And we’re off and running for this year’s Outwith Festival! Outwith 18 is dramatically bigger than last year’s inaugural event with over 200 artists delivering comedy, music, theatre, film, literature and art in more than 23 venues over five days in September. There are exciting names coming to town including one of the UK’s most successful screenwriters Gregory Burke, John Maclean who was the founder of The Beta Band and directed Michale Fassbender in the award winning Slow West, bestselling YA author Estelle Maskame and hot new comedy writer Chris McQueer among many others. Outwith’s theatre maestro Tom Freeman returns to the Monarch Bar with the hugely popular Stramashed Potatoes and there will be a new piece of writing for theatre performed each night of the festival.

Avocado Sweet is hard at work delivering the PR and communications for the Festival as well as contributing two new events. The first is The Dunfermline Filmhouse, a temporary cinema hosted in DCLG featuring three days of films, filmmaker talks and a pop up bar. You can read all about the film programme here and follow the Filmhouse on Twitter here.  We are delighted to be bringing this to Dunfermline because we love independent film and it’s something you seldom have the opportunity to see locally. The other project we are working on is a gala performance on the Glen’s outdoor stage by the brilliant Scottish Philharmonic Big Band. The outdoor stage hasn’t been used for a promenade concert for decades so it will be very exciting to hear rousing renditions of classic favourites blasting out in the Glen just as they did many years ago.

The Outwith website has just gone live and we really hope readers discover lots to enjoy: find out more and buy tickets here and keep a close eye on Avocado Sweet for news of some great Festival ticket giveaways!

The Outwith team is led by Dunfermline Delivers with Avocado Sweet, Write Rammy, Fire Station Creative and a host of great people who give their time, talent and experitise for free. Funding is provided by Dunfermline Delivers,  Fife Council Strategic Events Fund and the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust.