🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 2 - 8 Oct 2024
Soundhouse Winter Festival, Hidden Door headliners, Kate Bush night at Summerhall, local creatives' awards + A Kick Up The Arts
Welcome to the 61st 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 Soundhouse Winter Festival was announced this week. The brand new music festival will run over St Andrews Day and the Fair Saturday weekend (28 November to 2 December). The programme includes some of Scotland’s finest jazz, and trad musicians, a showcase of emerging new musicians, music workshops for adults and young people, film and live performance poetry. - Tickets are on sale now.
⮑ Featured performers include:
Fergus McCreadie with Mindaugas Stumbras, Michelangelo Scanroglio and Mattia Galeotti; Megan Black; Su-a Lee and Friends (Duncan Chisholm, Donald Shaw and Hamish Napier); Callum Easter & the Roulettes with special guest Iona Zajac; a brand new collaboration between outgoing Edinburgh Makar Hannah Lavery and acclaimed composer Kate Young; Rachel Walker and Aaron Jones; Edinburgh-based poetic psychedelic supergroup Acolyte; Victoria Hume and Chris Letcher; Nicole Smit Quintet; SWF Spotlight programmed by Helena Kay; and a screening of The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric (1933) accompanied by music composed by Inge Thomson and Catriona Macdonald, and opening set from Amy Laurenson.
Co-producers Douglas Robertson and Jane-Ann Purdy said:
“The Soundhouse Winter Festival presents a snapshot of the very best music produced in Scotland today. There’s no doubt that our small country produces some of the world’s finest musicians and we are honoured to give them a platform at our new festival. Shining a light on our home-grown stars seems an appropriate way to extend the St Andrew’s Day celebrations across this 5-day event. Despite the current gloom in the Scottish arts world, we hope the event will be inspirational and the first of many Soundhouse Winter Festivals.” - The event is supported by The National Lottery through Creative Scotland.
💰 Speaking of funding… Creative Scotland announced last week that its Open Fund for Individuals will reopen for applications at 2pm on Tuesday 8 October. The organisation has also confirmed that its process will be ‘updated’ in a bid to meet demand. Updates include: the maximum award amount reducing from £100,000 to £50,000 and decision timescales extending by two weeks. More updated guidance will be published on Tuesday. - Full details are here. (I found this information via the Craft Scotland Instagram, which is well worth a follow for more creatives’ resources).
🎨 Tickets are now on sale for the annual event that celebrates the creatives who shape our city: the 2024 Creative Edinburgh Awards. This year’s ceremony will be at Summerhall on Friday 15 November. The night will feature performances by local artists, as well as music and dancing. It’s a chance for freelancers, creatives and small businesses (who often miss out on year-end office parties) to come together and celebrate the year with old friends and new. - Get your ticket here.
⮑ Sidenote: I’m happy to announce that The Edinburgh Minute is a sponsor of this year’s City Award. So if you’re going to the event please let me know in the comments on this post and we can say hello IRL on the night.
🎤 Jane Weaver and HotWax have been announced as the headline acts for November’s Hidden Door venue launch party at The Paper Factory. - Tickets are here.
🏆 The Scottish BAFTA nominations were announced this morning. Loads of locals and productions with Edinburgh connections are among them. - Kevin Fullerton, The List.
⮑ Shout out to Leith-based Studio Something who landed multiple nominations.
🎧 Arts writer and broadcaster Nicola Meighan has launched a new Scottish culture podcast called A Kick Up The Arts. The first episode features writers Chitra Ramaswamy and Hannah Lavery, while the second features Chris Brookmyre. You can listen on the podcast website or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and YouTube.
👀 Push the Boat Out festival returns to Summerhall on 22-24 November. The programme line-up announcement is due next week.
🚴♀️ The Big Bike Film Night will be celebrating cycling at the Summerhall Cinema at 7pm on Thursday and Saturday, with a 2.5 hour programme proclaimed as ‘a feast of short films devised and designed for the two-wheel devotee’. - Details are here.
🎤 The music of Kate Bush will be performed by an ‘eight-women powerhouse’ ensemble from San Diego, California. On Tuesday 8 October Baby Bushka will bring a ‘wonderfully bewitching’ operatic pop night of exhilarating music bursting with wit, creativity and humour, says Summerhall.
🗞️ What’s in The List this month?
Here’s online news editor Kevin Fullerton:
October's edition of The List is available now from all good stockists, and this month we’re covering arts and culture outside of our usual stomping ground of Glasgow and Edinburgh with features on Dundee, Pitlochry, Aberdeen and more.
