuch talent up here as downthere, but unity is the way for-ward, less competition and morecollaborations between countries,areas and crews ultimately makesfor better music from everyone.Jordan continues with what hewould change in the scene if hecould, and any bad experienceshe’s had in music.“There will always be the peoplewho are into it for the wrong rea-sons, and there will always bebickering, I can’t change it but asthe saying goes, real recognisereal. I do have what you might alla negative experience, but hemight not be happy reading this!Halfway through a set one time,Physiks had been on the tonicand threw up in his mouth and Ihad to cover his verse! Its not re-ally that bad I suppose. I’ve alsomanaged to hit myself on the faceon stage with a mic stand beforetoo.”Looking back, Jordan reflects onthe coolest things he’s been giventhe opportunity to do in the past,and his goals in life.“Definitely meeting and support-ing a lot of rappers from my

childhood/teenage years has been a majorhighlight. Cyphering on stage with‘Lords Of The Underground’ was prettyinsane too as well as the amount of sup-port and response to our music we've re-ceived which we're humbled by. I'd reallylike to do collaborations with artists fromall over the world and hopefully put out arecord on vinyl. Also, I want to get to-gether an entertaining live production setup and running to gig with.So the passion is there from Scottishartists, as is the community and skill.What we need to know is why it doesn’tget the recognition it truly deserves.“It’s mostly an accent thing I think, it re-quires a bit of effort to the untrained earand so most people don't really give it thetime of day. Also, with the Scottishstereotype of kilt wearing, haggis eatingshortbread munchers, the very idea ofScottish hip-hop seems ridiculous any-

where but here. But the scene does havemassive support, and with support fromradio Djs such as Muslim Alim, Ally Mc-Crae from the BBC and Steg G with localstation Sunny Govan, local artists havehad the chance to have their tracks playedon air and delivered to a wider audienceas well as live BBC sessions and otheropportunities, which is brilliant. In thepast few years there has been a massiveamount of interaction between the scenedown South and the scene up here,and the stigmas starting to disappear. Alot of heads are starting to take note andthrough things like Badmouth Battles,Beats Rhymes and Life @ o2 ABC andA-Ball Events we've had the opportunityto meet and expose our music to some ofthe most respected artists from downSouth and beyond which has ultimatelyled to collaborations and mutual respect.Unity is the key.”

Follow the QR code to find Konchis’ Soundcloud,head to the O2 Academy website for some gigdates..

..Or you could follow him ontwitter for daily updates.

PAGE27

Street Art Gallery

ove it or hate it, street art isevolving and becoming more ac-cepted in urban culture and Scot-

land is definitely not lacking in it. We have our own Scottish Banksy’s pop-ping up all over the country with the likesof Rogue One, Smug One and Estumbrightening the streets of our biggestcities up with murals, Van Gogh inspiredpieces and giant women with magnifyingglasses towering over you. In an interview with Rogue-One he saysthat street art has definitely evolved fromwhen it first started appearing aroundtowns and cities “from being the classic80’s graffiti from trains and bubble lettersto them becoming more of an art withphotorealistic paintings and graphic im-ages.“This is from the development of newspray-paint with caps that make it easierto control them. Another new wave of theform is stencil and pasted poster art(more commonly done by art school stu-dents). Theclassicform ofgraffiti-like tagsandCromey'sare stillvery popu-lar but like

always they are considered to be vandal-ism by the general public. Though graffitihas now broke away from being one ofthe four elements of hip hop culture andcan be seen as a strong culture itself andeven as an art form.”He also believes that spray-paint in someform is now accepted as art, the likes ofmurals and street art canvas work but theolder generations still don’t see the moreretro art as art because it isn’t paintingsof people or items, just words written inbright colours on a wall. “I would like to think classic graffiti of

By Emily Lang

Glasgow

“It  will  con-tinue  to  growbigger and bet-ter  as  theyears go on.”

L

PAGE 29

Glasgow

Edinburgh

tags, dubs and burners are considered to beart, it certainly is in the fashionable under-ground. Though perhaps it never reallywill be. People will continue to pick andchoose the parts and styles that their happyto call art. At the moment people will stillcall tags vandalism and it's hard to say ifthat will ever change.”There is a huge question of whether streetart is good for places in Scotland orwhether it just makes it look messy,Rogue-One says: “I would say graffiti orat least graffiti art like murals can only begood for places like Glasgow. There’snothing wrong with fantastic artwork tocover a plain grey wall.” Street art is always hard to find, as graffiti

is still seen as being illegal; no matter howbeautiful it is. So, you have to look in thestrangest of places to find the most amaz-ing pieces of art but there certainly is not alack of it. Do not be swayed by this to go and justgraffiti anywhere and on anything youlike. Your local council may have specificplaces you can go and make your mark,you can find out if there are on your coun-cil’s website or if you phone they wouldbe happy to let you know. If you’re good enough businesses mayeven pay for you to decorate their build-ings; many tattoo parlours and independ-ent boutiques in big cities do this.

Dundee

PAGE 31

Glasgow

“People need andwant somethingcolourful and inter-esting to look at, andnot adverts!”

Photographs credited to Rogue-One and Laura Hughes

Aberdeen

Cumbernauld

Edinburgh

PAGE 33

Photographs credited to Rogue-One and Laura Hughes

as graffiti finally been accepted asan art?

We see graffiti everywhere; we see it in alldifferent kinds of forms. Sometimes you’llwalk through a tunnel on a cycle path andthe whole place is lit up with vibrantcolours that form majestic gigantic piecesof art across the wall.Sometimes it’s ‘wee mental Davie’smenchy’ accompanied by a badly drawnhash leaf.However, we at Iris see graffiti as an artform like any other, and spoke to Glas-gow’s own environmental artist RickyWilson to explain why.“We are lucky in that skilled graffiti artists

have come to the surface and made itmore mainstream. No longer is graffitipurely seen as vandalism, but as an ex-pressive way to combine art and passion.Artists such as Shepard Fairey, Space In-vader, Sloak, Spook and of course every-one’s favourite Banksy are very wellknown throughout the UK and give graf-fiti a respectable light”.Contact us through Twitter @irisscottish-culture if you agree or disagree withRicky. Should we accept graffiti is something thatwill always be there or should we be look-ing to stamp out what is technically van-dalism?

H

Graf

fiti

Is it morethan just amess on awall or are

people com-ing to termsthat it is, in-

deed, an art?

By

Gre

gor C

raw

ford

he Scottish ceilidh has been a tra-dition in this country for centuries. Forthe past few decades however, ceilidhs havebeen only been associated with weddings,elderly gatherings and school dances thatteenagers have to endure. The Scottish in-dependence referendum is just over a yearaway and with the rising patriotism comes arevival of ceilidhs. Al-istair Barr has heldcharity ceilidhs for St.Andrew’s Hospice forthree years and has no-ticed the growing popu-larity for the dances:“I think we’re having asort of rejuvenation ofculture with ceilidhsbecause everyone’sfeeling a lot more patri-otic, obviously with theindependence referendum. In the last cou-ple of years I’ve seen an increase inceilidhs out with my own.”What is really surprising about the growthin popularity is the amount of younger peo-ple who are getting into the Scottish spiritand attending ceilidhs. Alistair is only 19years old, yet chooses to hold these eventsto raise money for St. Andrew’s Hospiceafter doing work experience with the char-ity:“I just felt like I wanted to give somethingback and I thought a ceilidh was the perfectevent to hold to help raise money, and apartfrom the fact that ceilidhs are very fun for

the whole family.”Pride in Scotland is believed to be the mainreason for its revival but the health benefitsof highland dancing has also been attrib-uted to the comeback:“It’s certainly a fun way to meet people andalso there are health implications as well,you’re dancing, you’re keeping fit. It’s just

a really fun event to goto.”Ceilidh dancing is stilltaught in schools butnot many pupils werefond of it, Alistair wasslightly concerned thatbecause of this therewould not be a great at-tendance at his charityevents:“Since that first yearwe have had a whole

mixture of ages come go to the ceilidhsnow.”These events happen on a yearly basis andhave been getting more popular each year.When it comes to persuading people to goceilidh dancing, Alistair believes he haschanged some people’s minds:“I’ve convinced people to come along.Since they have, they’ve decided to comeback the next year. I would say that’s a suc-cess.”At the last charity ceilidh 150 people at-tended and helped raise £1,750 for St. An-drew’s Hospice. Alistair is already begunplanning for next year’s event.

The Ceilidh Comeback

TA dying tradition brought back and carried on by Scot-

land’s youth; and all for charity.

By Rebecca Ryan

PAGE 36

owever, it shouldn’tcome as a shock thatnot all of us live our

short lives like this. Scotlandhas an emerging subcultureof what is branded ‘straight-edge’. No smoke. No drugs.No alcohol.Straight edge emerged amidthe mid-1980s hardcore punkscene. Since then, a wide va-riety of beliefs and ideas havebeen incorporated into themovement, including vegetar-ianism, animal rights, com-munism and HareKrishna-like beliefs. In manyparts of America, straightedge is actually treated as agang by law enforcement of-ficials. Iris sits down with straight-edge wannabe journalist andblogger Neil Thomason togarner an insight into astraight edge life, beginningwith how he became straight-edge, and why.“I discovered straight edge ata really important point in my

life. I was22 and hadcom-pletelybottomed

out emotionally – I’d previ-ously quit university, split upwith my first long-term girl-friend and just had nothinggoing for me. As a conse-quence I was boozing toomuch because it seemed likethe only way to make anykind of human contact and Iwas under the illusion it gaveme confidence.Luckily I’ve never smoked ortouched drugs due to hangingaround with an older crowdgrowing up and seeing the ef-fect it had on them, so Ididn’t have that crux aroundmy neck as well. If I had Idon’t know how different mystory might be.”Neil obviously went througha rough patch in this periodof his life, but living straight-edge isn’t the first thing thatcomes to mind to sort outyour problems. Why not justget a new girlfriend and stopdrinking as much?“Looking back at journalsfrom that time is kind of gut-wrenching as it’s really ap-

