🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 18 - 24 June 2025
Abbeymount open studios, Filmhouse reopening next week, Souls Of Mischief gig + new local creative jobs
Welcome to the 93rd weekly the Culture Minute: a round-up of Edinburgh’s local creative news, events, jobs and opportunities.
And if I’ve missed anything please get in touch. Thanks again to everyone who contributes!
👀 The most-viewed links from last week’s Edinburgh Culture Minute:
- 📚 Book Festival programme revealed.
- 🎭 Shakespeare's comedy in Saughton Park.
- 🤡 Restless Natives: The Musical, reviewed. (runs until 21 June).
News:
🎭 The Fringe is inviting local businesses to be part of its new directory for audiences. The directory will be hosted on edfringe.com, which got 30 million page views last year. It’s due to go live by 25 July and the first booking deadline is 7 July. - Get involved here.
🏅 Congrats to three local creatives for awards from the King: MBEs will be given to audio description pioneer Bridget Stevens, and Alan Borthwick and David Lyle of the Edinburgh Gilbert and Sullivan Society. - Full details in Thom Dibdin’s report on All Edinburgh Theatre.
🎭 Royal Lyceum Theatre Executive Director and Joint CEO Mike Griffiths is standing down after six years. - Jane Bradley, The Scotsman.
🎷 Leading Edinburgh saxophonist Tommy Smith has been dismissed from his role as Head of Jazz at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. - Craig Williams, The Herald.
📚 Tickets for this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival go on sale on Saturday 21 June.
🎨 Performance artist Florence Peake is among a new batch of artists on the Jupiter Rising one-night-only festival line-up. - Full details via Edinburgh Art Festival and tickets are here.
🎬 Booking is now open on the Filmhouse website ahead of its first screenings following a £2m refurb. The Lothian Road cinema is due to reopen on Friday 27 June. - You can see and book the cinema’s new listings here + read the press release here.
🍿 Six Scottish filmmakers backed by the Sir Sean Connery foundation’s film school are to have their work premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. - Jane Bradley, the Scotsman.
🎵 Just announced: Hip-hop icons Souls Of Mischief will bring their 93 Til Infinity Tour from East Oakland, California, to The Liquid Room on Wednesday 13 August. - Tickets are here.
🎵 This week at The Voodoo Rooms: Thursday: Baiana feat. Snowboy and The Haggis Horns. Friday: Soulacoaster 12-piece soul and funk band. Saturday: Shuna Lovelle. Sunday: Scottish Artists Cover Joy Division for CALM Suicide Prevention.
🌿 Creative Sectors returns this month with Making it Matter: The Power of Sustainable Design. Hosted by Creative Edinburgh, the panel discussion will ‘explore how designers are driving innovation while tackling the urgent need for sustainability’. - Free tickets here.
🎨 Last week’s Hidden Door festival received good reviews:
- Five stars from David Pollock in The Scotsman.
- Five stars from Neil Cooper in The Herald: “As Hidden Door has shown so magnificently, a little creative vision can make for an artistically seismic experience.”
- ‘The transformative Edinburgh event's most site-specific festival yet’ - Miranda Heggie, The Arts Desk:
“The plan for the Paper Factory is demolition, with its site to see around 1000 new homes built in the next few years. Will their inhabitants know or care about the site’s heritage? Who knows? But how wonderful for the working lives, long careers, short summer stints, commutes, relationships and friendships borne out of this former factory to have been given such a fitting, fun and fascinating requiem.”
- “Music fans better get used to trekking out to this side of town, with the new Edinburgh Arena set to take shape just around the corner.” - Max Sefton, is this music?
🎨 Quality Yard will host a life drawing class on Sunday 22 June as part of Leith Festival 2025. - Find out more here.
🪩 Katie and Katie from the EHFM Culture Show are hosting a party to celebrate four years of their wonderful show/podcast/work/community. It’s on Wednesday 2 July at the Dragonfly on West Port and will include a live recording. Free tickets are here. (See you there!)
🛍️ It’s one month until a new exhibition titled ‘IKEA: Magical Patterns’ opens at Dovecot Studios, as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. - Find out more here.
📆 For more local events, check out Naomi Head’s Good Egg Project newsletter. This week: what the Government Spending Review means for the arts and culture in Scotland, The Chicken Coop Writing Group at Lost in Leith + this year’s ‘Not So Nice!’ annual Pride show: A Murder Most Queer, at Augustine United Church.
🏳️🌈 There is a lot happening for Pride at venues all over town. Check out this week’s extensive listings in My Queer Diary Edinburgh.
🎭 What's on Edinburgh's stages this week?
Here is All Edinburgh Theatre’s Thom Dibdin:
It's a busy week with many small-venue and short run shows - including a nice clutch in Leith Festival - to complement the two big runners which are both in their final week.
