🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 4 - 10 Oct 2023
Leith Comedy Festival weekender, EHFM’s all-day birthday bash broadcast, mental health arts fest + why Studio Something is staying local
Welcome to the 14th edition of the Culture Minute, a weekly round-up of Edinburgh’s local creative news, events, jobs and opportunities. Half of this post is a free preview. Normally it’s for paying subscribers only, whose generous support makes it happen. A few hours most mornings are spent curating it throughout the week. I’ve just replied to everyone who sent something in, sending a huge thanks to all contributors of this week’s newsletter. If you’ve got something Edinburgh-based to share, please email me. No press releases here please. Just a few lines and a URL are all it needs 👍
💰 The news of a £6.6m cut to Creative Scotland’s budget - and potentially the budgets of many locals working in the arts sector - continues to dominate discussion and headlines.
⮑ 🗣 Lori Anderson, director of Culture Counts, a nonprofit network of arts, heritage and creative industries organisations, said it ‘has created shockwaves across the sector’: “The news has been met with shock and disbelief. It’s hugely unsettling. It makes people fear losing their jobs.” Here more from Lori in this audio clip from Janice Forsyth’s Radio Scotland Show:
⮑ 🪧 On Tuesday more than 100 creative industry workers and supporters protested outside the Scottish Parliament. Speaking to campaigners and journalists outside Holyrood, First Minister Humza Yousaf responded:
“I understand the frustration and I completely understand that and hear the voices who have spoken out about this particular saving. Ultimately we did not know when we set a budget that there would be the disaster of the UK government's mini-budget. We've had to find savings from health, from education, from culture, from right across Scottish Government. We've had to find savings. Any organisation that was due to receive funding from that £6.6 million will still receive that. The source of the funding will change - it is not going to be able to come from the Scottish Government this year regrettably, but it will come from Creative Scotland's reserves, £17 million of reserves, of which we're asking them to use £6.6 million and we will restore that subject to Parliament, of course approving the 2024 budget.”
⮑ Andrew Learmonth has more in The Herald.
🎤 Leith Comedy Festival begins on Friday and runs all weekend. Shows and events are spread across eight venues (see map below). The festival aims ‘to inspire and create opportunities for the people of Leith by joining forces with local companies and charities to unleash the power of laughter for good’. On that note, director Rosalind Romer got in touch to invite readers to get involved this weekend:
“Have you got a funny story about Leith? Come and tell your story at Leith Dockers Club on Saturday 7 October. We want to hear the weird, wild and wonderful stories about Leith, the ones you tell your friends in a pub. Stories can be funny, humorous, light or interesting, and have a connection to Leith. It can be about yourself, or it can be a historical curiosity. Puma in Fairley's, anyone?
“We have booked an amazing host for the evening, comedian and storyteller Giulia Galastro, and our award-winning headliner, Fiona Herbert, will finish our evening with stories about Leith. But we need YOU! This is a welcoming, friendly night, so share your story and let's celebrate Leith together!”
⮑ To get involved, first book a ticket then contact organisers by email or on social media to secure your storytelling spot.
🎞 The crowdfunder to refurbish and reopen the Filmhouse as a cinema has passed £100,000 with 36 days left to go and a target of £250,000.
🧑💻 If you’re looking for a new hotdesking spot, Wasps Studios has opened up in the new Granton Station creative hub.
⮑ Thanks to reader Rosalie Faithful, who got in touch to share this link: “It's part of the wider re-development of the waterfront area at Granton. They're doing exceptionally low intro rates for freelancers (£10 a day for a desk).”
📚 Edinburgh-based artist Anna Gormezano Marks shares eight ‘art books for seeing’ on boom saloon.
📚 It's not everyday that you get to hear from a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Daniel Mason will be at Topping & Co on Thursday evening.
🧠 Dozens of local artists are busy putting together the 11th annual Out of Sight Out of Mind exhibition at Summerhall. There will be 160 artworks on show made by people with experience of mental health issues. - Find out about workshops and events in and around the exhibition here.
