🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 13 - 19 November 2024
Creatives take over Summerhall this weekend, Balkanarama farewell, Book Week Scotland preview, Hidden Door countdown + Stockbridge Creative Colonies
Welcome to the 66th edition of the Culture Minute, a weekly round-up of Edinburgh’s local creative news, events, jobs, funding and opportunities. The Culture Minute exists thanks to paying subscribers. If I’ve missed anything please get in touch.
The most-viewed links from last week’s Edinburgh Culture Minute:
- 🎥 Storytelling film collective Take One Action launches community festivals crowdfunder.
- 🎨 ‘The sad and stressful situation at Summerhall’.
- 🎭 Traverse theatre funding warning.
🏆 This year’s Creative Edinburgh Awards ceremony is on Friday at Central Hall in Tollcross. A few tickets are still available here. Hundreds of nominations have been whittled down to 33 finalists. The Edinburgh Minute is a proud sponsor of The Edinburgh City Award. The finalists are: Edinburgh Printmakers, Sett Studios CIC, The Creative Community Hubs Network & Tinderbox Collective and City of Edinburgh Council Instrument Libraries. Good luck to all and see you there!
🎨 A group of local creatives are opening the doors of Summerhall this weekend ‘to show them how we’d run the place’. - More details via the Save Summerhall Facebook page and poster below.
⮑ The venue remains in limbo amid an HMRC dispute and potential sale to a housing company. It’s been two weeks since the last update from the venue’s management.
⮑ Equity, the union for performing arts and entertainment, is calling on any artists affected by non-payment for work at Summerhall to get in touch for assistance. The union’s Marlene Curran said:
"This is a really stressful time for artists and performers. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is major event in the UK calendar for live performance and Summerhall is a well-established and significant venue. For artists, the Fringe is an important opportunity to earn some money, as well as showcase incredible productions. It’s vital that artists and performers are prioritised for payment. We’re encouraging anyone impacted to get in touch with Equity so we can make representations and provide advice and support for our members.” - Contact Marlene by email here.
💰 How will the Budget impact the arts? - Naomi Head of The Good Egg Project newsletter looks at the local state of the arts + lists a range of resources for those looking to get organised and involved.
⮑ Tickets for this month’s Chicken Coop Writing Group event at Lost in Leith are now available.
‘Writers of all levels and genres are welcome at this monthly group. Naomi will guide you through open-ended, multi-disciplinary writing exercises and exciting and supportive sharing sessions. From short story writing or poetry to creative non-fiction or copywriting (plus everything in between), you'll find something to spark your creativity at the Coop.’
📝 What do we do with great art by bad people? That’s the question posed by the subject of this month’s Wildcard Book Club at Argonaut Books on Leith Walk on Monday 25 November.
🚀 Organisers of the Shoreline of Infinity ‘Event Horizon’ series have announced details of their next live event. It’s a ‘Nova Scotia 2’ celebration of new speculative fiction from Scotland on 4 December.
📚 Book Week Scotland events begin next week, running from 18 to 24 November. - See all the Edinburgh-based events here. Highlights include:
‘Who's Aldo? A Leith Hero or Villain. The Sopranos but set in Leith’ with author, Colin Burnett and the audio voice of Aldo himself, Patrick Wallace. - Leith Dockers Club on Tuesday 19 November.
‘The Pleasures of Reading’ with Jackie Kay. - The Portobello Bookshop on Wednesday 20 November.
‘Faith, Hope & Perseverance: Ely Percy and Len Pennie on Scottish joy & Duck Feet’. - Pilrig St. Paul's Church, Thursday 21 November.
There are three ‘meet the author’ events around town on Monday 18 November:
Lin Anderson: Forensic Fact meets Crime Fiction. - Currie Library.
Meet the Author: Doug Johnstone. - Newington Library.
Meet the Author - Emma Steele. - Stockbridge Library.
🖼️ The National Galleries of Scotland have announced three months of events across their three venues: the National, Modern and Portrait galleries, in a bid to ‘light up the dark winter nights’. - Find out more about their exhibitions with talks, tours, music and workshops.
🔊 There’s just over a week until the new Hidden Door venue’s launch weekend. More than 20 visual artists and musical acts are taking over the giant Paper Factory (previously used by Saica) at Maybury on 22-23 November. The events will give audiences a sneak preview of this huge industrial site, transformed for the arts. - There’s a preview video here and you can get Friday tickets here and Saturday tickets here.
