Wigtown Book Festival 2023
A ten day literary celebration in Scotland's National Book Town
Founded in 1999, the 10-day Wigtown Book Festival is now one of the UK's best-loved literary events. This year the programme has over 200 events and activities for all ages, including music, theatre, food and visual arts.
We run children and family events across the year.
Big DoG Children's Book Festival is a stand alone festival in the spring, bringing leading children's authors to Dumfries for a weekend of family events.
The Big Wig programme runs alongside Wigtown Book Festival, providing events with industry leaders and entertainment for ages 2-12.
Dumfries and Galloway is a wide-reaching region with low social mobility, so many children are not able to visit our Wigtown and Dumfries festivals, so we bring a festival to them with the Big DoG Schools Tour. Last year, we reached over 2000 students in 5 days, spanning the length and breadth of Dumfries and Galloway, with over 1000 books donated.
We are committed to providing creative and professional development for young people.
Wigtown YA is our dedicated young adult programme, hosting YA authors and panels during Wigtown Book Festival.
Hooked festival for young people focuses on professional development in the arts sector with author talks, entertainment and workshops with leading practitioners.
Several previous interns, ambassadors and event staff have gone on to become leading industry professionals in events and publishing.
Events across the year are free for ages 14 - 26
Founded in 1999, the 10-day Wigtown Book Festival is now one of the UK's best-loved literary events. This year the programme has over 200 events and activities for all ages, including music, theatre, food and visual arts.
We run children and family events across the year.
Big DoG Children's Book Festival is a stand alone festival in the spring, bringing leading children's authors to Dumfries for a weekend of family events.
The Big Wig programme runs alongside Wigtown Book Festival, providing events with industry leaders and entertainment for ages 2-12.
Dumfries and Galloway is a wide-reaching region with low social mobility, so many children are not able to visit our Wigtown and Dumfries festivals, so we bring a festival to them with the Big DoG Schools Tour. Last year, we reached over 2000 students in 5 days, spanning the length and breadth of Dumfries and Galloway, with over 1000 books donated.
We are committed to providing creative and professional development for young people.
Wigtown YA is our dedicated young adult programme, hosting YA authors and panels during Wigtown Book Festival.
Hooked festival for young people focuses on professional development in the arts sector with author talks, entertainment and workshops with leading practitioners.
Several previous interns, ambassadors and event staff have gone on to become leading industry professionals in events and publishing.
Events across the year are free for ages 14 - 26
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:07 [Music]
00:35 [Music]
00:42 [Music]
00:52 [Music]
01:19 My name is Adrian Turpin. I am the Artistic Director of the Wicked Temple Festival.
01:24 So, 25th year. Obviously, you know, I've been for a lot of organisations in the last two or three years.
01:31 It's been really difficult after Covid. You know, last year we probably had about 70% of the audiences that we had before the pandemic.
01:39 And it really feels like this year we're kind of back with, you know, full marquees, town absolutely buzzing at the weekends.
01:47 You know, it just feels a little bit like we're back in the old days actually. It's quite nice.
01:53 I think what's been really noticeable is that the sort of weekends and people coming down for the weekend,
01:59 it really feels like that's back to how it was before.
02:04 So, we'll have about 20,000 people coming through town, going to events over the 10 days.
02:11 You know, last weekend we had, I think we had Nicholas Sturgeon, we had Hamza Yassin from Strictly,
02:19 you know, all these, Gavin Esler, all these kind of big tent events.
02:23 And this weekend we got Nigel Planer, Kate Moss, you know, same sense of excitement, Virgil Keane.
02:30 You know, people love that. It gets crowds in, it gets the locals in, it gets people from out of town in, you know.
02:36 And that's the thing I really like about this festival, I think, is the fact that we've managed to kind of blend those audiences.
02:44 We've got the local audience, some of those who've come here for a whole 25 years, but we've also getting, you know, tourists coming in.
02:52 And a lot of actually mix between the two. You see people making friends and talking to people in queues.
02:58 And it's such a small town that even with hanging out around events, you know,
03:03 I remember last year, you know, we sort of go for a drink and there'd be Jeremy Bowen standing by the bar, you know, buying people a drink.
