ABOVE: Beldina Odenyo, Mairi Morrison and Anna Porubcansky in rehearsals at Uig Community Centre during the 2018 development of Move-Gluasad by Julia Taudevin.
sruth-mara is an arts company dedicated to developing ambitious new creative projects from Uig in the Isle of Lewis. It was founded in 2018 by Andrew Eaton-Lewis, who has worked in the arts in Scotland for over 20 years. Regular collaborators include director Laura Cameron-Lewis and performers Elspeth Turner and Daibhidh Walker; other notable collaborators include Scottish playwrights Julia Taudevin and Alan Bissett, and Swiss-Italian astrophysicist Roberto Trotta.
The idea behind sruth-mara (‘sea current’ or ‘sea lane’ in Gaelic) is to help carry ideas and people back and forth across the Atlantic in a spirit of mutually respectful exchange, developing innovative, collaborative new arts projects that draw equally on the Hebrides’ distinctive culture and ideas and experiences from the rest of the world. Two books in particular inspired its creation: Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh, and Love of Country by Madeleine Bunting, for their rich blend of local and personal history and global perspective, and their observations about the power of dominant cultures to erase other histories, languages, and forms of creative expression.
Andrew Eaton-Lewis grew up in Cumbria before moving to Scotland as a teenager, and then to the Isle of Lewis in 2018. He has variously worked as a festival director, creative producer, media consultant, musician, and group arts editor for The Scotsman & Scotland on Sunday, for whom he continues to edit Edinburgh festivals coverage each year. Since 2022 he has run the artist support programme for An Lanntair and has also supported artists across Scotland since 2014 through his work for the Mental Health Foundation & Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
If you would like to work with sruth-mara you can contact Andrew at seafieldroad @ gmail .com (no spaces).
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