Staff Blog:
Eugenie Thomasson

Eug’s February Blog

My role at An Tobar and Mull Theatre is Administrator, and I’ve been in the role since 2022 having started off in the Café in 2021. Having raised my family, and being self employed for years,  I was keen to get out and about post Covid, and AT&MT has been a wonderful opportunity for me. I’ve lived in Mull since 2011 and I really enjoy working in the Arts. Music is a big part of my life and I picked up my dusty old kid's fiddle in 2023 and haven’t looked back, attending Trad music workshops and festivals whenever I can. I also have a self-catering business on the island and two very sweet Shetland ponies, and my Siamese cat, who keep me on my toes!

Eug’s January Blog

Now that we’re in to a new year and the new season is on the horizon, I’m spending some time focussing on what we will be offering in the Café at An Tobar. In a few weeks time we’ll be open again and after all the building work is completed at An Tobar, there will be a lot to do to prepare the buildings and the café for our reopening. It’s exciting to think about the year ahead and we’re looking forward to opening our doors again. We’ll be looking for staff for the Café for the season so if you’re interested in working in a stimulating and progressive environment please let us know! The Café is so much more than just a café, it’s a welcoming space, the beating heart of the organisation, the doorway to everything we offer here at An Tobar and Mull Theatre and it’s a really fun place to work.

In other news I’m working with a training platform, to enable our staff to develop their skills and interests, so have been spending some time getting that set up.

We have recruited for our Green Education Programme lead and have some interesting and exciting workshops lined up for the year, which we will share soon.

Eug’s December blog

This month, I’ve been exploring exciting training opportunities for our staff. Once everyone’s appraisals are completed, we’ll create a tailored training plan to support everyone’s Continuing Professional Development and help them thrive in their roles.

On December 1st, we hosted our Children’s Crafty Christmas, and it was an absolute delight! An Tobar was filled with festive cheer, smiling faces, and the sound of laughter, while Santa stayed busy spreading joy to all the little ones.

December hasn’t been without its challenges—we’ve weathered our fair share of storms. Thankfully, the buildings only required a few minor repairs, and everything is back in order. Here’s hoping for calmer skies ahead!

We welcomed our new Marketing Assistant, Finlay, to the organisation this month and it was lovely to meet him face to face for his induction and to show him round our buildings.

In my free time I attended the Scots Fiddle Festival in Edinburgh as a volunteer/participant. The more I learn about the music scene in Scotland, the more I realise how incredibly privileged we are to have such high quality musicians and bands touring Scotland and performing at An Tobar. It was lovely to see a few familiar faces at the Festival who have performed here. Highlights were tutoring sessions with Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, a Cape Breton workshop with Isla Ratcliff, and watching performances by Amy Laurensen and Laura Wilkie, all top of their game musicians. Stars aligned as Ryan Young was performing at the Traverse on the Monday, one of my favourite musicians and he did not disappoint with his beautiful playing and funny stories!

I’d like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas when it comes, and a fruitful and enriching New Year.

Eug’s November blog

Admin

As the busy season has drawn to a close, I’m now getting a chance to sit down and focus on my admin work, particularly assisting Karen our General Manager with our HR admin. As AT&MT is a Living Wage accredited employer, I was invited to attend a very interesting webinar on Living Hours and we hope to work towards implementing a Living Hours policy for the Organisation. We are also members of ‘Parents and Carers in the Performing Arts’ and I am working my way through the training modules to ensure that we are enabling supportive working practices which are inclusive and accessible for those with caring responsibilities. I’m also thinking ahead to next year and working with the team to develop our plans for the Café. We are very interested in developing our space to enable more local artists and crafters to sell their work, so if you have work to sell please get in touch with Calum our Visual Arts Curator.

Rebecca has created a small pottery studio at An Tobar and with a lot of help from her, I made my first pot! We had our end of season get together recently and Scott and I did a quiz including a Gaelic guess the meaning of the word round, and a guess the flavour of the crisp round which produced some interesting results!

Green

I attended Business Energy Scotland CPD-certified Green Champion training which was incredibly useful, with a real focus on saving energy, and the importance of monitoring our energy consumption. Rebecca our CEO has written up heating policies and developed monitoring processes for the Winter period, so it will be interesting to see how our energy consumption pans out. As our buildings are closed for the winter, I will be monitoring the buildings over the next 2 months with regular checks.

We were very lucky to receive funding from the Pebble Trust for a Green Education programme for 2025, so we are looking for a practitioner to bring this interesting project to fruition. The vacancy is shared on social media and is on our website, but please get in touch if you need further information.

Eug’s October Blog

Admin

As we wrap up the season, we're shifting gears towards our Winter work-from-home phase. My role often has me jumping from task to task, covering for team members on annual leave or with ill health, so it'll be a refreshing change to settle back at my desk and dive into focused admin work. During November and December, I'll be working reduced hours to dedicate time to refurbishing our self-catering facilities. However, my ATMT duties will still include regular building checks and tackling essential HR admin projects.

This month, I had the chance to attend an insightful one-on-one session funded by HIE with AAB Consulting on Fair Work policy. They recognized our achievements in this area and provided us with an action plan for further growth, which I’ll be focusing on in the coming weeks.

Sustainable Working

Exciting news on the sustainability front! After submitting our data to Creative Carbon Scotland over the summer, we’ve seen a significant drop in our CO2 emissions for 2023-24. This progress is even more impressive given that we included staff accommodation in this year’s report for the first time. This achievement reflects our efforts, including closing our buildings in the Winter and running our Peripatetic program.

The primary source of our CO2 emissions remains the old oil boiler at An Tobar, but we're actively pursuing funding to replace it with a clean energy system. Committed to greener practices, we aim to reach the basic standard of the Theatre Green Book by 2025. Managing the complex heating systems at both An Tobar and Mull Theatre has been challenging, but we've put in a lot of work to ensure maximum efficiency.