parent I was desperate forchange and wasn’t happywith my life. That Christmasmy sister bought me ‘Get inthe Van’ by ‘Henry Rollins’. Ican’t overstate how much ofan impact Rollins had on myearly twenties and this bookwas pretty much my bible asit documented not only hislife on the road with BlackFlag, and the insane DIYwork ethic the band had, butalso all the great bands fromthe beginnings of hardcoremusic – this resulted in mydiscovery of Minor Threat. Ididn’t suddenly adopt thestraight edge lifestyle afterlistening to Minor Threat, Ilet it sink in, and if the musichadn’t been so awesome Ithink the message might havebeen lost on me to be honest.But I really paid attention andit started to make more andmore sense. Because of thiscombination of HenryRollins’ work ethic and IanMackaye’s (Minor Threat)message I realised there wasso much more to life thanwhat I was doing and Ineeded to squeeze every sec-ond out of it.I gave up drinking, started

weightlifting, and generallyjust became very intense. I’vechilled out a lot since then. Ialso started writing more reg-ularly – short stories, articles,and reviews – and decided Iwanted to pursue a career injournalism. It has been nearlysix years since this wholeprocess began and I’ve onlyjust come to the end of thatjourney. I have never lookedback once.”Throughout the past 5-10years we’ve seen straightedgeget more and more publicity,partly due to the wide expo-sure of WWE wrestler CMPunk, which can be seen asboth a blessing and a curse.This is because more peoplehave adopted it as a lifestylebut also drop out of it so eas-ily and they see it as a gim-mick.The term ‘straightedge’ hasalso almost become a catch-all term somehow. It’s alifestyle that walks hand-in-hand with the punk and hard-core movement, but isn’tsomeone who isn’t into punkmusic and doesn’t drink or dodrugs just called a teetotal? Neil has lived his life thisway for a long time, but it

doesn’t come without its crit-icisms.“I’ve not had many problemswith other people in regardsto living this way. Universitywas hard going in the firstyear; meeting new people, so-cialising and constantly hav-ing to explain myself, but ifanything I dare say peoplewere more impressed or in-trigued about me by the fact Ididn’t drink. People would al-ways buy me shots of cran-berry juice when they wereall doing Sambucca so Ididn’t feel left out, which wasalways pretty funny!I guess the only major back-lash I’ve had is from other‘straightedgers’ believe it ornot – I’m not a vegetarian orvegan like a lot of others andso I occasionally get hasslefrom them, which to me is hi-larious as these are also thepeople who say they hatethose who preach about thestraightedge lifestyle or rub itin peoples faces, but thengladly do those exact thingswith that aspect of their lives.It’s absurdly contradictoryand laughable at times.When I think about it,straightedge to me is counter-

culture, because to me theculture of society, in Britainespecially, is to go out anddrink and get messed up.”When asked for any lastwords on the topic, Nealadds:“For the record - I’m notmuch of a ‘scenester’, I don’troll with a crew and as muchas I love it I don’t just listenspecifically to hardcore music– I discovered the lifestyle onmy own and I live it on myown. It allows me to get thebest from myself as I havenothing hindering me – Idon’t think I would be whereI am now if I hadn’t given updrinking, as it focused my at-tention from being a bit of awaster to wanting to dosomething I love for a liv-ing.”As ‘Toby Morse’ of Americanpunk-rock band ‘H2O’ oncesaid: “One life, one chance”.

In Scotland, we’re well known forour drinking culture. Across the

globe we are known for the finestwhiskies to the worst binges.

H

owever, it shouldn’tcome as a shock thatnot all of us live our

short lives like this. Scotlandhas an emerging subcultureof what is branded ‘straight-edge’. No smoke. No drugs.No alcohol.Straight edge emerged amidthe mid-1980s hardcore punkscene. Since then, a wide va-riety of beliefs and ideas havebeen incorporated into themovement, including vegetar-ianism, animal rights, com-munism and HareKrishna-like beliefs. In manyparts of America, straightedge is actually treated as agang by law enforcement of-ficials. Iris sits down with straight-edge wannabe journalist andblogger Neil Thomason togarner an insight into astraight edge life, beginningwith how he became straight-edge, and why.“I discovered straight edge ata really important point in my

life. I was22 and hadcom-pletelybottomed

out emotionally – I’d previ-ously quit university, split upwith my first long-term girl-friend and just had nothinggoing for me. As a conse-quence I was boozing toomuch because it seemed likethe only way to make anykind of human contact and Iwas under the illusion it gaveme confidence.Luckily I’ve never smoked ortouched drugs due to hangingaround with an older crowdgrowing up and seeing the ef-fect it had on them, so Ididn’t have that crux aroundmy neck as well. If I had Idon’t know how different mystory might be.”Neil obviously went througha rough patch in this periodof his life, but living straight-edge isn’t the first thing thatcomes to mind to sort outyour problems. Why not justget a new girlfriend and stopdrinking as much?“Looking back at journalsfrom that time is kind of gut-wrenching as it’s really ap-

parent I was desperate forchange and wasn’t happywith my life. That Christmasmy sister bought me ‘Get inthe Van’ by ‘Henry Rollins’. Ican’t overstate how much ofan impact Rollins had on myearly twenties and this bookwas pretty much my bible asit documented not only hislife on the road with BlackFlag, and the insane DIYwork ethic the band had, butalso all the great bands fromthe beginnings of hardcoremusic – this resulted in mydiscovery of Minor Threat. Ididn’t suddenly adopt thestraight edge lifestyle afterlistening to Minor Threat, Ilet it sink in, and if the musichadn’t been so awesome Ithink the message might havebeen lost on me to be honest.But I really paid attention andit started to make more andmore sense. Because of thiscombination of HenryRollins’ work ethic and IanMackaye’s (Minor Threat)message I realised there wasso much more to life thanwhat I was doing and Ineeded to squeeze every sec-ond out of it.I gave up drinking, started

weightlifting, and generallyjust became very intense. I’vechilled out a lot since then. Ialso started writing more reg-ularly – short stories, articles,and reviews – and decided Iwanted to pursue a career injournalism. It has been nearlysix years since this wholeprocess began and I’ve onlyjust come to the end of thatjourney. I have never lookedback once.”Throughout the past 5-10years we’ve seen straightedgeget more and more publicity,partly due to the wide expo-sure of WWE wrestler CMPunk, which can be seen asboth a blessing and a curse.This is because more peoplehave adopted it as a lifestylebut also drop out of it so eas-ily and they see it as a gim-mick.The term ‘straightedge’ hasalso almost become a catch-all term somehow. It’s alifestyle that walks hand-in-hand with the punk and hard-core movement, but isn’tsomeone who isn’t into punkmusic and doesn’t drink or dodrugs just called a teetotal? Neil has lived his life thisway for a long time, but it

doesn’t come without its crit-icisms.“I’ve not had many problemswith other people in regardsto living this way. Universitywas hard going in the firstyear; meeting new people, so-cialising and constantly hav-ing to explain myself, but ifanything I dare say peoplewere more impressed or in-trigued about me by the fact Ididn’t drink. People would al-ways buy me shots of cran-berry juice when they wereall doing Sambucca so Ididn’t feel left out, which wasalways pretty funny!I guess the only major back-lash I’ve had is from other‘straightedgers’ believe it ornot – I’m not a vegetarian orvegan like a lot of others andso I occasionally get hasslefrom them, which to me is hi-larious as these are also thepeople who say they hatethose who preach about thestraightedge lifestyle or rub itin peoples faces, but thengladly do those exact thingswith that aspect of their lives.It’s absurdly contradictoryand laughable at times.When I think about it,straightedge to me is counter-

culture, because to me theculture of society, in Britainespecially, is to go out anddrink and get messed up.”When asked for any lastwords on the topic, Nealadds:“For the record - I’m notmuch of a ‘scenester’, I don’troll with a crew and as muchas I love it I don’t just listenspecifically to hardcore music– I discovered the lifestyle onmy own and I live it on myown. It allows me to get thebest from myself as I havenothing hindering me – Idon’t think I would be whereI am now if I hadn’t given updrinking, as it focused my at-tention from being a bit of awaster to wanting to dosomething I love for a liv-ing.”As ‘Toby Morse’ of Americanpunk-rock band ‘H2O’ oncesaid: “One life, one chance”.

PAGE 38By Gregor Crawford

IN THEFLESH

Christopher Brookmyre talks about hisnew book 'Flesh Wounds.

cottish author,Christpher Brook-myre, has been writ-

ing crime novels since the1990s. His dark sense of hu-mour has led to him beingone of the most respectedauthors of today with ahuge fan base. His latest novel, ‘FleshWounds,’ is the last in a seriesof books revolving around thecharacter Jasmine Sharp fol-lowing his novels ‘Where theBodies are Buried’ and ‘Whenthe Devil Drives.’ Christophertalks about his childhood, hiscareer as a writer and latestnovel.Christopher has always beeninterested in writing storiesfrom a young age, readingbooks by Robert Ludlum, IanBanks and Ian Fleming, buthe originally began writingfor newspapers before becom-ing a published author. Hisbig break came in 1997 when

his first novel, ‘Quite UglyOne Morning,’ was published.“You need a bit of luck some-times but by the time I gotthat break I had a good bookto present.” He had started outhis writing career in journal-ism to gain life experience be-

fore going onto publishednovel writing: “I wasn’t oneof those who went into jour-nalism and then decided towrite fiction. I got into jour-nalism because I needed somesort of job after I left univer-sity.” As a freelance journalist, hededicated more of his time towriting novels but ‘QuiteUgly One Morning’ was hisfourth attempt at writing anovel worth publishing. His

first three unpublished bookswill remain unpublished as hesays, “They generally weren’twhat I wanted to be doing. Iwas writing stuff that Ithought would get publishedrather than what I wanted todo. Once you get the massiveboost in confidence of gettinga publishing deal, you thenwant to go and do somethingnew. You don’t want to goback over the old stuff.” Because it took a few at-tempts before Mr Brookmyresuccessfully got a novel pub-lished, he offers his advice toaspiring authors: “Write whatyou love. Write what you’vegot a real passion for becauseone thing that is always easierto write about is somethingthat you’re really interestedin. It’s something that I havedone. If it’s not fun to writeit’s not going to be much funto read.” Another key factorin novel writing according to

“Write whatyou love.”