Inside the issue we’re raising a glass to the Dundee Contemporary Arts’ 25th anniversary, taking the temperature of the theatre scene beyond the central belt, staring in wonder at Pitlochry’s Enchanted Forest and reviewing the bar scene in Dundee’s city centre. And to celebrate the cinematic event of the month, Joker: Folie à Deux, Joker and Harley Quinn are gracing our front cover in typically ghoulish/glamorous fashion (and we've scribbled up a chunky feature on the film, too). Grab the issue for free across Glasgow and Edinburgh or read it online here.
📆 The editorial team at The Skinny has also been busy. Here are their October previews:
- 🎞️ Might there be too many film festivals in October? - Jamie Dunn helps you organise your local cinema calendar.
- 🇪🇸 Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival.
- 🎭 Scottish Theatre highlights including Edinburgh Horror Festival at the end of the month. - Rho Chung.
- 🪩 This month’s clubbing highlights round-up includes Daniel Avery and Sylkie World playing the Sneaky Pete’s Installation at the Fruitmarket. - Cammy Gallagher.
- 📖 Book launches, workshops and readings are in Anahit Behrooz’s October book events guide.
- 📚 Building bridges with Scottish International Storytelling Festival at the Scottish Storytelling Centre. - Louis Cammell.
⮑ For more on the Scottish International Storytelling Festival (18-31 October), tune in to this month’s EHFM Culture Show. The Katies interview SISF programmer Daniel Abercrombie and storyteller Niall Moorjani.
🎭 A new Theatre Book Club hosted by Blackwell’s Edinburgh and Capital Theatres will begin later this month. Kicking off with Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, readers will meet at the bookshop for a discussion on the book, then cross the road to the Festival Theatre for a performance of the show. - It’s on Saturday 26 October and tickets are here.
🍿 The programme for this year’s Edinburgh Short Film Festival has been announced. - Plenty on this and more in Jonathan Melville’s ReelScotland round-up.
📆 As usual, there are more local creative events on this week than I can fit into this email. More of them are previewed in Naomi Head’s latest edition of The Good Egg Project Newsletter.
✍️ For those of you who write, want to write or want to improve, take a look at the events listings on Women Who Write Edinburgh.
🎭 What’s on Edinburgh’s stages this week?
Here’s Thom Dibdin of All Edinburgh Theatre:
It's a slightly calmer week, but there is still plenty going on, even if the only big show in town is Rambert with their dance version of Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby at the Festival Theatre (Tue - Sat: tickets).
The hot happenings are at the Traverse, with a Burns-related PPP: Armour: A Herstory of the Scottish Bard (ends Sat: tickets); the return of EdFringe-forged Rukus (ends Thurs: tickets) from Metal Rabbit Productions; and Inua Ellams' "chaotic, audience-led poetry event" Search Party (Fri: tickets).
For local theatre the EUTC's first play of the season at Bedlam is EngLit student Victoria Ge's new play Intoxicated Honeymoon (Thurs/Fri: tickets) in which the once-innocent and wholesome past of a group of high school friends is slowly brought to light while the present reveals its ugly side.
Glasgow's Visible Fictions has UP at Assembly Roxy (Sat: tickets) a play told using Object Theatre - the use of everyday tiny things to tell a huge story of luck and odds.
Finally: two adaptations of children's books. Anna Hibiscus' Song is touring to the Studio (Thurs - Sat: tickets), while Freckle Productions co-pro with the Lyceum of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s smash-hit book: The Baddies, opens on for previews on Friday (ends Sun 20 Oct: tickets).
The big show dropping before next week's Culture Minute is Hairspray at the Playhouse (opens Mon: tickets), full deets on Æ's On Stage Next Week page and more details of this weeks' shows at Preview & Listing Mon 30 Sept - Sun 6 Oct 2024.
📌 Edinburgh Culture Minute Community Noticeboard
📌 From Edinburgh-based charity Love Music: ‘We are seeking a new Board member and the particular skills we would welcome include Strategic & Lobbying, and connections with, and knowledge of, the Scottish Artistic Sector. However, this is not an exclusive list. Closing date: 25 October.’ - More information here.
📌 “Scottish Youth Film Festival is back for its 10th year at Armadale Academy on the 4th and 5th of October. This free event is hosted by the Scottish Youth Film Foundation and brings together young filmmakers from across Scotland for a chance to network, learn and celebrate film in Scotland. The event is open to the ages of 12 to 26 and includes various workshops from industry professionals such as Douglas Mackinnon and ILM, film screenings and an awards ceremony, tickets for the event should be booked in advance.” - Thanks to the SYFF team for this.
💌 Share your news, events or opportunities here.