LGBT History Month: Out in the Hills

Over 3 days in January, Pitlochry Festival Theatre hosted Out in The Hills, an LGBTQ+ arts festival of performance, music, exhibitions and discussions. Marking LGBT History Month, our Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Keith Paterson, reflects on the experience.

Although Age Scotland was not taking part formally, the event organisers happily distributed our publications, several members of our LGBTQ+ Network attended in a private capacity and supporter of the Network playwright, Jo Clifford hosted a discussion with his daughter, journalist Catriona Innes called Family Pride.

If you had asked me a few years ago if this beautiful theatre in the middle of Scotland in the middle of January and often seen (unfairly) as a safe, middle of the road venue, would have hundreds of people attending a queer arts festival, I wouldn’t have bet on it. However, local born (Aberfeldy), Tony-award winning actor, Alan Cumming and now artistic director had other ideas and invited Lewis Hetherington to curate the programme. Lewis is a frequent collaborator with our office neighbours, Luminate.

There were so many highlights – Ian McKellen in a reading of a new play, wonderful discussions with Val McDermid, Louise Welsh, The Hebridean Baker, Graham Norton, footballers Zander Murray and Amy McDonald and Cumming himself taking part in rehearsed reading of a moving play with music based on a Noel Coward short story.

There was a memorable session with poet and former Makar, Jackie Kay and Russell T Davies, writer and producer (Years and Years, Doctor Who, Queer as Folk, A Very English Scandal and It’s A Sin). One of the questions was about where they saw us now – in terms of LGBTQ+ rights and wider civic society. They gave very different answers, Jackie Kay more optimistic (“it will pass”) and Davies very pessimistic.

I suppose I veer more to his position on where we are with many older LGBTQ+ folk very fearful for the future – concerned for our own rights but more generally frightened at what is happening across the globe.

What did make me a bit more hopeful was that here in Pitlochry a huge audience of LGBTQ+ people gathered, some from afar but many locals from rural Perthshire, with allies and local people, many of them older, who would just see themselves as audience members attending a show but in being there made themselves allies. I think that is how we will emerge from this rather scary place – by getting to know each other, respecting each other and standing together against the forces that want to divide for their own gain.