By Rebecca Ryan

PAGE 39

S

IN THEFLESH

Christopher is to make surethat you have enough experi-ence in life before you gointo novel writing: “It’s notjust about getting a job; it’sactually about getting expe-rience in life. I rememberone or two writers back inthe early 90s who had beenpublished when they werevery young; their first bookwas really interesting butafter that, essentially all theycould write about was beinga writer.” Christopher oftenrefers to journalism in hisnovels, showing he usessome of his past experiencesas an influence in his writingtoday.Mr Brookmyre has a greatinterest in crime and darkhumour; something which hesays is a result of past bookshe has read in his teen years.With electronic books nowbecoming increasingly popu-lar and the recent success ofchildren’s book franchises,he believes there is a farwider range of books foryoung people to read todaythan there was when he wasa teenager. “I rememberreading ‘Lord of the Flies’about five times when I wasin my early teens simply be-cause it was one of the fewdepictions of kids my agethat was realistic. Obviouslyit was horrific, but it rangmore true than any other de-piction of teenagers.” The

success of books like theTwilight series has meantthat publishers are now moreinterested in publishingbooks for younger people,meaning there has been ahuge surge in books aimed atthis market. “All they(American publishers) wantto publish right now areyoung adult and if you canchuck a vampire in there

they are all the happier.” Theincreasing popularity in elec-tronic books means that peo-ple have greater access todifferent kinds of books thatyou may not necessarily findin your local book store, andyou can carry hundreds ofbooks on one device ratherthan have a bookcase full ofthem. “They’re very handywhen you’re going on yourholidays. I mean half of mysuitcase used to be booksand now when I’m going onholiday I just take my Kin-dle.” He has seen a huge in-

crease in purchases of hisbooks via electronic devices,“my editor said last weekthat when it comes to paper-backs, Kindle sales are farout-stripping them.” His last book ‘Bedlam’ re-volved around the world ofvideogames and involved aman being stuck inside thevideogame he played as ateenager. He claims got theidea for this novel after hewas approached by a gamesdeveloper asking if he wouldhelp him make a new first-person shooter game. “I wasexcited by the idea of agame that somehow re-flected the way games haddeveloped so I came up withthe idea of a guy being in-side a videogame but, thebig kind of hook was he wasnot the hero because it is al-ways you are the man ofdestiny when you are in agame.” ‘Bedlam’ had quite alot of popular videogamereferences included in it –there’s a reference to thegame Half Life at the verybeginning of the book.Christopher admitted tobeing a fan of videogamesand fascinated by the newgaming culture that hasspawned from them and isprevalent in society today. “Iused to play for hours andhours a week, racking upridiculous phone bills. Iwrote about that when I

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wrote ‘A Big Boy did it andRan Away’, I wanted to re-flect this…vibrant subculturethat was developing aroundit.” Christopher Brookmyrehopes the videogame plot ofhis new book will interestteenagers who maybe do notread books a lot. In pastbook signings, he remembersmany parents attempting toget their teenage children toget into reading with the helpof his books: “I certainly geta lot of parents who say tome at events that either theywant to get a book signed forone of their kids or they say‘we are going to get this andtry and get our son toread’… I hope with a booklike ‘Bedlam’ aboutvideogames and videogameculture will maybe tempt afew to turn the page thatwould otherwise not go nearit.”Christopher Brookmyre’slatest book, ‘Flesh Wounds’will be available in August.“Sometimes I wonder how Imanaged to write it soquickly because it’s huge,well it’s not the longest bookI’ve written but it’s prettylong, it’s about 130,000words.” The book will be thethird of the Jasmine Sharpnovels, following ‘Where theBodies are Buried’ and‘When the Devil Drives.’ It follows Jasmine as shetries to find out more about

her father who was murderedbefore she was born. Thestory also follows a Glaswe-gian Detective Superinten-dent who has to deal with thecity’s crime problem and isinvestigating the murder ofan infamous gangster. MrBrookmyre has a lot of re-curring characters who popup in several of his novels

but one of the most popularof these characters is inves-tigative journalist, Jack Par-labane. He has not been seenin a Brookmyre book nowfor nearly eight years sincehis appearance in ‘Attack ofthe Unsinkable RubberDucks.’ “It seems like theright time (to bring Parla-bane back) because postLeveson and also there’s akind of tension between oldmedia and new media, printjournalism and more imme-diate forms of reporting. So Ithink it’s probably time tobring him out of cold storageand unleash him once

again!” Characters like JackParlabane appear in bookswhich act as sort of sequelsto other books, some of hismore recent books whichwere extremely popular suchas ‘Pandaemonium’ releasedin 2009, have left fans hun-gry for more. “I’m neverquite sure what story isgoing to precipitate and oncethe story idea comes up I’llthink ‘is this a new storywith a need for new charac-ters or is this somethingthat’s appropriate for Parla-bane for instance?’” ‘Pan-daemonium’ ended in acliff-hanger which has leftmany people wonderingwhat will happen next: “Peo-ple keep asking me to do asequel to ‘Pandaemonium’because they want to knowwhat happened to Adnan andI do intend to but, again it’s aquestion of waiting for theright idea.” ChristopherBrookmyre has already gotplans to do a follow up novelafter the events of ‘Bedlam,’“I’ll be writing a ‘Bedlam’sequel for sure because‘Bedlam’ is set up in a waythat it creates a whole uni-verse with which I can doanything I want. If peoplelike it, I’ll write loads ofthose because it was greatfun.” Trying to decide whichof his books were hisfavourites proved to be animpossible choice for Mr

“So I think it’sprobably timeto bring himout of coldstorage and un-leash him onceagain!”

PAGE 41

Brookmyre; having written17 books now, he ex-claimed that the questionwas impossible to answerbecause he likes so manydifferent parts of differentbooks. “The book I’m hap-piest with I would have tosay is ‘Pandaemonium,’ be-cause I think, with every

book you write, you have akind of platonic ideal of thebook you would like towrite and then you justcompromise and compro-mise and compromise…‘Pandaemonium’ was theone that comes closestwhere I did achieve every-thing I set out to achieve

with that book. It’s one ofthe books I’m happiestwith.” His book, ‘FleshWounds’ will be availablein August, 2013 in book-stores and on electronicreading devices.

PAGE 42

avid Wood’s adaptation of MichelleMagorian’s famous children’s novelmakes for a beautifully touching piece

of theatre that will keep adults as engrossedand emotionally invested as any of the chil-dren in the audience, if not more so.The play begins with William Beech, an evac-uee, arriving in Dorset and being placed with‘Mister Tom’ – Tom Oakley, played by OliverFord Davies – because his mother has insistedthat she will only allow him to be evacuated ifhe can be placed with church goers or someonewho lives near a church. The Christian up-bringing implied by this is quickly torn toshreds when William is revealed to be a timidchild, always on edge and always too scared torelax – not least because he arrives covered

from the neck down in bruises where hismother has beat him mercilessly. In addition tothis he cannot read or write, is malnourished tothe point he cannot keep any food down andhas never slept in a bed before coming to Mis-ter Tom’s care – having always slept on thefloor below it, whilst his mother slept in it. It isclear that the horrors William has escaped inLondon are not merely down to Hitler. Tom’swife has died several years before, along withtheir only child, and this has turned Tom into agruff recluse. The scene is set therefore forboth parties’ lives to be enriched by this cross-ing of paths.There is certainly a possibility of clichés andtwee moments within the show – not least ofall due to the Vera Lynne soundtrack, albeit

Goodnight MisterTom.

At least until the curtains come upagain. A review of Glasgow’s rendition

of a classic.

By Roisin Stewart

T

PAGE 43

beautifully sung by Georgina Sutton; and thelack of any character development bar the cen-tral storylines and even then mainly only forTom, William and William’s new found friendand fellow evacuee Zach. The backdrop of vil-lagers are very much a romanticised, Enid Bly-ton ‘by Jove old chum’ country lot, however thestoryline keeps it dark enough to be kept grip-ping – as no amount of country sunshine, picnicsand village halls can gloss over war, child abuse,mental illness and the constant presence of death– though we only see one actually death occuron stage. Oliver Ford Davies is wonderful as ever as Mis-ter Tom, giving a natural, organic performancewhich is understated yet all the more over-whelming for it. Although the program did notspecify which two out of the six boys coveringthe roles of the tentative William and the con-trastingly flamboyant Zach were performing,both boys were truly wonderful in their respec-tive roles. Despite being very young both por-trayals were mature, convincing and, mostimportantly, touching. For various reasons allthree of these performers bring a tear to the eyeand by the end of the show the desired catharsishas certainly been achieved. Acknowledgementmust also be made to the fantastic Elisa de Grey,the puppeteer behind Mister Tom’s sheepdogSammy, who is as huge part of the family of theshow as any of the human characters – some-thing all pet owners will appreciate and under-stand. As with the stage adaptation ofMagorian’s “War Horse” the puppeteer behindthe animal is so skilful that the audience alto-gether forget they are watching a puppet – themovement, interaction with the other actors and

the ‘dog sounds’ vocals are all sheer perfectionand De Grey is outstanding on the basis that shedoesn’t at all stand out. Another aspect of the show which must be ac-knowledged is Robert Innes Hopkins’ set – a su-perbly simple design, which is merely abackdrop of a railway station, complete withvintage rail posters, and a floor when we openon the idyllic country setting. However when thestory transports us to London to come face toface with William’s abusive mother the ‘floor’ islifted to become the dingy grey backdrop ofWilliam’s home. Why this is particularly signifi-cant is because when it comes back down to re-turn us to the country it does so on William’shead – conveying physically the trapping ofWilliam in the dark, grey hole that London – andhis mother by extension – is to him.Overall this was a wonderful piece of theatre andI would recommend it for people of all ages –the only downside was the Vera Lynne sound-track, not because it doesn’t suit, but becausewar time songs seem to cue every audiencemember over a certain age joining in - badly andout of tune, drowning out the trained singer onstage. However, you may be luckier with youraudience than me.

imon Higlett is a happily seriousman; his eyes twinkle behind the

round glasses, yet convey a sense of deepthought and care. He thinks before he answers, doesn’t say aword he doesn’t mean and is a great sense ofcalm in the bustling Elmbank Crescentheadquarters of Scottish Opera – despite thedeep, robust laugh that escapes often, seem-ingly from his toes.

It is this curious mix of frivolityand solemnity no doubt that allowed Higlettto create the ‘steam punk’, Victoriana cos-tumes for Scottish Opera’s 2012 run of “TheMagic Flute” – for which he has been nomi-nated for The International Opera Awardsfor Costume Designer. “People think opera is all about being seri-ous, it isn’t. Opera is sexy and seductive andfun. The Magic Flute is seen as...” he trailsoff, thinking of the right way to phrase whathe means. There is a long pause, duringwhich Higlett expels air from his nostrils,sighs loudly and bites his lip – an inner ar-gument taking place. I tentatively suggestopera for beginners, but he shakes his head,then nods it, then sways like a snake to a,well, a flute.“Not opera for beginners. I think many peo-

ple like The Magic Flute, long termers andnewcomers, but, yes, in a way it is opera forbeginners. It is more accessible. I wanted to

really grab that. It was the 50th anniversaryof Scottish Opera. We wanted it to be spe-cial. And fun. The Magic Flute is fun, it’s al-most a pantomime. There are certainlyelements of panto. So it can attract a newaudience, we wanted to show that opera isnot fat and old and retired – opera is young,sexy. Opera is fun. And the steam punk cos-tumes were one of the best ways to conveythat – to connect with that young audience.”

Our interview is taking place at theend of March, and the International OperaAwards take place on April 22nd 2013.Higlett is up against three others for theCostume Designer award, yet it doesn’tseem to be at the forefront of his mind.“I am working, all the time. Currently I amworking on costumes for two theatre pro-ductions – Blithe Spirit, which begins inMay and A Day In The Life Of Joe Egg,which begins at the end of April. They’revery fun, very contrasting. Not quite as funas steam punk and opera costumes, mindyou, but fun. I enjoy designing for opera – Ican go to town. But yes, I keep busy. I trynot to think too much about what if, unlessit’s about fabrics and shapes.”Perhaps the fact Higlett has already wonawards for his designs makes this less of abig deal for him – he has won two Theatri-cal Management Association Best Designawards for Elizabeth Rex and Three Sisters,

The Man Behind An interview with Scottish Opera’s ‘Magic

Flute’ Costume Designer, Simon Higlet, who

was nominated for International Opera Award.

The Sequins By Roisin Stewart

S

PAGE 5PAGE 45

“People think opera isall about being seri-ous, it isn’t. Opera issexy and seductive

and fun.”

as well as the Helen Hayes Award Best De-sign award for his work for Lady Winder-mere’s Fan at the Shakespeare Theatre inWashington, DC - but he shakes his headfervently at this suggestion.“It’s a huge deal. A huge, huge deal. I’mquite overwhelmed. As I said I love doingthe opera costumes – they are so much moretheatrical than the likes of A Day In TheLife, for example, we’re renting those cos-tumes. And renting is sometimes the bestway, especially when you want somethingthat looks authentically lived in. But I am adesigner. I love to design. I think all cos-tumes help set up a character, sure. But Iwill always love doing the more theatricalcostumes – like the “The Queen Of TheNight” dress. That was incredible. Some-times when you create something you standback, look at it, and can’t quite believe youdid it. That was one of those costumes. As adesigner opera and big productions arewhere I can really sink my teeth in, so itwould be incredible to win it. That’s proba-bly half the reason I try to keep so busy inthe lead up!” The laugh erupts from himagain, rich and full before dying away andadding: “Though of course, I don’t reallystand a chance. I probably shouldn’t eventhink about it.” “I will try and keep busy the day before – Iam flying back to London tomorrow but Iam going to be working up till the day be-fore and then I’m at a loss. I’m in theprocess of having a new suit made, beingvery flamboyant and going bespoke. So Ishall be nipping in and out of Saville Row,but the day before might be pushing it forthat! I’ll probably fill my time with toomuch nervous drinking and eating, so that Idon’t fit into my new suit the next morning.Or just turn up to the ceremony so out of it Ican’t understand what anyone’s saying orwhether I’ve won or not.”

It’s incredible though, whether he wins ornot, to have actually been one of four cos-tume designers nominated for the interna-tional awards. The other three are renownedParisian couture designer Christian Lacroix,Olga Polikarpova and Buki Shiff.“It’s an honour. Truly, an honour. Thoughit’s always an honour to work on a produc-tion like The Magic Flute where I do get toreally get creative. And [Sir] Thomas Allenis always amazing to work with. We alwaysseem to have a perfectly in sync vision for aproduction – this was my third ScottishOpera production – or four if you includethe revival of The Barber of Seville as well– and I have been very luck to work withsuch a wonderful, visionary director.”And as for the Scottish Opera cast? How dothey compare to working with MaggieSmith, Dame Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgraveand Richard E. Grant, amongst others?“Wonderful,” Higlett sings, “The Scottishare truly wonderful, and the talent at Scot-tish Opera – even when it’s not, strictlyspeaking, Scottish, is definitely amongst thebest in the world. I always hope to be backwith Scottish Opera very, very soon.”

hen Mark Andrewswalks into the cafe inthe Glasgow Film

Theatre he isn’t swarmed byfans, screaming, jumping upand down, or trying to gethim to take pictures withthem. Instead a few peopleglance in his direction, theireyes widen and they then turnback to their plate, cup orcompanion. A few wave athim, to which he lifts afriendly hand in return. Thisis not the reception of afilm or a television star;this is a calm admira-tion for him, a respectthat quiets tonguesrather than looseningthem. The people in thisroom are in awe, one thatis palpable in the atmos-phere since he has arrived.This man is a Pixar employee,and not just any employee atthat - Mark Andrews was oneof the directors of Brave, win-ner of the 2013 Oscar for BestAnimated Feature.In addition to being one of thedirectors of Brave Andrews isalso currently spending twoweeks in Glasgow mentoringand working with students atThe Glasgow School of Art,so – first thing’s first – why ishe so interested in Scotland?

“I have Scottish ancestors - onboth sides. We literally cameover on the Mayflower – asmerchants, not puritansthough! Definitely not puri-tans! Anyway, yeah I had fam-ily from Torridon in WesterRoss in the Highlands - I’verecently found out exactlywhere they were from, previ-ously I only knew they were

from

theHighland area so I’m quiteproud now I know exactlywhere they were from - theywere haberdashery merchantsfrom what we can gather, theymoved to London and thenwent over on the Mayflower.On the other side our ances-tors are part of a Scottishcolony living in France. Soyeah, long time ago but forsome reason it’s always inter-

ested me, the one I’ve felt thestrongest pull to.” Speaking later at his talk inthe Film Theatre he explainsthis lineage and pull as: “Onone side there’s Scots, Germanand Jewish heritage and on theother side there’s Scots, Eng-lish and Dutch. I figure thatmakes my heritage Scottishbecause out of all those groupsthe Scottish would win in thefight cause there’s two lots ofthem.Despite the flippant way he

talks about it later on at ourone on one interview thereis a genuine sense of pridein his Scottish heritage, andhe explains how, after yearsof wanting to, he finally

took his first trip to Scotlandin 1998. “I remember havingto leave and seriously consid-ering emigrating. Obviously Icouldn’t, I couldn’t have thecareer I wanted here at thattime unfortunately, but I didfeel really sad about going –and I knew I’d be back. I’ddone a lot of research beforecoming here and bought a lotof books, which funnilyenough became the books thata lot of the Brave research wasdone on; I was certainly thego-to guy when Brenda cameup with the whole idea of

doing Brave as everyone knewhow much I loved Scotland.But genuinely, I can’t describethe pull I feel to this greatcountry of yours.”So Brave wasn’t actually hisidea? “No, no the originalconcept was all Brenda’s.”Brenda Chapman was theother director of Brave and theimpression I’d had was that asco-directorsthey hadworked to-gether, but An-drews explainsthat this wasnot the case.“I was involved from the start,almost as a Scotland expert ofsorts. As I said, I was prettymuch the go to guy becauseeveryone knows how much in-terest I have and whatever Ididn’t know off hand I had allthe books to go look it up, so Ibrought a lot of my own booksin and stuck them down in themeeting room and then I was-n’t involved much unless theyhad specific questions orwanted a recommendation onsomething. I was working onother stuff, but something justwasn’t working right on Brave– they had been at it for toolong, everyone was tired and, Ican’t explain it, you can’t ever

be totally sure of why a filmisn’t working, but somethingwasn’t working – so come theeighteen month deadline,eighteen months before itneeds to be finished, I get acall. They wanted me to comein and take over Brave. So Idid.”Eighteen months to go, andhe’s just taken over a film set

in a country he’s passionateabout? What was the firstthing he did?“I fired everyone who’d beenworking on it up till then. As Isaid, it wasn’t working. It wasnothing to do with anyone’scapability – it’s Pixar forChrist’s sake, everyone whoworks there is at the top oftheir game – but everyone wastired. You can only stare at aproject for so long beforeyou’ve given all you can giveto it and can’t contribute any-more to it. They had reachedthat point, so I told them theywere free of this project, to gorelax, catch up on some sleepand have a break. Artists can’twork because they have to, it’s

not a 9-5 job, you can’t bringsomeone in and say ‘Right,switch it on – be creativenow’, it just doesn’t work likethat. If they had given all theycould that was it, they didn’tneed to be on the project any-more. So I hand-picked thepeople I wanted and we wentfrom there. We re-storyboarded it, retold the story,

came up with a new plot.The original characters andthe central story was nearenough all there, but wedefinitely changed a lot.”Pixar have recently con-

firmed that Finding Nemo,one of their most popularfilms, will have a sequel. WillBrave?“I’m not against it, but I’dnever make a movie for thesake of it. There would needto be a story there, but if I hadthe story then yeah – defi-nitely! If nothing else I’d getinvolved early and get myselfon the research trip this time!”When he speaks later to hisaudience he reveals a similarscenario happened withPixar’s Ratatouille. Again atthe eighteen month deadlineAndrews was called in. Firinghalf the crew, yet again, but hesaved the day one more time.After saving Ratatouille An-

The Best Failure There IsAn Interview with the director of one of Scotlands newest touritst attraction; Brave.

