Five years of making and baking: a visit to Narture’s RISE Festival
SCAN’s Deputy Director Helen Moore reflects on a recent visit to Ayr to visit the inaugural RISE Festival, a celebration of SCAN Member Narture‘s fifth anniversary.
We can all agree that the last five years have not been easy on our creative community, from the pandemic and subsequent recovery, to the impacts of a cluster of crises – cost to climate and geopolitical tensions.
Back in 2020, father and daughter team Robert and Saskia Singer believed that creativity and critical thinking were more important than ever. Based in the seaside town of Ayr, they founded Narture to encourage people to direct creative energy towards positive change. The profits from Narture’s sourdough bakery go right back into funding accessible and inclusive creative activities.
In 2025, Narture are celebrating their fifth anniversary of making and baking, and their evolution through connecting creativity, food and regeneration. The centrepiece of this celebration was RISE Festival, which took place across three days and four spaces. The festival also looked in two directions – forward and back, revisiting the social enterprises beginnings as a bakery delivering small scale pop ups to showcasing future plans for enlivening even more space in Ayr town centre.
Our first stop was the Make Space which is the current home of Paper Cave, a work by artist Laura McGlinchey, whose practice is embedded in themes of transformation and sustainability. Everyday and lightweight materials such as paper, cardboard, water and flour have transformed the Make Space into a textured cavernous structure, with a calming effect thanks to dampened sound. When we arrive, a table has been set up in the middle of the space, awaiting attendees for an afternoon origami workshop. The Make Space hosts a huge number of creative workshops across the year, providing learning opportunities for local people whilst providing employment opportunities for artists at the same time.
Next up, it was time to go upstairs to Narture Studios for a lively workshop on healthy eating and nutrition. Food is a key component of Narture’s operations, both through their income-generating, award-winning bakery, and in many food-related wellbeing and creative workshops. Outwith the festival, Narture Studios are used by artists and makers and also host a range of wellbeing activities every night of the week, from yoga to meditation and other holistic therapies.
We then went to Shape, a new venue for Ayr linking food, creativity and music together. During the festival, Shape hosted a cafe, shop and live music space. It was also the site of the RISE exhibition which celebrates the story of Narture, capturing stories and projects from the last five years.
Finally, Saskia took me along to another new space next to the sourdough bakery on Cathcart Street. Although virtually untouched for the last 20 years, the shop space is full of potential. At one of SCAN’s MSP visits to Narture in August, Saskia told Sharon Downey MSP that this space will eventually house the expansion of the existing bakery and cafe. Here we watched a film, the last supper, created by Sam Meech and Francis Ewe (also known as Gregory Scott-Gurner). Made in 2008, the film documents the re-enactment of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper by Liverpool group the Art Organisation and speaks quietly about the use of space for cultural work before being irrevocably redeveloped.
All the activity within the festival was a showcase of the work that Narture do all year round. If you missed the festival, you can still visit the Paper Cave and see the RISE exhibition in Shape. For year-round activity, you can see the programme on the Narture website and also SCAN’s What’s On page.
Images: Stephen McGibbon, Stephen Pitt and Ayrshire College Photography students