Perth named as UNESCO city of craft and folk art

The fair city becomes Scotland's fourth creative city alongside Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh

Author: Dale EatonPublished 8th Nov 2021

Perth has become Scotland's fourth UNESCO creative city as it has been announced as the city of Craft and Folk art. The first of its kind in the UK.

The fair city joins Dundee, City of Design, Edinburgh, City of Literature and Glasgow, City of Music. Perth also takes the UK's number of creative cities up to 13.

Just last month Dundee hosted the world's first UNESCO trail connecting all of Scotland's world heritage sites.

Perth and Kinross council led the bid which centred around Perth, but, the designation will include the entirety of Perth and Kinross.

Perthshire mosaic artist, Katy Galbraith, gave us her reaction to the news, saying: "I think it's fantastic news and I'm delighted that the whole of Perthshire has been represented and not just the city centre."

She added: "I think it's a great opportunity to showcase crafts because quite often they're seen as the poor cousin to the art as such."

Discussing why Perth has received such an accolade, Galbraith said: "Perth itself is a beautiful city and it has quite a vibrant art scene in its own right. There's also a very, very strong creative moment within Perthshire. There's a lot of collaboration, a lot of networking going on.

"There's also organisations such as Perthshire studios and Perthshire artisans that really bring artists together and I think Perth is a strong city and Perthshire is a strong county for all of those reasons."

On whether this could put Perthshire on the map for the wider world she said: "Certainly in the mosaic world I quite often will say I'm from Perthshire and people will never have actually heard of it and you have to clarify saying well it's north of Stirling and north of Edinburgh.

"It's an opportunity from a tourism perspective to really tap into the beauty of this county as well as from a creative point of view and a landscape point of view as that's what stimulates many of us artists in the first place."

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