This week in the Gracefield Office. . .

Colin and Rhiannon in the office at Gracefield Arts Centre.

The past week has largely been spent tying up the final push of press coverage and advertising for Spring Fling. Another thing we’ve been planning to do this year is to commission a photographer to take some specific images of the event that we can then use to publicise various elements of Spring Fling in future (as well as providing a record of the 2009 event). We put this out to tender last month and the job has gone to Angus Bremner (http://www.bremnerphoto.co.uk/) whose work many of us recognise from the stunning images he shot for last year’s Wigtown Book Festival programme. Angus is based in Edinburgh but his parents live just outside Castle Douglas so he does quite a bit of work in the region and is a big fan of Dumfries and Galloway .The other big job has been getting some publicity material designed for Tim Taylor’s residency in Kirkcudbright and sending it out to the Spring Fling mailing list and local organisations. We’re pretty pleased with the result (see picture attached), especially given the distraction of working at Gracefield while the building is undergoing a big refurbishment. Just as the final countdown to Spring Fling began, a team of builders arrived - bearing hammers, drills and anything else that bangs, whirrs or clatters - and started orchestrating a symphony of disruption around our desks. What this picture (sent earlier), which was taken a few weeks ago, doesn’t show is the electrician currently up a ladder re-wiring the ceiling lights above our heads and the flock of confused quilters who wandered through our office earlier this morning having misguidedly taken a scenic route from Gracefield Galleries to the Café Bar.

By Rhiannon Batten, Spring Fling coordinator extraordinaire!