🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 9 - 15 Oct 2024
'Fresh hope' for museum, Irvine Welsh backs campaign, Granton Station artists showcase, £5k writing prizes + meet the Creative Edinburgh award finalists
Welcome to the 62nd 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:
- 🎸 Soundhouse Winter Festival line-up announcement.
- 🎉 Hidden Door venue launch party headliners revealed.
- 🍿 The Skinny’s October Scottish Film Events.
📚 The council says it hopes to find a way to reopen the People’s Story Museum in December following a public outcry over its closure. - Geraldine Kendall Adams, Museums Journal.
⮑ Writer Irvine Welsh has voiced his support for the reopening of the People’s Story Museum. He said:
“I worked for Edinburgh Council when this museum opened. The feeling amongst councillors from working class areas of the city was that we represented monarchs, aristocrats and the warlords of slavery and imperialism enough in our civic culture, it might be an idea to represent local people too.”
⮑ Having been ‘temporarily’ closed without public consultation, the museum’s supporters now fear the worst, writes John Harris in The Guardian.
⮑ #SaveThePeoplesStory campaign leader Jim Slaven said: “They’ve turned the city centre into a citadel for the rich and now they’re trying to write us out of the history of the city as well.”
⮑ Council culture committee leader Val Walker said: “That is an absolute commitment from me that at the December committee meeting we will be looking at the ways in which we can re-open that museum – not in April but in December.” - Local Democracy Reporter Donald Turvill has more in this report for BBC Scotland.
🚨 Genuinely awesome local art klaxon: A new exhibition opens on Friday at the newly redeveloped Granton Station. The UNBOUND showcase spotlights the work of six emerging artists taking part in the Wasps Graduate Accelerator project, launched in October 2023. - 11 October to 11 November.
⮑ Artist and Creative Consultant Anna Gormezano Marks writes: “I’ve been working with these talented artists over the past 12 months, as they immersed themselves in their practice development… as well as navigating the tumultuous creative industries and precarious economic environment… Matched with and mentored by professional creative practitioners who have been there and done that, sharing invaluable skills, knowledge and insights that go beyond traditional educational environments.” - See Anna’s posts on FromNow studio for a look behind the scenes of the gallery-installation.
🎭 More than 100 Edinburgh Festival Fringe acts say they are still owed money after Summerhall’s management revealed the venue's bank accounts were frozen as a result of new legal action by HMRC over alleged unpaid tax, which Summerhall denies. - Brian Ferguson, The Scotsman.
💰 With Creative Scotland's decision on Multi-Year Funding delayed again, Jamie Dunn of The Skinny talks to arts organisations and unions about where this leaves the local arts community.
🎨 Nominees have been announced for the 2024 Creative Edinburgh Awards. - See the full list across ten categories here.
⮑ This year’s ceremony is due to be at Summerhall on Friday 15 November. - Get your ticket here. The Edinburgh Minute is a sponsor of this year’s City Award. The finalists for the The Edinburgh City Award are: Creative Community Hubs Network, Edinburgh Printmakers, Sett Studios CIC, Sett Studios CIC and Tinderbox Collective and City of Edinburgh Council Instrument Libraries. - All the finalists are listed here.
🎤 October’s Loud Poets showcase at the Scottish Storytelling Centre is on Friday evening. - Tickets. - Thanks to subscriber Sharon for sharing this.
🎧 This week on Nicola Meighan’s A Kick Up The Arts podcast: Horse McDonald and Hannah Jarrett-Scott, recorded at the National Galleries of Scotland’s Women In Revolt exhibition at Modern Two.
⮑ I can also highly recommend this month’s EHFM Culture Show, which previews the Scottish International Storytelling Festival (18-31 October).
📆 As always, there are WAY 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.
🎭 What’s on Edinburgh’s stages this week?
Here’s Thom Dibdin of All Edinburgh Theatre:
It's a week of plenty on Edinburgh’s stages, with practically all tastes catered for, from the brilliant darkness of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd from local amateurs Blackout Productions at the Church Hill (ends Sat: tickets), to the sparkling new adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s The Baddies at the Lyceum (ends Sun 20 Oct: tickets)
There's plenty of politics, whether its body-positivity and 1960s racial politics in Hairspray at the Playhouse (ends Sat: tickets) or the students of the EUTC taking on George Orwell at the Bedlam with his examination of dystopian futures 1984 (ends Sat: tickets).
There's gender politics in a rare but very welcome opportunity to see Strange Town’s schools work with Jennifer Adam’s HER at Summerhall (ends Thurs: tickets). Environmental politics are to the fore at the Traverse with Isla Cowan and Andy McGregor’s musical To Save the Sea (Thurs-Sat: tickets).
For pure joy, the fabulous Blue Man Group are hitting the Festival Theatre with their Bluevolution World Tour (ends Sat: tickets) while kids company The McDougalls have their Halloween Party Show at the Church Hill (Sun: tickets).
But that is not all. The Studio Theatre has groundbreaking new production DEMENTIA – The Musical, (Sat: tickets). It's back to Traverse Two and returns only for this week’s lunchtime theatre Anna/Anastasia by Jonny Donahoe (ends Sat: tickets).
Finally, at the troubled Summerhall, there's Annie Lowry Thomas’s autobiographical performance Afterparty (Fri/Sat: tickets) and a whole weekend of adventures into the unknown with Magnetic North’s MegaMix 25 (Fri-Sun: tickets) the company’s celebration of their 25th anniversary.
For shows coming up, check Æ's: On Stage Next Week; and there’s more details of this weeks’ shows in the Preview and listings: Mon 7 – Sun 13 Oct 2024.
📌 Edinburgh Culture Minute Community Noticeboard
📌 “All new, returning and prospective volunteers for the Hidden Door Venue Launch Party this November are invited to our Volunteer Get Together, at Leith Arches - 24th October 18:00-20:00. Come along to meet the Hidden Door team and other volunteers, and find out what volunteering at the Paper Factory will involve. Let us know you’re coming by signing up on our eventbrite, or just head along on the night.” - Thank you to Rohanie Campbell-Thakoordin, Volunteer Manager, Hidden Door, for sharing this.
⮑ Find out more about volunteering with Hidden Door here.
📌 The Edinburgh Radical Book Fair is on 21 - 24t November at the Assembly Roxy. Before then, there’s a programme launch at Lighthouse Books on 12 October. - More details via Lighthouse.
📌 Tickets for the third annual Argonaut Books Halloween Extravaganza are out now.
📌 “Cinetopia DOC: Club presents WAR GAME - October 16th, 7pm at The Cameo Cinema 🪖 A real-life political thriller set on January 6, 2025, War Game imagines a nation-wide insurrection in which members of the US military defect to support the losing Presidential candidate, while the winning candidate and his advisors war game the crisis in the White House situation room. Join us for post-show discussion at the bar!” - Thanks to the Cinetopia Team for sharing this.
⮑ The Cinetopia team are also seeking more contributors to their monthly film review podcast and EHFM radio show.
💌 Share your news, events or opportunities here.