🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 9-15 August 2023

Welcome to the Culture Minute, Edinburgh’s weekly round up of local arts happenings. It’s already week two of the festivals, so in this post you’ll get links to the best-rated shows and big talking points. You’ll also find heaps of local creative sector jobs and opportunities in this week’s edition. This post is too long for some email inboxes, so be sure to hit the link above to read the full thing!

👀  At last we have show reviews to use to make informed decisions about our festival plans. Navigating the reviews can be a challenge in itself, so I’ve gathered some reliable and experienced local writers’ reviews for you here: 

✍️  There’s a week’s worth of show reviews up on All Edinburgh Theatre courtesy of Thom Dibdin and his team. They’re not all five stars, but five out of 19 shows so far got top marks. - They’re easy to browse here.

✍️  The Skinny team have helpfully gathered their four-star and five-star reviews into two places: their top comedy shows here and the best theatre shows here. They’ll keep updating those pages, so perhaps check back closer to the days you’re planning to hit the festivals. 

✍️  Critic Fergus Morgan has also been busy, batching his reviews in groups of five shows per post. His reviews and recommendations include five shows at Summerhall and a show all about *NSYNC. 

🎧  The EHFM Culture Show is an absolute must-listen, especially during the festivals. This week, hosts Katie and Katie go behind the scenes at Summerhall to learn from Tom Forster about how bookings happen from between 18 months and just one day. - Tune in on Mixcloud here.

🥁  It’s a big weekend of music at Summerhall. Withered Hand play on Friday, then it’s Scottish Electronic Musician of the Year Brian d’Souza aka Auntie Flo on Sunday night.

💰  Three performing companies have shared their costs of performing at the Fringe in The Guardian. 
⮑  £22,000 - Madelaine Moore and Guleraana Mir of The Thelmas: “It’s not sustainable. It’s not healthy. It doesn’t make good art.” (Includes £5,800 on accommodation). 
⮑  £12,000 - Kim Wildborne of RoguePlay: “If you break even that’s a bonus.” 
⮑  £7,746 - Tamsyn Kelly, standup comedian: “I’m spending the cost of a wedding! Even if I sold every ticket, I’m not making that back.” (Includes £1,200 on accommodation, £1,300 on tech and £3,910 on PR, posters and flyering). 
⮑  Behind the costs are individual stories of securing funding, maxing out credit cards or appealing for crowdfunding. It’s well worth reading Rachael Healy’s full piece. 

💰  Sticking with the money theme, debate is raging about funding for festivals and the arts in general. There’s a long discussion examining multiple viewpoints in this Twitter thread, featuring artist and researcher Rosie Aspinall Priest, creative Morvern Cunningham and The Scotsman’s Brian Ferguson. Here’s a summary:

📚  This week marks the start of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. 

Multiple festivals are joining forces for a series of Sunday Salons featuring artists working across literature, film and art. This Sunday’s salon features filmmaker Margaret Salmon and composer Annea Lockwood talking with Kim McAleese of Edinburgh Art Festival about their collaborative opera.

⭐️ Saturday book festival highlights include: Irvine Welsh, Aidan Moffat, Ned Boulting, Kirsty Logan and Ben Okri. 

⭐️ Sunday book festival highlights include: Ben Okri, Paula Bowles, Gina Martin and Jenny Colgan. 

📆 The full book festival programme is here.

📚  There’s also the Book Fringe starting this weekend. It’s a collaboration between three local indie bookshops: Argonaut, Lighthouse and Typewronger. Appearing are international writers Akwugo Emejulu, Claudia Pineiro and Chika Unigwe, as well as local authors Lynsey May, Sarah Grant, Luke Winter and Camilla Grudova. - All Book Fringe events are listed here on the Lighthouse website.

🎨  Edinburgh Art Festival starts on Friday. Among the 35 venues hosting events is Sierra Metro on Ferry Road. It’s hosting ‘PAIN 2 POWER’, a free exhibition of new works by Haein Kim, exploring ‘the modern woman’s psyche, how we want to see ourselves, materialism and puppies’. There’s a talk with the artist on Sunday morning.
⮑ Browse the full Edinburgh Art Festival programme here.

🗣  “It’s just astonishing to me that in my lifetime that women’s rights are being taken away from them.” - Three women performing at the Fringe have opened up about bringing stories about abortion to the festival this year. - Hannah Brown, STV News.

🧘‍♀️  For those of you looking to make your Mondays better, Habits is a new event focused on setting the tone for your week. Founder Alix Picken says: 

“Habits is a creative community for like-minded entrepreneurs to come together attend our events and build a network. We host both business and well-being events, talks, and workshops, while collaborating with local businesses. Our next well-being event, Monday Rest will be hosted on Monday 21st August, at Portobello Beach. Dee McQueen will guide you through some self-empowerment & intention-setting meditation and journaling, a short Yoga-inspired wiggle, followed by an optional dip in the sea. After this, we will gather indoors at a local cafe for a drink of your choice, warm up and connect with others. If this sounds like the perfect start to your week then you can grab a ticket on the link here.” 

🖌 If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to spray paint, the ‘360 Street Art’ exhibition at Quality Yard in Leith is a Fringe show with a difference. There are 25 artists taking part and you can join in this weekend. - Details on the venue’s Instagram account.

🎵  DJ Yoda is headlining a 50th anniversary of hiphop party at La Belle Angele on Thursday 10 August.

🏠  Non-festival related culture happenings this week: 

Thanks to brilliant locals, art happens all year round in here Edinburgh. Here’s some of what’s happening this week, followed by the local creative sector jobs and opportunities of the week: