Friday 29th July : 8pm

Join Dumfries and Galloway Bat Group for an illustrated talk about bats, followed by a leisurely bat walk at the Mill and in the nearby woods.  We will provide bat detectors, giving you a fresh understanding of these fascinating flying mammals.

17th April 3.30 – 5.00

As part of The Big Lit Festival

Songwriter/composer Alison Burns loves to write for community choirs – songs with lush beautiful harmonies and simple text that are easy to learn by ear but satisfying and special to sing. Many of her songs have found their way into the repertoire - and hearts - of singers across the UK, and increasingly the USA and Australia. In this concert, which offers a rousing finale to BIG LIT 2016 her renowned Castle Douglas based Feral Choir perform some newly written songs of hers and by other contemporary writers. £5

Sunday 17th April   2.00 – 3.00

As part of The Big Lit Festival

Jane Austen in the Making

Actress Karin Fernald explores some of Jane Austen’s earliest works in this intriguing one-woman show. Written while Austen was in her teens, these farcical and anarchic stories, short novels and plays were never meant for publication, but to entertain family and friends.   Disconnect from ipods and ipads, smartphones and twitter, and  enter the I8th century. (One unlikely heroine ends her career up in The Highlands)

£8.00

Saturday 16th April  4.30 – 5.30pm

As part of The Big Lit Festival

Celebrating the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s death

Actor and broadcaster Peter Marinker discusses and reads from the 29 year old Shakespeare’s  sonnets expressing his unconditional, platonic love for his patron, the third Earl of Southampton, the beautiful 19 year-old, cross-dressing womanizer Henry Wrothesley. In a fascinating exploration based on the late Ted Hughes’ Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being we glimpse the personal history of the greatest poet of the English language.

£8

Saturday 16th April  3.00 – 4.00pm

As part of The Big Lit Festival

Kenneth Steven was inspired to write A Song Among the Stones by a talk about early Celtic hermits thought to have made the difficult and dangerous journeys from Iona to seek solitude in Iceland. It was first broadcast by Radio 3’s The Verb and went on to become a choral work by composer John Hearne. Then world renowned harpist Wendy Stewart composed music to be woven through and around the sequence. Wendy and Kenneth have gone on to perform it many times in different corners of Scotland.

£10
Sponsored by the Scottish Book Trust

Saturday 16th April  1.30 – 2.30pm

As part of The Big Lit Festival

With old photographs, poems and a summary of his philosophy, Dr Christine Kupfer explores the life and thought of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore was a polymath who reshaped Bengali poetry, literature, music, art and theatre. He was honoured with the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913 for Gitanjali. India still celebrates him as one of its greatest cultural heroes. Dr Kupfer, author of a book on Tagore’s philosophy and education, talks about Tagore’s life, worldview and his educational experiments at his Indian ashram.

£8.00

Saturday 16th April  10.30 – 11.30am

As part of The Big Lit Festival

Writer, photographer, and exhibition and book designer Phil Cope will take readers on a series of surprising journeys: travels through time, through our contested histories, through the responses of our poets and writers, and through the inspiring territories of our changing beliefs, in his illustrated talk on the sacred springs and holy wells of Scotland.

£8.00

See additional associated event - a free guided walk to Rutherford’s Well at Anwoth (weather permitting!)

Friday 15th April  3.45 – 4.30pm

As part of The Big Lit Festival

World renowned Scottish harpist Wendy Stewart entertains with a programme of Gaelic and Scots song  highlighting the poetry of both languages and the links in culture and history.

£5.00