W

hen Mark Andrewswalks into the cafe inthe Glasgow Film

Theatre he isn’t swarmed byfans, screaming, jumping upand down, or trying to gethim to take pictures withthem. Instead a few peopleglance in his direction, theireyes widen and they then turnback to their plate, cup orcompanion. A few wave athim, to which he lifts afriendly hand in return. Thisis not the reception of afilm or a television star;this is a calm admira-tion for him, a respectthat quiets tonguesrather than looseningthem. The people in thisroom are in awe, one thatis palpable in the atmos-phere since he has arrived.This man is a Pixar employee,and not just any employee atthat - Mark Andrews was oneof the directors of Brave, win-ner of the 2013 Oscar for BestAnimated Feature.In addition to being one of thedirectors of Brave Andrews isalso currently spending twoweeks in Glasgow mentoringand working with students atThe Glasgow School of Art,so – first thing’s first – why ishe so interested in Scotland?

“I have Scottish ancestors - onboth sides. We literally cameover on the Mayflower – asmerchants, not puritansthough! Definitely not puri-tans! Anyway, yeah I had fam-ily from Torridon in WesterRoss in the Highlands - I’verecently found out exactlywhere they were from, previ-ously I only knew they were

from

theHighland area so I’m quiteproud now I know exactlywhere they were from - theywere haberdashery merchantsfrom what we can gather, theymoved to London and thenwent over on the Mayflower.On the other side our ances-tors are part of a Scottishcolony living in France. Soyeah, long time ago but forsome reason it’s always inter-

ested me, the one I’ve felt thestrongest pull to.” Speaking later at his talk inthe Film Theatre he explainsthis lineage and pull as: “Onone side there’s Scots, Germanand Jewish heritage and on theother side there’s Scots, Eng-lish and Dutch. I figure thatmakes my heritage Scottishbecause out of all those groupsthe Scottish would win in thefight cause there’s two lots ofthem.Despite the flippant way he

talks about it later on at ourone on one interview thereis a genuine sense of pridein his Scottish heritage, andhe explains how, after yearsof wanting to, he finally

took his first trip to Scotlandin 1998. “I remember havingto leave and seriously consid-ering emigrating. Obviously Icouldn’t, I couldn’t have thecareer I wanted here at thattime unfortunately, but I didfeel really sad about going –and I knew I’d be back. I’ddone a lot of research beforecoming here and bought a lotof books, which funnilyenough became the books thata lot of the Brave research wasdone on; I was certainly thego-to guy when Brenda cameup with the whole idea of

doing Brave as everyone knewhow much I loved Scotland.But genuinely, I can’t describethe pull I feel to this greatcountry of yours.”So Brave wasn’t actually hisidea? “No, no the originalconcept was all Brenda’s.”Brenda Chapman was theother director of Brave and theimpression I’d had was that asco-directorsthey hadworked to-gether, but An-drews explainsthat this wasnot the case.“I was involved from the start,almost as a Scotland expert ofsorts. As I said, I was prettymuch the go to guy becauseeveryone knows how much in-terest I have and whatever Ididn’t know off hand I had allthe books to go look it up, so Ibrought a lot of my own booksin and stuck them down in themeeting room and then I was-n’t involved much unless theyhad specific questions orwanted a recommendation onsomething. I was working onother stuff, but something justwasn’t working right on Brave– they had been at it for toolong, everyone was tired and, Ican’t explain it, you can’t ever

be totally sure of why a filmisn’t working, but somethingwasn’t working – so come theeighteen month deadline,eighteen months before itneeds to be finished, I get acall. They wanted me to comein and take over Brave. So Idid.”Eighteen months to go, andhe’s just taken over a film set

in a country he’s passionateabout? What was the firstthing he did?“I fired everyone who’d beenworking on it up till then. As Isaid, it wasn’t working. It wasnothing to do with anyone’scapability – it’s Pixar forChrist’s sake, everyone whoworks there is at the top oftheir game – but everyone wastired. You can only stare at aproject for so long beforeyou’ve given all you can giveto it and can’t contribute any-more to it. They had reachedthat point, so I told them theywere free of this project, to gorelax, catch up on some sleepand have a break. Artists can’twork because they have to, it’s

not a 9-5 job, you can’t bringsomeone in and say ‘Right,switch it on – be creativenow’, it just doesn’t work likethat. If they had given all theycould that was it, they didn’tneed to be on the project any-more. So I hand-picked thepeople I wanted and we wentfrom there. We re-storyboarded it, retold the story,

came up with a new plot.The original characters andthe central story was nearenough all there, but wedefinitely changed a lot.”Pixar have recently con-

firmed that Finding Nemo,one of their most popularfilms, will have a sequel. WillBrave?“I’m not against it, but I’dnever make a movie for thesake of it. There would needto be a story there, but if I hadthe story then yeah – defi-nitely! If nothing else I’d getinvolved early and get myselfon the research trip this time!”When he speaks later to hisaudience he reveals a similarscenario happened withPixar’s Ratatouille. Again atthe eighteen month deadlineAndrews was called in. Firinghalf the crew, yet again, but hesaved the day one more time.After saving Ratatouille An-

The Best Failure There IsBy Roisin StewartAn Interview with the director of one of Scotlands newest touritst attraction; Brave.

“I fired everyone who’dbeen working on it”

drews decided to call in afavour and get to work onsomething he’d wanted tofor a long time.“I got to do John Carter.Which Disney had ownedthe rights to for... forever.Since before Snow Whiteand the Seven Dwarvestime. But there had justnever been the right timeor technology to do it, but Ireally, really wanted to so Isaid to them ‘I saved this foryou guys, this is what youguys do for me’. Cheeky re-ally, but I got away with it. Idid a lot of concept work forthat and I really believe in thatfilm.”Funnily enough, the film isone that Andrews acknowl-edges didn’t do well – yet hehas his own theories as to whyit didn’t.“I really, really believe in it.It’s a great story and I love vi-sually how it came out. Weput so much time and energyand, well, not to be clichéd,but heart and soul into it. Itdidn’t fail, they did make theirmoney back but it didn’t dowell. Not a lot of people sawit. But that’s the marketing,that’s separate. We can onlymake a film that we think isexcellent and then we hand itover to the marketing depart-ment. What did they dowrong? Well firstly they tookMars out of the title – fromJohn Carter of Mars to JohnCarter. I mean who is JohnCarter? Why do you care

about his story? Well, youcare about his story because

he’s from Mars. They tookMars out the f***ing title, forChrist’s sake – excuse my lan-guage. Did anyone here actu-ally see a trailer for it? Anadvert? No, no you didn’t.And neither did anyone else.But I can’t get angry. Themarketing failure isn’t myfault.”Despite his last sentence it isobvious in these rare outburstsjust how passionate Andrewsis about the work he does, andhow personally invested he isin his art form. So, after call-ing in John Carter as hisfavour in return for his workon Ratatouille, what did heask for in return for his savingof Brave?“Well right now I’m workingon my own animated featurefilm – which I can tell younothing about!”And he won’t tell me any-thing. Nevertheless, before hegoes back to California tocontinue work on this myste-rious project he has anotherfew days on mentoring thestudents at Glasgow School ofArt. As a former student atCalifornia Institute of the Arts

Andrews has been were thestudents he mentors currently

are – sitting inclasses, knowingwhat they wouldlike to do and ab-solutely no cluewhat they’ll actu-ally do.“I’m not an ambi-tious person; I’m

too lazy to be ambitious actu-ally. I’ve always been visual;when I was younger I couldalways keep up with my olderbrother when he was readingcomic books because I couldwork out the stories from thepictures before I could readthe text. We used to go roundto my Uncle Kenny’s house,because he had cable TV andwe’d watch films. I was ob-sessed with films and I likedto draw. But I never put thetwo of them together. I wasactually nearly in the armywhen my brother saw an ad-vert for classes at a commu-nity college in animation –which I went along to just be-cause I liked drawing, didn’treally know what I wanted todo and I got in. From there Iwent on to Cal Arts.”But Mark has ended up atPixar – he surely can’t betelling the truth here, he can-not be so unconcerned withhis career choices and havegot to where he is? Surely thepeople who end up at Pixarare the people with the lifegoals and plans?“When I graduated Cal Arts

animation was in its goldenage – The Little Mermaid, Al-addin – all those classic early90s Disney movies. And thennominated for Best Picture atthe Oscars. That changedeverything; they created aBest Animated Film categoryand acknowledged animationas its own art form, on parwith other films. “I could not get anyone to hireme. And then I got in to workon Johnny Quest, probablybecause no one else wantedthe job. It was awful – but itwas animation work. And it’sa small pool, once your nameis known you just grow. So Idid a string of fails and awfulwork, Quest for Camelot, Os-mosis Jones and Iron Giant.And the director of Iron Giantwas Brad Bird, and the storyperson was Jeff Lynch. I did agood job and then next thingJeff Lynch is working on isSpider-Man with Sam Ramiand he remembers me andnext thing I know I get a callasking if I’ll go work on Spi-der-Man. A few months be-fore that I had been buyingWal-Mart’s own brand valuefood. So of course I say yes.Literally two seconds laterafter I put the phone down itgoes again and I think it’s himcalling back to say he’s madea mistake. It’s Brad Bird, the

director of Iron Giant. He’sworking on The Incrediblesat Pixar and wants me in-volved. I say I’ve just said toJeff I’ll do Spider-Man. Bradsays it’s fine, it doesn’t startfor nine months – ninemonths later I’ve finishedSpider-Man and I’m lockedup in a Pixar contract. I’vegot an agent now and thingsbut I’ve literally fallen fromone thing into another. IronGiant was massive failure – itmade one million and costten times that to make. But Istill did it, loved it, and metthe two people who hookedme up with the jobs thatstarted my proper career andgot me on the path to where Iam now. That’s my story – Idid a lot of crap work, I didany work I could. I didn’tever think I’d end up at Pixar,I just wanted to work in filmor animation.”The interview tied up per-fectly with a piece of goldenPixar coated, Oscar winningadvice from the self pro-claimed best failure there is;showing what he has learnedand passing on his knowl-edge for those who want toget into this sort of industry. “Do not ever wait for the ship– it’s not coming. Go outthere, get experience.”

