Loop - Season 5

In late 2022, Leyla Josephine's debut poetry book, In Public/In Private, was published, with a whirlwind tour around England, Scotland and Northern Ireland to support it. We meet the performance poet at the top of her game as she pauses for breath in her adopted hometown of Prestwick. In an exclusive recording from the beach, Leyla reads Questions I Have for Birds and gets ready for her much-anticipated homecoming gig at Glasgow's iconic King Tut's Wah Wah Hut.

Mousa Alnana is a Syrian artist working in painting, print and graphic design, who now calls Glasgow home. A master's graduate from the Glasgow School of Art, Mousa's work draws from his own experiences, showing humanity in its different colours and vulnerable stages. As well as showing us his own highly personal work, Mousa lets us in to one of his creative workshops at Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts.

When they started No Comply, romantic and professional partners Cat and Andy turned their love for skateboarding into an eco-friendly business, as well as an art form. The pair collect used and discarded skateboards from across the UK and give them a new lease of life as a piece of beautiful handmade homeware. From the barn in rural Perthshire that they use as a workshop, the couple reveal their multi-layered process, which involves stripping the boards, gluing them together and lathing them down into the final products.

There is also an exclusive performance from poet Harry Josephine Giles, who performs her poem No Such Thing as Belonging.

Ceramicist AJ Simpson won The Great Pottery Throwdown in 2022, impressing the judges with her impressive ceramics.

AJ lives and works in Aberdeen, where she shares a studio with partner Celda, and we join them as they go back to their old high school to inspire the next generation of north eastern Scottish potters.

Passionate about creating better Asian representation in literature, Birmingham-born, Glasgow-based children's' author Maisie Chan's first book was shortlisted for the 2020 Blue Peter Book Award. As she prepares to launch her second novel, Loop learns how Maisie's role as a young carer to her adoptive parents shaped the narrative in Keeping Dancing, Lizzie Chu.

Elsewhere, from her studio in the Tweed Valley, Moy Mackay creates vivid felted paintings. Taking inspiration from the beautiful countryside on her doorstep, Moy reveals the secrets of felting with merino wool and coloured thread as she creates one of her unique landscape artworks.

Also in this episode, poet Matt Kinghorn gives an exclusive performance of Sometimes.

Classical chart-topping sisters Sarah and Laura Ayoub have been playing violin and cello since they were kids, but it was only when they started playing together as the Ayoub Sisters in 2015 that the world started taking notice. For their latest release, Arabesque, the sisters draw inspiration from their Arabic heritage, fusing classical strings with traditional folk songs from Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, to reflect their unique musical make-up. The duo perform El Helwa Di for quartet of violin, cello, guitar and percussion.

The work of Trackie - aka Conor McLeod - pokes fun at growing up queer in the 90s and 00s in Glasgow. Drawing from the hyper-masculine, heteronormative world of football, Trackie's reflective work attempts to make sense of past cultural norms where he struggled to find his place. Loop joins Trackie as he prepares for his first solo exhibition, which explores the struggles he faced growing up and reclaims the experiences of his past.

Using traditional Chinese materials and techniques, Chi Zhang exploits the rich effects created by the interaction of brush, ink, water and paper, to paint Arthur's Seat in the city of Edinburgh.

And poet Nuala Watt provides an exclusive performanceof Pregnant and Squint.

Once the drummer for legendary punk band Buzzcocks, John Maher has become a serious photographer and is keen to document the landscape and abandoned crofts of Harris, where he now lives. We meet John to hear how he toured the world with Buzzcocks while supporting the Sex Pistols, and he opens up his scrapbooks to reveal meeting heroes such as Debbie Harry. We also follow him as he photographs a local family who are transforming an old croft into their home.

Due to complications at birth, teenager Becky Tyler has quadriplegic cerebral palsy. However, eye-gaze technology has allowed her to talk and paint, and now to study at the University of Dundee, where she is researching how applied computing can allow those with disabilities to gain more independence.

Drawing unconventional inspiration from pubs rather than churches, stained-glass artist Tessa Mackenzie reveals the secrets of her trade and creates a strikingly modern stained-glass piece in her city studio.

And Hong Kong-born poet Tim Tim Cheng performs The Fo(u)rth Bridge, her love letter to the Forth Road Bridge that was penned and inspired by seeing the famous Scottish landmark for the very first time.

For Glasgow-born and bred Yong-Chin, the face is her canvas. Since winning BBC make-up competition Glow Up in 2022, she's been turning heads with her eye-catching creations. Now based on the London fashion scene, Yong-Chin returns home to revisit old haunts like Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, and as she gives her sister a radical makeover, they discuss what it was like growing up with mixed Scottish-Malaysian heritage, and embracing their Asian side later in life. Inspired by the style of 90s club kids, the Glow Up star gives a glittering public masterclass at the city's Buchanan Galleries as friends, family, fans and influencers look on.

‘Scouting for Buoys' is one family's mission to clean up their local beaches - and turn discarded plastic waste into unique pieces of art. Donna and her husband Carl scour the shores next to their Isle of Skye home, collecting washed-up plastic to take back to their artists' studio overlooking the landscapes they care so much about. Artist Donna first creates beautiful artwork by painting the plastic buoys, and giving them a new lease of life. Carl, a retired fisherman, then handmakes each buoy's new rope, and what was once waste becomes a piece of art. We meet Donna and Carl on the stunning shores around their home, and experience how a close-knit family use creativity to make their corner of the world all the more beautiful, whilst helping clean up their beaches and seas.

Having studied architecture in Edinburgh, Charles Young, aka ‘Paperholm', has a fascination with all things intricate and building-related. A love of modelmaking led to Charles beginning a project where he made a paper building every day for a year. He's now up to 1,000 individual sculptures, which form a sprawling paper metropolis that he keeps adding to. We meet Charles as he creates his latest model, taking inspiration from one of our capital city's most iconic buildings, and recreates Edinburgh's St Giles Cathedral as a 3D paper model.

Sean Wai Keung performs Tomb Sweeping Day, his moving poem about his maternal grandparents from Hong Kong who made the leap to begin a new life in Britain as Chinese takeaway owners in the 1950s.