🎨 Fruitmarket gallery presents the annual Deep Time festival of new music on the weekend of 27 to 30 November. It’s curated this year by vocalist, movement artist and composer Elaine Mitchener and features performances by artists including Apartment House, Rie Nakajima, NikNak, Aidan O’Rourke, Mitchener and Dam Van Huynh, among many others. - Elaine Mitchener speaks to Vanessa Ague in The Quietus.
🥁 Opa! Details of the next Balkanarama have been announced. Say a final goodbye to the Baghdaddies, who are retiring after 28 years. The 7 December show at The Biscuit Factory in Leith will be their very last Scottish performance. The Balkanarama team are also planning ‘the usual general mayhem’ with Balkan Beats DJs, dancers, circus acts, costume boudoirs, glitter stalls and ‘shots of freshly smuggled home-made rakija brandy’. - Tickets are here.
🍿 This week’s local interesting film screenings and events are curated by Cinetopia:
🎤 November’s Loud Poets showcase at the Scottish Storytelling Centre is on Friday evening. Taking the mic for an ‘insanely stacked showcase’ are Akshay, Jemima Foxtrot, Joshua Idehen & Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa.
🎭 What’s on Edinburgh’s stages this week?
Here’s All Edinburgh Theatre’s Thom Dibdin:
There's something of a collective intake of breath this week, as theatres prepare for the Panto season, although there are some particularly intriguing shows on offer.
Top billing goes to the non-panto production of Cinderella - Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Broadway version - from braw local amateurs Threepenny Theatricals on their first musical offering, at the Church Hill Theatre (Wed - Sat tickets).
At the Playhouse, the Romeo-free & Juliet (ends Sat: tickets) will delight all musical fans, but particularly a younger audience. And opera fans have two offerings from Scottish Opera at the Festival Theatre: Albert Herring (Wed: tickets) and Don Pasquale (Sat: tickets).
Theatre wise, the hot tickets are at Tynecastle Park, where Two Halves Productions bring back their hit shows Sweet FA (ends Thurs 21: tickets) and A War of Two Halves (ends Thurs 21: tickets).
At the Traverse Dogstar's The Tailor of Inverness (ends Sat: tickets) has a few tickets left, but Harry Mould's The Brenda Line (ends Sat: tickets) is returns only.
There is experimental stuff from the often pleasing Theatre Paradok at the Augustine United Church, with The End of the Line (Fri - Mon: tickets), Men Don't Talk (Sat/Sun: tickets) from the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival at the Storytelling Centre and - a bona fide panto - for one performance only: McScrooge (Thurs: tickets) at the Assembly Roxy as part of the Scottish Dementia Arts Festival.
As alway, full deets on Æ’s On Stage This Week and, for those about to drop before next week’s Culture Minute: On Stage Next Week.
📌 Edinburgh Culture Minute Community Noticeboard
📌 “This week Out of the Blue Drill Hall hosts a new group exhibition. My Body Whose Choice is an exploration of female autonomy and safety through art. Organised and curated by Hello Art, the free exhibition is open 10-5 daily with a closing event on Saturday from 10-2.” - Thanks to artist Solen for sharing this.
⮑ There’s a special closing event on Saturday with artist talks, a clay workshop and guest speakers.
📌 “This year's Stockbridge Creative Colonies event is taking place this Sunday 17 November, 12 - 4pm. Buy direct from creative Stockbridge Colonies residents in their own homes and gardens (Bell Place to Reid Terrace EH3, look for the doors decorated with red balloons). Please bring cash, thanks!” - Thanks to Alexandra Snowdon, Stockbridge Colonies, for sharing this. Full details on their blog here.
📌 “Edinburgh Royal Choral Union invites to their first concert in the season on the 16th of November at 7.30 pm at St Cuthbert's Church. We're singing Brahms Requiem - a unique masterpiece expressing the universal longings of mankind, Ronald Center's Dona Nobis Pacem - an impassioned plea for peace and Stanford's For lo I raise up - his most dramatic anthem, written during World War 1.” - Thanks to Natalia for sharing this. - Tickets are here.
📌 “TULUK is a new social enterprise on a mission to conserve Scotland’s traditional artisan skills – funding apprenticeships to enable future generations of makers to flourish and endure, learn more at our pop-up launch. TULUK x The Arienas Collective 21st November 2024 5:30pm - 8:30pm 2 Dublin Meuse, Edinburgh EH3 6NW. Unique commissions of hand-crafted pieces from Scottish artisans, each piece you buy funding an apprenticeship, empowering skilled artisans to pass on their craft.” - Thanks to Gillian Scott, Founder, TULUK Crafting Apprenticeships, for sharing this.
💌 Share your news, events or opportunities here.