“Do not ever wait forthe ship – it’s not com-ing. Go out there, get

experience.”

drews decided to call in afavour and get to work onsomething he’d wanted tofor a long time.“I got to do John Carter.Which Disney had ownedthe rights to for... forever.Since before Snow Whiteand the Seven Dwarvestime. But there had justnever been the right timeor technology to do it, but Ireally, really wanted to so Isaid to them ‘I saved this foryou guys, this is what youguys do for me’. Cheeky re-ally, but I got away with it. Idid a lot of concept work forthat and I really believe in thatfilm.”Funnily enough, the film isone that Andrews acknowl-edges didn’t do well – yet hehas his own theories as to whyit didn’t.“I really, really believe in it.It’s a great story and I love vi-sually how it came out. Weput so much time and energyand, well, not to be clichéd,but heart and soul into it. Itdidn’t fail, they did make theirmoney back but it didn’t dowell. Not a lot of people sawit. But that’s the marketing,that’s separate. We can onlymake a film that we think isexcellent and then we hand itover to the marketing depart-ment. What did they dowrong? Well firstly they tookMars out of the title – fromJohn Carter of Mars to JohnCarter. I mean who is JohnCarter? Why do you care

about his story? Well, youcare about his story because

he’s from Mars. They tookMars out the f***ing title, forChrist’s sake – excuse my lan-guage. Did anyone here actu-ally see a trailer for it? Anadvert? No, no you didn’t.And neither did anyone else.But I can’t get angry. Themarketing failure isn’t myfault.”Despite his last sentence it isobvious in these rare outburstsjust how passionate Andrewsis about the work he does, andhow personally invested he isin his art form. So, after call-ing in John Carter as hisfavour in return for his workon Ratatouille, what did heask for in return for his savingof Brave?“Well right now I’m workingon my own animated featurefilm – which I can tell younothing about!”And he won’t tell me any-thing. Nevertheless, before hegoes back to California tocontinue work on this myste-rious project he has anotherfew days on mentoring thestudents at Glasgow School ofArt. As a former student atCalifornia Institute of the Arts

Andrews has been were thestudents he mentors currently

are – sitting inclasses, knowingwhat they wouldlike to do and ab-solutely no cluewhat they’ll actu-ally do.“I’m not an ambi-tious person; I’m

too lazy to be ambitious actu-ally. I’ve always been visual;when I was younger I couldalways keep up with my olderbrother when he was readingcomic books because I couldwork out the stories from thepictures before I could readthe text. We used to go roundto my Uncle Kenny’s house,because he had cable TV andwe’d watch films. I was ob-sessed with films and I likedto draw. But I never put thetwo of them together. I wasactually nearly in the armywhen my brother saw an ad-vert for classes at a commu-nity college in animation –which I went along to just be-cause I liked drawing, didn’treally know what I wanted todo and I got in. From there Iwent on to Cal Arts.”But Mark has ended up atPixar – he surely can’t betelling the truth here, he can-not be so unconcerned withhis career choices and havegot to where he is? Surely thepeople who end up at Pixarare the people with the lifegoals and plans?“When I graduated Cal Arts

animation was in its goldenage – The Little Mermaid, Al-addin – all those classic early90s Disney movies. And thennominated for Best Picture atthe Oscars. That changedeverything; they created aBest Animated Film categoryand acknowledged animationas its own art form, on parwith other films. “I could not get anyone to hireme. And then I got in to workon Johnny Quest, probablybecause no one else wantedthe job. It was awful – but itwas animation work. And it’sa small pool, once your nameis known you just grow. So Idid a string of fails and awfulwork, Quest for Camelot, Os-mosis Jones and Iron Giant.And the director of Iron Giantwas Brad Bird, and the storyperson was Jeff Lynch. I did agood job and then next thingJeff Lynch is working on isSpider-Man with Sam Ramiand he remembers me andnext thing I know I get a callasking if I’ll go work on Spi-der-Man. A few months be-fore that I had been buyingWal-Mart’s own brand valuefood. So of course I say yes.Literally two seconds laterafter I put the phone down itgoes again and I think it’s himcalling back to say he’s madea mistake. It’s Brad Bird, the

director of Iron Giant. He’sworking on The Incrediblesat Pixar and wants me in-volved. I say I’ve just said toJeff I’ll do Spider-Man. Bradsays it’s fine, it doesn’t startfor nine months – ninemonths later I’ve finishedSpider-Man and I’m lockedup in a Pixar contract. I’vegot an agent now and thingsbut I’ve literally fallen fromone thing into another. IronGiant was massive failure – itmade one million and costten times that to make. But Istill did it, loved it, and metthe two people who hookedme up with the jobs thatstarted my proper career andgot me on the path to where Iam now. That’s my story – Idid a lot of crap work, I didany work I could. I didn’tever think I’d end up at Pixar,I just wanted to work in filmor animation.”The interview tied up per-fectly with a piece of goldenPixar coated, Oscar winningadvice from the self pro-claimed best failure there is;showing what he has learnedand passing on his knowl-edge for those who want toget into this sort of industry. “Do not ever wait for the ship– it’s not coming. Go outthere, get experience.”

Andrews’ blog: talesofcolos-sus.blogspot.com

riginally a television movie madein 2001, ‘Trance’ tells the story ofa heist gone as wrong as it can

possibly go. Successful art auctioneer andnot so successful gambling-addict, Simon(played by James McAvoy, similarlyback in his native accent) finds himself apartner in the theft of a priceless Goyapainting with gangster, Franck (VincentCassel) in order to clear his ever amount-ing debt. After some improvising landshim a sharp blow to the head, Simonwakes up in hospital with some missingmemories and one missing painting. Nat-urally, the gang don't take this too well,and after some excruciating torture (notas drawn out as 127 Hours, but will makeyou suck the air through your teeth all thesame) they decide to turn to hypnother-apy to recover Simon's memories of thepainting's whereabouts. Enter RosarioDawson as Elizabeth Lamb, a doctor whomay not be as delicate as her name sug-gests. Within the first session, Elizabethsenses something is not quite right abouther latest client, and by the second, sheworks her way into the gang for a sharecome the payoff. At this point, ‘Trance’kicks into a higher gear.The slick heist-movie of the first act sim-

mers down and makes way for a tonebordering on science-fiction noir. How-ever, it remains just that, sitting on theborder without every fully tipping intothat territory, and it's all the better for it.Boyle and screenwriters Joe Ahearne andJohn Hodge have to be commended fortheir originality. Whereas other filmswould see their characters use technologyto retrieve the lost memory, ‘Trance's’less tech-savvy approach sets it apart andallows for intriguing paths for the story totake, which, for the most part, serve thefilm well. Using Elizabeth as the link be-tween Simon's mind and the physicalgang lets the characters mix without theinteraction seeming forced and, eventu-ally, an interesting love/lust-triangle be-tween the three main characters is builtup, leaving the lost painting MacGuffinto take a back seat. By this point,“Trance” starts to add more threads ofgrisly character development and mys-tery, so much so that the film is almostforced into stepping up into an evenhigher gear. However, in an effort to double the ten-sion, this ultimately triples the confusion.The film starts to flip from scene to sceneso quickly that it's almost hard to keep

After years away - spent trailing American canyons and Indian

slums, director Danny Boyle is returning to his British roots.

O

By Roisin Stewart

up. The further the film goes, the more is-it-real-or-not scenes are layered on top ofeach other and then substantially blurredbefore you have the chance to really takeit in. It's a pity ‘Trance’ isn't beingbranded as science-fiction considering itwill leave you scratching your head likesome of the genre's best. Internet debatesand forum-based arguments will no doubtrage on for years concerning each andevery available theory for the fate ofthese characters. Unfortunately, themore the story reveals of these char-acters and their backstories, the lesslikely you are to connect with them,and ultimately, this is ‘Trance's’ mainflaw. By the end, feelings of sympa-thy for some characters will be longgone, leaving you slightly cold tothem for repeat viewings.

That aside, ‘Trance’ is as entertaining andsuspenseful a film as any of Boyle's otherwork. Here we have one of the most styl-ish directors of modern cinema on topform successfully diving into a genre yetuncovered in his line of work. Of all thequestions left for the audience to ask by‘Trance's’ closing credits (and there aremany), one begs an answer above others:what can't Danny Boyle do?

By Roisin Stewart

PAGE 54

You wake up in the morning and pour your-self a cup of coffee, sipping it while readingthe news on your smart-phone as you getready to head out for another day at work.You hop in the car and listen to the melancholicvoice talking about the latest political scandalas you let the heating warm you up, wishingyou could have stayed just another hour in bed.Perhaps you’re worrying about what to makefor dinner and what time the mother-in-law iscoming round for lunch at the weekend, buthow often do you take a step back and feelthankful for all you have?Many young adults across Scotland have beengiven the opportunity to do just that, andchoose to take a month, or even a year to leavetheir comfort zones for Third World Countries

and help people in need, and live amongstthem, teaching, and perhaps more importantly,learning as they do.There are currently 3 billion people across theworld living in poverty, without the luxury of ahot coffee in the morn-ing, or the promise of awelcoming home to re-turn to after a long,hard day.Before embarking on her degree course atGlasgow Caledonian University, LaurenMunro, an 18 year old from Edinburgh volun-teered to spend 8 weeks in Malawi, one of themost impoverished countries in the world.After travelling to Africa alone, she arrived atthe volunteer accommodation that was to be-

come her home for the following months. Shefound herself there as the only volunteer.Recalling the uncomfortable conditions shewas faced with, she speaks of how she missedher family, the depth of the darkness she slept

under at night and theguilt she felt just formissing somethingbetter.

“I saw how people were living, what they weregoing through, what they had to do just to getby, how little they had, and it showed me howlucky I was. It was an absolutely amazing ex-perience.”The organisation Lauren worked with is calledSekanawo, which literally translates to Englishas ‘laugh with them’, and she did, she says, but

not as much as she cried. The organisation pro-vides home-based care to those too poor to ac-cess it professionally, and provides nutritionaladvice and support to many people sufferingfrom HIV/Aids. She describes the feelings sheexperienced while visiting these people as ‘in-tense’.“They had a book called ‘Where There is NoDoctor’ and went around visiting people theyknew were ill and diagnosing them based onthis book.” She speaks quickly, an obvioussense of worry in her words.“These people aren't qualified or anything,most of them haven't even finished school. Isaw one girl who had a hole in her back from aburst abscess, a deep hole, and she couldn't af-ford to go and get it treated so they were just

“I fell in love with Uganda”

Young and Not Care FreeBy Niamh Milne

ou wake up in the morning and pour your-self a cup of coffee, sipping it while readingthe news on your smart-phone as you getready to head out for another day at work.You hop in the car and listen to the melancholicvoice talking about the latest political scandalas you let the heating warm you up, wishingyou could have stayed just another hour in bed.Perhaps you’re worrying about what to makefor dinner and what time the mother-in-law iscoming round for lunch at the weekend, buthow often do you take a step back and feelthankful for all you have?Many young adults across Scotland have beengiven the opportunity to do just that, andchoose to take a month, or even a year to leavetheir comfort zones for Third World Countries

and help people in need, and live amongstthem, teaching, and perhaps more importantly,learning as they do.There are currently 3 billion people across theworld living in poverty, without the luxury of ahot coffee in the morn-ing, or the promise of awelcoming home to re-turn to after a long,hard day.Before embarking on her degree course atGlasgow Caledonian University, LaurenMunro, an 18 year old from Edinburgh volun-teered to spend 8 weeks in Malawi, one of themost impoverished countries in the world.After travelling to Africa alone, she arrived atthe volunteer accommodation that was to be-

come her home for the following months. Shefound herself there as the only volunteer.Recalling the uncomfortable conditions shewas faced with, she speaks of how she missedher family, the depth of the darkness she slept

under at night and theguilt she felt just formissing somethingbetter.

“I saw how people were living, what they weregoing through, what they had to do just to getby, how little they had, and it showed me howlucky I was. It was an absolutely amazing ex-perience.”The organisation Lauren worked with is calledSekanawo, which literally translates to Englishas ‘laugh with them’, and she did, she says, but

not as much as she cried. The organisation pro-vides home-based care to those too poor to ac-cess it professionally, and provides nutritionaladvice and support to many people sufferingfrom HIV/Aids. She describes the feelings sheexperienced while visiting these people as ‘in-tense’.“They had a book called ‘Where There is NoDoctor’ and went around visiting people theyknew were ill and diagnosing them based onthis book.” She speaks quickly, an obvioussense of worry in her words.“These people aren't qualified or anything,most of them haven't even finished school. Isaw one girl who had a hole in her back from aburst abscess, a deep hole, and she couldn't af-ford to go and get it treated so they were just

“I fell in love with Uganda”

giving her paracetamol for it.”Cases like this are common across many ThirdWorld Countries, where more than two thirdsof all the world’s deaths happen every year.Other organisations such as Project Trust re-cruit volunteers to teach children in schools inthe developing world and provide meals tothose too poor or unwell to fend for them-selves.Beth Cairns, a 19 year old from Stirling spenta year living in Uganda, teaching English in alocal school. She jokes about the amazementshe felt upon returning to the UK and re-famil-iarising herself with the things she had previ-ously taken for granted – being able to go tothe toilet at night without a torch and a jacket,and the blisters she received when she finallydonned her old converse shoes after not wear-ing anything on her feet for so many months.Like the majority of volunteers, she returnedwith a whole new outlook on life. Happy toget up in the morning to set off for her univer-sity classes, ecstatic to sit at her laptop andtype away absent mindedly at the courseworkshe couldn’t find the motivation to do before.“I saw a lot of pain and worry from the secondI arrived, and instantly I felt selfish for all thetimes I’d felt hard done by back home. Someof the people I met were living with aids, somehad lost every member of their family, somewere so hungry they didn’t have the strength

to do anything but stare at us strange, wealthywhite people who had arrived to give them thehelp they weren’t aware was available.”“I fell in love with Uganda”, she smiles, flash-ing a picture of her laughing with a group ofyoung Ugandan children.“They were happy though, that’s what givesme the strength to shake off the day beforewhen I wake up in the morning. If these chil-dren can laugh, then I know I can get throughanything.”Every year billions of people in the world suf-fer because of poverty, and every year, moreand more young adults choose to do some-

thing selfless, and in return are blessed withimportant life lessons. We are all guilty oftaking things for granted sometimes, and it isrefreshing to see so many young peoplechoosing to act selflessly when many in thegeneration have been branded as irresponsi-ble and ungrateful. There is hope.

For more informationabout becoming a volun-teer visit:http://www.do-it.org.uk

A step behind thejewellery

Taking a look behind the glitz of thejewellery to the award winning busi-ness of Sheila Fleet and Mother &Daughter combo, Ruby and Rose.

ith the likes of Scotland’s Deputy FirstMinister, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, and on

actors in the TV series Taggart wearing SheilaFleet Jewellery, it makes you wonder. How didshe get there? Getting her inspiration from the natural envi-ronment in Orkney, the sea, sky, land and richarchaeology are her muses. Sheila had worked in the jewellery sector for26 years before deciding to set up on her own.She felt it was time to try it for herself; havingcontrol over the design, creation and finishingof each of her collections. She gave some ad-vice for anyone wanting to do something simi-

lar: “Take things that interest and inspire you andinterpret this into your own ideas to createyour own designs. So for example for some-one that lives in the Borders, look at local in-fluences of the area or a place of naturalbeauty and use this to inspire you.”It took Sheila five to ten years to establish her-self and her business but since beginning shehas won over six awards, has concessionstands in the prestigious store Jenners and hasan ever growing team of employees to help heralong the way.

W

Also on the Jewellery scene is “Ruby and RoseJewellery.” A mother and daughter act (MarionPaterson and Emily McIntyre) which was forgedafter from a therapeutic hobby; after Marion wasdiagnosed with Dystonia. Iris spoke with one of the partners of the com-pany, Emily. Although the business is small and they are stillestablishing themselves they have had their jew-ellery worn by Model, and Vic Reeves wife,Nancy Sorell and Emmerdale Star, Lisa Riley. The two ladies are known for their: “a love ofall things Hollywood, from the old style andclassic Hollywood Glamour to the more recent

and up to date styles of the reality programmes,‘The Real Housewives…’ and ‘Keeping UpWith the Kardashians’.” This is where they pull their inspiration for theirdesigns. Their collections also change with theseasons to reflect on colour trends, which are infashion “but at the heart of each design is stillthe same effortless glamour that we love.”“We are still establishing ourselves, starting up asmall business is very difficult and takes up a lotof your time. It’s hard competing with the biggercompanies and their massive PR budgets.”You can find both these companies on Face-book.

By Emily Lang

Scottish Football

Top ten facts for peoplewho don’t know the

first thing about football.

ONE. Scotland is made up of 4 profes-sional divisions; SPL (Scottish Premier

League), SFL (Scottish Football League)Division 1, Division 2 and Division 3.

TWO. There are a total of 42 professionalclubs in Scotland, stretching from Ross County inDingwall to Berwick Rangers who are located on

the borders.

THREE. Scotland’s two biggest and successful clubs are located in Glasgow – Celtic andRangers sharing 98 league titles between them.

FOUR. Rangers recentlyhad serious financial prob-

lems and were demoted intoDivision three as a

punishment.

FIVE. Queens Park wereestablished in 1867 and arecurrently Scotland’s oldest

football club. They play theirhome games at the nationalstadium, Hampden Park andget a crowd on average 500

people every week.

SIX. Hampden Park is lo-cated in Glasgow. It used toplay cup finals; the complexcan hold a capacity crowd

of 52,063.

SEVEN. Scotland’s biggest stadium is Celtic park – 60,355 whilst the smallest is Clifton-hill; home to Albion Rovers – 1,238.

EIGHT. The Scottish Cup is the world’ssecond oldest national cup competition, onlybeaten by England’s FA Cup. The ScottishCup consists of every Scottish club in thefour leagues including teams from non-

league outlets also.

NINE. Five out of six cities in Scotlandhave a fierce football rivalry:

•Glasgow – Celtic vs. Rangers •Edinburgh – Hearts vs. Hibernian

•Dundee- Dundee United vs. Dundee •Stirling – Stirling Albion vs. East Stirling

•Inverness – Inverness Caledonian Thistle vs.Ross County

TEN. Scotland’s first ever game took place on 30 November 1872 between Scotland andEngland. The match finished 0-0.

By Danny Collins

PAGE 60

he Emirates Arenaand Sir Chris HoyVelodrome is soon to

be at the centre of theworld’s attention whenGlasgow holds the forth-coming 2014 Common-wealth Games. The new £113m complex willbe used for cycling and bad-minton in the upcominggames and has caught the eyeof many with its flashy de-sign and its top-class facili-ties - which are now alsoopen to the public. The most distinguished fea-ture of this brand new sportsarena is undoubtedly theVelodrome, which is gearingup to serve as a major plat-form to promote the sportwithin

Scotland. The Velodromewas opened by Sir Chris Hoyhimself and how it was onlyfitting to name the site afterScotland’s most successfulathlete. A 250 metre cycling track canbe permanently viewed by atotal of 2,500 spectators, withan extra 2,000 seats to bebrought into the arena for thestart of the games. The trackwas specifically designed byGerman entrepreneur, RalphSchuermann, and he has usedonly the finest pine fromSiberia to shape up the plat-form for where athletes willperform on the world stage.The track was opened on Oc-tober 6, 2012 and has alreadybeen put to effective use withthe Emirates playing host to

the first round of the UCITrack Cycling World

Cup last year. Nextup, the arena

will play host

to the UCI Junior TrackWorld Championships in Au-gust this year which will thenbe followed up by the Com-monwealth games in summer2014. However, the cycling track isnot the only stunning featureof this magnificent complex;the Emirates Arena also holdsa flexible multi-sports arenawhich will see the Badmintontake place. With a total of5,000 spectators able toanalyse a performers everymove, the Badminton will bea highly anticipated event,with every seat guaranteed tobe filled. At the moment, the sportscomplex is used for athletics,currently holding a 200 metrerunning track, high jumpequipment and long jumpequipment. But with spe-cially designed hydraulicbends on the running track,an easily managed conversioncan be taken place, turning an

athletics arena into avast sports hall

which can com-fortably holdtwelve fullbadmintoncourts. Basketballfans can use

Wheels of SteelBy Danny Collins

Circumnavigating a be-spoke sports arena.