03:12 You know, it's really informal. And that's, I think that's part of what makes it, it's just got this really informal, lovely atmosphere,
03:18 especially when the sun is out late today.
03:21 Variety is really built into what we do. And we really do think of ourselves as trying to provide something for everyone.
03:28 So, you know, on the one hand, we've got, as I say, we have the big ticket events.
03:34 Like we had a debate last week with two former first ministers. We've got an NHS debate today.
03:42 You've got your kind of, you know, Judy Murray's, Louise Minchin's, those kind of people.
03:49 And then we've but we've also got a lot of we like to do a lot of local history, local heritage.
03:54 We like to get people out. We've got night walks this week where we're taking people out with this, with headphones on.
04:01 And it's like a kind of night walk with music and poetry and talk and stargazing.
04:09 You know, we like to use what we've got here and a lot of what we've got is landscape.
04:14 We've got landscape, we've got we've got local history and we also like to celebrate Scotland's books.
04:20 So we've got, you know, a whole series of brilliant first debut novelists from from Scotland.
04:30 You know, that our meet and drink is probably, I would say, nonfiction like a lot of book festivals.
04:36 But but we're a pretty broad, we're a pretty broad church.
04:39 You know, tonight we've got a Kayleigh, got music. You know, we've got visual arts, the whole the whole caboodle.
04:47 And that's always been, I think, for us, the sort of, you know, it's about the experience of coming here.
04:56 And so if you come down here, yeah, you go to you go to events, but you also go and look around the bookshops and you also go out to eat.
05:05 And you also, you know, go and go for a walk or go on a foraging trip or go on a bookshop tour or whatever there is that we're doing in that year.
05:15 So I mean, those are all things in the programme this year.
05:18 My name is Sally Avrabach. I'm 16 years old. And this poem is called The Golden Frame.
05:25 And what love this world can contain is on the highest shelf in a golden frame.
05:31 Look up, admire, don't touch, aspire.
05:37 Split the world and feel the pain and stab its back and curse its name and never touch the golden frame.
05:45 Never touch the golden frame.
05:52 Sometimes a covering came loose as a body hit the wooden planks, unraveling to reveal a chin or an ear.
06:01 We were rich. This had always been clear to me.
06:05 We ate well and our house had many rooms.
06:09 My name is Tara Johnston and I was performing today at the Wodimbook Festival with Stanza as one of the Scotland's six young markers.
06:19 It went really well. It was it was a very exciting opportunity.
06:22 We were all really glad to be here and I really enjoyed it.
06:26 It was nice to get to see everybody again and just to get to be in the poetry world again for another another bit of time.
06:35 It's been since March since we all performed last.
06:38 And how important is it for you to come to a festival and actually perform?
06:44 I think it's very important, especially for young people who are doing poetry.
06:50 It's not it's not a big world nowadays, so it's nice to come and be like fully immersed in the world of of books and poetry with other people that are your age.
07:01 My big takeaway is is probably just how much of a community it all is and and how much fun you can have just just getting into the act of everything.
07:12 And seeing so many other people who feel the same way about poetry and about literature that you do.
07:17 I would say do it because I'm exactly the same.
07:20 I'm a very I'm a very shy person and I was very nervous for weeks before coming here today, you know.
07:26 But in the end up, it's so worth it and you have so much fun.
07:30 And I would just say like any way that you can find to get your stuff out there is as good.
07:34 I just do it. I would say he refused less and repeated his favorite saying.
07:40 Everything that must happen is written down. Our hour is marked and it is not in our power to take from time a portion which nature refuses us.
07:53 So I'm Andy Stewart. I'm a children and young people's producer here at Wigtown Festival Company.
07:59 So it is really, really important for us engaging with Stanza, Scotland's international festival of poetry and to get young people from across the region involved.
08:08 We're really lucky that three of this year's young markers come from Dumfries and Galloway and the other three from across Scotland.
08:16 It's really important for them to be able to share their work, to have a platform and hopefully get noticed by some of the publicists in the room today.
08:26 And it's just a really good opportunity for them to build their skill sets, public speaking and just to get their work out there.
08:33 [Music]