⮑ It’s part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, which runs in venues across the city between 4-22 October. Here are some local highlights:
- Fruitmarket Wellbeing Wednesday - 4 October.
- Canalside Stories: Wellbeing Sketching Walk - Fountainbridge Square, 5 October.
- Bipolar Edinburgh: Commission Launch - The Melting Pot, 5 October.
- TALK photographic portrait exhibition by Graham Williams, exploring men’s mental health - Scottish Storytelling Centre, 7-29 October.
- Hard to Look at - ‘How can we present work by contemporary artists that explores painful subject matter without traumatising the audience or re-traumatising the artist?’ - Whitespace Gallery, 7-12 October.
- Easy Sundays: The TAM Sessions - ‘Musicians Claire Gullan and Kirstie McLanaghan present a collaborative project that combines two of their passions – playing Trad music and art & crafting’ - Sunday 8 October, Scottish Storytelling Centre.
- Canalside Stories: Water Tales - a canal boat cruise on Lochrin Belle - leaving from Leamington Liftbridge at 11am on Monday 9 October.
- See the full programme of events for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival here.
🗞 October’s edition of The Skinny is on the streets and online here.
⮑ This month’s cover features work by Edinburgh-based illustrator and painter Joanna Blémont:
⚽️ Studio Something, the Leith-based agency behind some of Scottish football’s best films, have written about why sticking to their Edinburgh roots really matters. As A View From The Terrace goes into its sixth season, Jordan Laird, Studio Something's co-founder and Creative Director, writes:
“It was so easy growing up to think ‘nothing ever happens here’, to look over the wall, to other places, and other cities and think ‘if only we were there…,’ and even now it’s easy to look online at agency instagrams and LinkedIns and think ‘hmmm should we be there…?’, but I think there is something more powerful in being steadfastly who you are and wearing where you are from as a badge of pride rather than something to run from.”
🌴 If you’re part of a creative team that needs to dedicate some time to focus on ‘the big stuff’, then a new off-site session at Leith Theatre could help. Kanopy is for teams of up to five in any sector and business type that poses the question: ‘When was the last time you worked on the business, not just in it?’ It’s led by expert strategists from Korero Studio, who share more info here.
🇪🇸 Organisers of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival are celebrating their 10th anniversary with a month full of events. Screenings start on Thursday and run all month. See a PDF of the full programme here.
⮑ Here’s an overview of the programme written by Beth Blakemore in The Wee Review.
🎥 A Cinetopia Networking Night at Summerhall will kick off this year’s 2023 Edinburgh Short Film Festival at the end of the month.
🔊 Edinburgh’s online community radio station EHFM celebrates five years on air with a special gig this weekend at Sneaky Pete’s. They’ll be broadcasting at the venue after a full day of special shows, detailed below. It’s £5 and tickets are on RA.
🍺 Another independent local brand celebrating a milestone birthday soon is Pilot brewery, which has announced its birthday event plans for The Biscuit Factory, happening on 18 November: “There'll be The Dreadnought's mullet-sporter Toby with his legendary music bingo, Goose's Quizzes Elimination Game, and music from EHFM's Drinking Music, Soul Jam and our TBA very special headline band. We'll be sending enough beer to flood Leith Docks, with not just our core favourites but some extra specials, a few new brews and a couple of resurrected classics from the archives.”
🎭 Oscar-winning 16-year-old Jude Coward Nicoll, who goes to Broughton High School, has been cast alongside Catherine Tate and David Threlfall in a big west end show. - Thanks Thom Dibdin for sharing this happy news.
⮑ 📆 Here are this week’s local theatre listings via All Edinburgh Theatre.
💰 We’re half-way through the newsletter, so here’s the paywall. Subscribing for the full thing helps keeps it independent and ad-free. Plus you get more local events and the ‘networking, jobs and funding opportunities’ section, including the salaries of this week’s local creative sector jobs 👀