T

Glasgow’s own team ,‘Glas-gow Rocks’, as an excuse tovisit the site as this is wherethe Basketball team currentlyplay their home games. A6,500 capacity crowd flockin every second week towatch the Rocks take onteams throughout Britain. The complex isn’t just beingsaved for the upcomingCommonwealth games how-ever; it’s also open to thepublic to use at the moment.The state of the art gym isavailable to the public and isbranded one of the biggestgyms in the city. With thegym overlooking both theVelodrome and the IndoorArena, it’s undoubtedly oneof the most motivating places

in the countryto conduct aworkout andtraining. The EmiratesArena and SirChris HoyVelodrome isbased on Lon-don Road in the east end ofGlasgow, directly acrossfrom Celtic Park – whichwill also be put to usethroughout the Common-wealth Games. The complexalso stands next to the ath-letes’ village which is stillcurrently under construction. Location of this sports com-plex is extremely effectivefor fans as it is located onlyfive minutes away from Dal-

marnock train station. Fre-quent train journeys to Dal-marnock will be available toensure that spectators willnot miss any part of thegames or atmosphere. The stage is set for 2014 tobe a spectacular year in Scot-land’s history and with the£100m+ investment in thesebrand new facilities, Glas-gow is on the right path toensuring it will be.

By Danny Collins

The Commonwealthgames are tobe held in thesummer of2014.

hat a couple of years Calum Mainhas had. From living in a small vil-lage called Eaglesfield just nine

miles from the border to moving to Sweden,in the hope of pursuing his dream of playingprofessional table tennis.Undoubtedly, he is rapidly becoming one ofScotland’s hottest prospects in the sport.From a very young age, Calum has alwaysdreamed of playing table tennis at the highestpossible level. With the CommonwealthGames coming up next year in Glasgow, thiscould prove to be his big chance to announcehimself on the world stage.With the Commonwealth Games Squads ex-pected to be announced in the next couple ofmonths, Calum certainly didn’t hold back onsharing how much it would mean to him if hemanaged to achieve his hope of making thetable tennis Commonwealth squad:“Making the Commonwealth Games Squadhas always been a dream of mine and this isone of the main reasons which influenced megoing abroad to train. However, Scotland has avery strong group of players coming throughwho are all obviously wanting to play in 2014.All players must qualify the year before, whichis difficult. Of course I would love to be therebut it’s going to take a lot of hard work andsome good wins to qualify.”The recently turned twenty-year-old startedplaying table tennis as a child and has takenthe next step of his career by moving to Swe-den in order to train full time, surely increasinghis chances of becoming one of the best in the

country:“I’ve been playing table tennis since I was inprimary five. It’s taken a lot of dedication sohopefully it will all work out for me. I actuallyonly decided when I was in 5th year in schoolthat I wanted to play the sport for a living. Ilooked into moving abroad to play and afterone of the national competitions in Glasgow, aSwedish coach got in touch with me, thingssort of just took off from there.”“I’m now coming up to my second year oftraining full time in Sweden and I still love it.”Based in a small town called Eslov, one of themost southern points of Sweden, Calum trainsfull time for five days every week. As well asChina, Sweden is renowned for producing thevery best table tennis players and coaches withpast world champions such as Jan-Ove Wald-ner and Jorgen Persson originating from theScandinavian country.With this in mind, Sweden would seem themost favourable place to train in relation togiving Calum the best possible chance to makehis own national squads respectively. Theyoung athlete was more than happy to sharewith us how life is going over in Sweden andhow hard his training has been:“In Sweden I train twice a day for roughly twoand a half hours each session five days a week.On top of this, we have physical work, mostlyin the gym, and long 5k runs – which can bepainful. It’s a tough programme but the bene-fits are there.”Calum also shared with us of his decision to doextra training on the weekends, just so that he

By Danny CollinsMain ManBatting banter back and forth with ping pongstar Calum Main.

W

cango that extra mile in order to givehimself the best possible chanceof representing his nation in2014:“There is no set training on Sat-urdays or Sundays but I like doa wee bit extra for myself andspend a couple of hours in thegym on either one of the days.Sometimes on the weekendsthere are competitions, whichI prefer, plus we can alsoplay in Swedish leaguematches which are always a good challenge.”The Commonwealth Games being held in Scot-land next summer does have its advantages; anumber of new facilities have been built whichwill be used to accommodate the many differentsports. The table tennis will be held in theNorth West of Glasgow at Scotstoun SportsCampus, along with the squash.With a capacity of just over 2,500 people, thatplace is guaranteed to be filled to the brim with

Scot-land fans hoping to see theirown athletes take gold. There is then extra an-ticipation that with more home grown athletescompeting in the games; there is more pressureon them to win medals.When asked if Glasgow holding the gamesadds any extra pressure in qualifying for thesquads, Calum shared his feelings:“I find that its massive motivator having thecommonwealths in Scotland. It would be such aproud moment if I managed to achieve making

PAGE 64

them. However, with Scotland being thehost nation, I personally do feel thatadded extra pressure when I’m playing incompetitions.”Although there may be pressure added,this in no way hinders the young Scot’sdesire to make the CommonwealthGames, stating that this would be a lifetime achievement:“It would mean a lot to me to qualify toplay in 2014; I moved to Sweden in thehope of it and have really trained hardand worked hard. I would love the endoutcome to result in a place on the squad.It would be an achievement of a lifetimeto be able to represent my country in thecommonwealths; this is something I havealways dreamed of.”Although he is still young, Calum has

achieved a lot in his career so far, win-ning competitions up and down the coun-tries including the Scottish NationalChampionships. There have been occa-sions in the past where the pressure ofplaying a professional sport whilst stillmaturing has affected an athlete’s per-formance.However, Calum insists that his feet arefirmly routed to the ground:“I don't know what I can achieve, I wouldlike to hope I can represent my country atthe commonwealths whether it is 2014 or2018 or whatever. I would like to think Ican achieve that at some point. That ismy overall goal.”

8th of June 2013Sponsor someonetoday.

What about oil& gas?

In January 2012, Wood MacKen-zie published a report showing that in

2011 capital investment in the UK oil in-dustry was £7.5 billion, the highest ever,with these high levels of investment con-tinuing for the next few years. What this

tells us, is that there are many moreyears of oil & gas production -

and revenues - left in Scot-tish waters.

Why be inde-pendent?

Yes Scotland Claim that beingindependent is based on a simple

truth. It is fundamentally better for allof us if decisions about Scotland’s fu-

ture are taken by the people whocare most about Scotland - that is

by the people of Scotland.

What about the NHS and health?Scotland already has an independent NHS to the rest of the

country We also control our own prescriptions and it is the theScottish givernment who introduced free prescriptions for all.

Though it would mean the government would have controlover the likes of abortion laws - Scottish Health Secretary

Alex Neil wishes to reduce the 24 week limit. Would we staywithin the EU?

The SNP would like Scotland tostay within the European Union no mat-

ter what the outcome of the referendum is. Although, EU commission president JoseBarroso has cast doubt on any hopes of a

smooth transition, pointing out that a newstate, like any other, would have toapply for membership and be ap-

proved by other members.

Do we keep the RoyalFamily?

Independent Scotland would keep theQueen as head of state and remain partof the Commonwealth.Though manypeople have claimed they would like

another referendum to decide whetherto keep the monarchy or not.

When is thereferendum?18th of September

2014

Do we get tokeep the flag?

Yes. The flag is ours tokeep!What about un-

employment?The SNP plan to put more poli-

cies forward and try and im-prove the current situation.Though, it is not a definite.

Scottish Indepen

dence Referendu

m 2014

IRIS asked you what you wanted to know about Scottish Independence.

Yes Scotland and Better Together have united to answer your questions.

Would we staywithin the EU?

The SNP would like Scotland tostay within the European Union no mat-

ter what the outcome of the referendum is. Although, EU commission president JoseBarroso has cast doubt on any hopes of a

smooth transition, pointing out that a newstate, like any other, would have toapply for membership and be ap-

proved by other members.

Do we get tokeep the flag?

Yes. The flag is ours tokeep!

Scottish Indepen

dence Referendu

m 2014

IRIS asked you what you wanted to know about Scottish Independence.

Yes Scotland and Better Together have united to answer your questions.

Currency wise, would we keep thepound?

An independent Scotland would continue to use pound sterling,though George Osborne has claimed that the details of a “mone-tary union” between the two nations have been not been consid-

ered by the SNP and claimed that independence would meanhigher interest rates in Scotland.

Would we have enough defence?There are plans for a “Scottish Defence Force” being formed. It would of course be smaller than the British force, though it

would consist of over 12,000 soldiers and 20 to 25 ships. Doubts remain over whether UK armed forces personnel will be

able to “switch allegiances”. Some politicians also believe that we would be better together as our defences would be stronger

together.

Would we keepthe nuclearweapons?

Scotland would not have anynuclear weapons and would not

allow Britains Tridantsubmarines init’s docks any longer. Many believe

this would make the country vulberable.

Will I need a pass-port to cross the

border?If Scotland stays part of the EU,no you will not. Though some Westmin-ster politicians would like broder control

between Scotland and Britain to be tighter.There may be ID needed, but not neces-

sarily a passport and certainly not ifwe stay within the EU.

By Emily Lang

I R I S

ON THE COVER:Photo: Scottish hip hop

talent Konchis. Photographer: Thomas

Slack PhotographyTDSLR

CREDIT TO:Photographers: Alan McAteerLaura Hughes

Rogue One Thomas Slack

I R I S:Editor:

Gregor Crawford

I R I S would like to thank every-one that reads this magazine.

Designer: Emily Lang

Sub Editors and Reporters:Danny Collins

Emily Lang Niamh Milne Rebecca Ryan Roisin Stewart