Top tip is The Mountaintop at the Lyceum Theatre (ends Saturday: tickets). This sometimes surreal two-handed account of Martin Luther King Jr's last night on earth is "an enthralling, beautifully performed examination of history and humanity", according to our critic.
The other longer runner is the Scottish tour of Restless Natives at Leith Theatre (Thurs - Sat: tickets). One for Big Country fans, this captures much of the original movie, if not its pawky humour, but Caroline Deyga is criminally under-used and, as a musical, it needs trimmed.
Sticking with Leith, there are a couple of notable theatre pieces in the Leith Festival (full programme click here). Epona Productions have #KaraokeKarma at Leith Depot (Wed: tickets) ahead of a brief run in the Fringe.
And Active Enquiry return to Out of the Blue with The Manuscript (Thurs - Sat: tickets) "A completely unreliable and dubious history of Leith", this devised piece, is scripted by Duncan Kidd.
For musical fans, Room 29 Theatre has Little Shop of Horrors at Augustine United Church (ends Sat: tickets). We have great reports from first night, with best availability on Thursday.
If you fancy belting a few tunes yourself, there's a Singalong H.M.S. Pinafore at the New Town Church (Sat: tickets). With support from the EDGAS's soloists and professional orchestra. Some scores available on then night.
Art 27 Scotland has two of its CULTURE = LIFE programme. at the Studio Theatre. Alla Shehada has his storytelling piece The Horse of Jenin (Fri: tickets) and Farah Saleh a performance lecture, Balfour Reparations 2025-2045 (Sat afternoon: tickets).
And finally, the Traverse is host to a trio of new plays by local playwrights, performed by various Strange Town Youth Companies. Each plays one night and all three are on Saturday: Livin' On A Prayer by James Beagon (Thurs, Sat: tickets). In The Cult of Work by Daniel Oregon (Fri, Sat: tickets). The Stars and After by Eleanor McMahon (Wed, Sat: tickets).
Æ's various listings pages, all linked here, have more details as well as shows dropping before next week's Culture Minute.
📌 Edinburgh Culture Minute Community Noticeboard
📌 “Ever wondered what goes on at Abbeymount studios? We'll be opening our doors this weekend for our Summer Open Studios - it's a great chance to meet some of our artists and makers and find out more about their work and our facilities. Saturday 21st & Sunday 22nd June, 12-5pm.” - Thanks to the studio holders for sharing this.
📌 “Community theatre group The Forth Act presents Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' in Saughton Park Gardens on 25th - 28th June 2025. Following our well received production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2023 we are returning with this comedy tale of concealed and mistaken identity, love quadrangles, and mischievous pranks. Tickets from £10-£15.00 are on sale now on Eventbrite.” - Thanks to Diane Waugh, Comms Team, The Forth Act, for sharing this.
📌 “Summer Ceilidh – last minute discount for Edinburgh Minute readers! Join Humanist Society Scotland on Friday 20th June at Assembly ROXY for a high-energy celebration ceilidh marking 20 years of humanist weddings. To take advantage of the discount for Edinburgh Minute readers and get £5 off your ticket, enter code pekclgy3n at the checkout.” - Thanks to the organisers for sharing this.
📌 “Join us at Collective on Thursday 19 June (6:30–8:30pm) to celebrate the launch of our new exhibition, 'Fire on the Mountain, Light on the Hill' by Mercedes Azpilicueta, including a huge tapestry installation – and refreshments!” - Thanks to Collective Gallery for sharing this.
📌 “Charlie McSween and Kevin Parker return to Piccalilli following their last sold out show. Folk music from the British Isles and beyond. Tickets are £15 and include and drink and nibbles. 24th June from 6:30 at Piccalilli, 1 Grange Loan. Email for tickets piccalilliedinburgh@gmail.com” - Thanks to Emma Urquhart - owner of Piccalilli, for sharing this.
📌 “Leith School of Art's End of Year Exhibition celebrates the fantastic work produced by this year's Year-long Course students. The exhibition will take place at both our North Junction Street and Albion Road campuses, which means we will be holding not one but two private views. We welcome you to join us for both!
- North Junction Street Opening: Thursday 26 June, 7-9pm.
- Albion Road Opening: Friday 27 June, 7-9pm.
- Exhibition continues at both campuses: Friday 27th – Sunday 29th June, 10am – 4pm.” - Thanks to Leith School of Art for sharing this.
📌 “Library & University Collections at the University of Edinburgh are looking for an AV digitisation professional to join our team on a permanent basis, to undertake programmatic and on-demand digitisation of the University’s AV heritage collections. If you have an understanding of AV digitisation equipment, processes and software, a passion for heritage collections and experience of working with formats such as reel-to-reel, cassette and VHS, then we would love to hear from you. The salary range for the post is Grade UE05: £29,179 to £33,482 per annum, and the application period closes on June 30.” - Thanks to Rebecca Hirsch, Associate Director for Digital Library, University of Edinburgh, for sharing this.