Simon Hart

I am the director and CEO of the Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival, based at the Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries.

I have been in post now for four months so there has not been so much time to create stand out moments. However, this year’s very successful festival enabled me to get to know many venues across the region which were new to me, meet so many dedicated promoters who are passionate about presenting live performing arts events for their communities, see a great deal of brilliant creative work provided by leading local and nationally-based artists and enjoy audiences’ enthusiastic and appreciative reactions, as well as experience one of Scotland’s most beautiful country sides in late Spring.

For the past thirty years Simon has enjoyed a busy, successful and varied career in the arts. A graduate of the University of Glasgow, the Royal College of Music and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Simon has worked as a classical singer, actor, musical director and singing teacher with leading UK cultural institutions such as Scottish Opera, Dundee Rep, the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich, Bristol Old Vic, RADA and the universities of Queen Margaret, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Simon has also directed award-winning productions with his own theatre companies, as well as worked as a musical director.

Before joining Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre, on the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, at the beginning of 2020 as its CEO, Simon was for many years the artistic director of Puppet Animation Scotland, championing puppetry, visual theatre and animation nationally and internationally primarily through the organisation’s two national festivals, the MANIPULATE Visual Theatre Festival and the Puppet Animation Festival.