David's Blog

Last month, we welcomed the artist Chris Dooks to Woodend Barn for a mini-residency.  Chris is a doctoral researcher at the University of the West of Scotland and a respected sound and lens-based artist.

During the two days he was here, Chris spent a lot of time in the wild garden and allotments, exploring the sounds and space of the two places and also interviewed a number of volunteers, staff and members of the public who were in the Barn during that time.  He's produced the first piece exploring his time here, entitled Gardening as Astronomy.

  Wow!  We had a brilliant night with some of Edinburgh's finest on Friday the 17th of March.  The soon to be absolutely massive Meursault travelled up with Wounded Knee for a night in the country; complete with bothy ballads, blisteringly loud guitars and a whole clutch of new Meursault songs from their upcoming 3rd Album.

I can't believe it's a year already.  So much has happened.  It's a year today since I joined the team at the Woodend Barn!

We've had disagreements along the way but I don't think I've worked anywhere else with such a nice atmosphere and a genuine passion for the work.  Everyone really wants to make a success of the Barn and it shows in everything we do.  When your passionate you'd expect a couple of disagreements but they're never serious, just proof that we all believe in what we're doing.

It's my first blog of 2012 and I'm rather excited.  I had a great relaxing festive period, enjoyed the fireballs in Stonehaven and have come back to the barn ready to face the year ahead.

The first treat was discovering the new delights on Buchanans menu.  Lots of wee bites and savoury snacks to keep us going in the office.  I also got far too excited about getting a new diary.  It's a sad day when stationary is what gets you excited. 

My winter coat is now hanging on the coathook in the barn office; my scarf draped over it and my gloves stuffed deep in the pockets.  There's even a torch snuggled in there somewhere.  I've also put the heating back on the timer. 

All this means that autumn is upon us and winter is round the corner.  Apparently there's snow in the Cairngorms already.  Instead of the hyperactive chirping and swooping of swallows, martins and swifts, the sky is full of honking geese as they fly back and forth from their feeding grounds each morning and night.

One of the things we discussed at my interview for the Barn was how to grow our audience and attract new people to the venue.  It's a tricky thing and there's no easy solution.  The Barn was already putting into place a number of things such as hiring Sam Thom our Digital Media Co-ordinator to train everyone in producing content for this site, facebook etc and we've been actively using them since, but one area that could be improved was programming for that new audience.

Although the weather is doing it's best to convince us otherwise, we are in the midst of summer here in Banchory which means it's technically our quiet period.  Many of our customers are away, the staff and volunteers take their holidays and bands are all away playing festivals.

So it's been a quiet month, but in the middle of this oasis of calm we have the sold out Laura Marling show tonight!  Hooray! 

Here at Woodend Barn we love films.  We love films so much we thought we'd start a club so we could all talk about them and put on our favourite films to share with the good people of Deeside, this is where you come in.

Well, it's been another hectic week in the barn office!  I'm taking a weeks holiday soon and so we've been training some student volunteers to help on the box office while I'm away, please be gentle with them!  Kirsty and Heather are both very capable and it'll be great to have some input from them while they're in the office, perhaps they'll give us some tips on great new bands or come up with an imaginative way to promote our shows. 

 We are absolutely delighted to announce that Brit Award winner for Best Female Artist 2011, Laura Marling, is playing the barn! 

She'll be here on Friday July 22nd as part of her highland tour and tickets go on sale Saturday 28th May at 10 am on this here website then on Monday via the box office.  Please don't come to the box office over the weekend looking for tickets as there's a wedding on :)