About

A Kick Up The Arts is a Scottish Arts and Culture Podcast hosted by me, Nicola Meighan, which comes in two parts…

Part one is a weekly(ish) round-table discussion with brilliant guests in arts spaces around the country. You can listen to previous episodes - with guests like Deacon Blue, Liz Lochhead, Barbara Dickson, Michael Pedersen, Karine Polwart and Chitra Ramaswamy - recorded in Dundee, Perth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Stirling and Fife - with lots more adventures coming up.

And then there’s a monthly(ish) special – A Kick Up The Arts: All Back To Mine – where a well-loved musician / writer / actor / comedian / artist gives us a virtual night in, round at theirs: quite often, we recorded these live with an audience - you can join us here if you fancy coming along… They’ll choose a Scottish album to play us, a Scottish film to show us, and a Scottish book for some bed-time reading, and we’ll chat about all of that. They might even chuck in a snack or two.

I’m an arts writer and broadcaster based in Scotland. I present BBC Radio Scotland’s arts / entertainment programme the Afternoon Show on Fridays, 2-4pm, and have interviewed guests like Dolly Parton, Martha Reeves, Joan Collins, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Russell Crowe, Patti Smith and Kylie over the years – on the wireless, at book events and festivals, and in print.

I’ve contributed to BBC Radio 4, 6 Music, STV, The Herald, The Quietus, The List and Mojo, along with working at Glasgow’s Arches, Tron Theatre, and Monorail Records; for the Scotland-wide Triptych festival (Grace Jones, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Herbie Hancock, Candi Staton); and before that I worked for Mute Records in London, with acts like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Depeche Mode, Goldfrapp, Erasure and Moby. I also ran a happy hardcore label out of a former chocolate factory in Ladbroke Grove, but that’s another story.

If you’d like to know more, there’s a lot of incriminating evidence about me here…

I’d love to hear from you! I’m at nicola@akickupthearts.org