ENTENTE CORDIALE - CULTURE
Our contrasting national stereotypes might sometimes suggest otherwise, but the cultural relationship between Scotland and France has long been one of our closest ties. Partly through the Celtic connection centred on Brittany, for instance, partly through shared military history, the bagpipes are often guaranteed almost as warm a welcome in France as at home - indeed, France boasts several native bagpipe varieties of her own.
The two countries' intellectual affiliations during the 18th century Enlightenment are touched on elsewhere in this brochure, while Walter Scott's novels were the toast of élite Parisian salons, engendering a Gallic fondness for Highland imagery that persists to this day.
Appropriately, culture is firmly to the fore within the Scottish Entente Cordiale programme, with key events including an exhibition of the Scottish Colourists in Paris, and another on Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Port Vendres, the south-western town where he lived the last years of his life. A third major art project, to be shown in both countries, explores the links between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Scotland, through works by Scottish artists Robin Gillanders and Ian Hamilton Finlay.
In the contemporary field, the 2002 Becks Futures winner, Glasgow-based artist Toby Paterson, will be presenting new work in Paris, and contemporary artists from France’s regional collections will exhibit in Edinburgh and Dundee. Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre and Lyon's new Les Subsistances venue are undertaking an exciting new contemporary playwrights exchange project, while a specially-curated French film festival, Cordiale Classics, will play in several major Scottish venues, and the Scottish Ensemble – in company with the Band of the Scots Guards – will perform at the Festival de Musique de Beaulieu-sur-Mer, which is themed this year around the Entente Cordiale.
