I did manage to get up to Aberdeen for Nuart 2023, I travelled up on Friday, with my mate Jim and booked into the Lost Guest House on Bon Accord Street. Once we had checked in and unpacked, we then went for a belated lunch, before nipping into the local Tourist Information shop to pick up a festival map. Map in hand we went for a wander to see what we could find.
The theme of this year’s festival is Rewilding, a fairly topical theme as we try to regain our space and recover from industrial decline. As we had the time this year, we thought we would sit in on some of the Nuart Plus programmes, our first one was the Fight Club in the Spin Pub on Littlejohn Street, this was a lively affair with two sides arguing over the topic ‘Is professionalisation killing art…’, it was all good fun and the beer was OK too. On Saturday afternoon we visited the Art Gallery to hear an interesting talk by Aida Wilde on her contribution to the festival and how she worked with students from three Aberdeen secondary schools – including young refugees who have fled war-torn Afghanistan and Ukraine – to create a stunning mural for Nuart Aberdeen 2023, unfortunately, her time ran short before she could finish her talk, we would have liked to hear more. Our next session was again an interesting one with a discussion by KMG, Snik, Eloise Gillow and Tamara Alves, it was good to hear them speak with such passion about their work.
Jim's travels 