WHAT’S THE STORY?
COP a load of this - a police box is just one of the unusual venues lined up for this year’s LeithLate which returns to Edinburgh this summer with a jam-packed programme of exhibitions and events taking place over a four-day period from June 23 to 26.
Highlights include the Public Poetry Project which sees contemporary Edinburgh poems installed in advertising spaces across Leith Walk, plus installations and parties everywhere from Leith Walk Police Box to Pat’s Chung Ying Chinese Supermarket.
This year over 50 artists are taking part to offer visual arts, performance, talks and gatherings. What’s more, all events other than the opening night Afterparty and Closing Party are free or by donation.
The Out Of The Blue Drill Hall will act as this year’s festival hub with a host of activities taking place in and around the building.
To whet the public’s appetite for the festival, the LeithLate Public Poetry Project, a new collaboration with Edinburgh City of Literature, will see poems about Edinburgh by top contemporary poets including Rachel McCrum, Michael Pedersen and Harry Giles displayed on advertising sites around Leith throughout the month of June.
WHAT CAN BE SEEN?
VISUAL arts are an important part of the festival and a new commission by Dennis and Debbie Club features a multi-projection audio-visual installation revisiting the history of the Gayfield Creative Spaces site. The Improvement of Invalid Youth is supported by a new partnership between LeithLate and the Goethe-Institut.
A new banknote has been designed specially for the four days by Leith artist Rabiya Choudhry. Her LeithLate banknote will be mass produced and given away throughout the festival and she is working with local young people from Out Of The Blue’s #artcore group to design their own forms of currency. Young people aged 13 to 25 from the #artcore group are also taking over the McDonald Road Library for a night of live art music.
Deptford digital artist Ian Gouldstone – whose work incorporates games, animation and new media – has created a new work Nearest Neighbours: Leith especially for the festival. The piece coincides with the initial stage of a new partnership/twinning between LeithLate and Deptford X, London’s longest running annual contemporary arts festival.
ANYTHING ELSE?
A SECOND partnership with the Goethe-Institut will see the installation of Kosmischer Läufer ephemera, complete with a special music link to The Secret Cosmic Music Of The East German Olympic Programme 1972-83, in the window of Leith Athletics premises.
The Back Garden Biennale is artist Sara Sinclair’s curated outdoor art event in a local back garden in the heart of the community while there will be a poster exhibition and zine giveaway at the Settlement Projects from the Poor Art Collective.
Juliana Capes will be creating pavement art installations on the theme of luck (pictured) while photography collective Eye Am Camera’s Wish You Were Where can be seen in the Leith Walk Police Box. The collective will be distributing their new collection of work free to the public throughout LeithLate16.
Dancing and music is courtesy of the Soul Deep vinyl dance party at Brass Monkey with live music from Scottish/Spanish/German six piece The Rhumba Radges at the Victoria Bar.
The LeithLate16 Afterparty has a headline set from Carbs and kicks off at Hibs Supporters Club.
AND THE REST?
EXHIBITIONS will continue throughout the weekend and on Friday, June 24, there is a series of panel talks on global issues of local importance including Gentrification in Leith with Tim Brinkhust, The Politics of Public Art with Fraser Gray and The Value of Art and Artists with Laura Docherty.
Saturday, June 25 sees a Leith Mural Tour, a guide to murals, old and new, with contributions from some of the artists involved in creating them.
The Art Bar Boot takes place on Sunday, June 26, and is somewhere between a cabinet of curiosities and an art show, featuring The Department of Lost and Found, The Thermos Museum and the Penniless & Obscure zine.
The Art Bar Boot will be followed by the LeithLate16’s closing party at Pilrig Church hosted by The Grind Journal, including spoken word and live music performances, with profits going to Amnesty International.
LeithLate16 is supported by Creative Scotland, The Goethe Institut-Glasgow, Edinburgh City of Literature and Settlement Projects and is an arts organisation responsible for a number of public art initiatives in the Leith area including The Shutter Project and The Mural Project, alongside the annual festival.
For more information, see www.leithlate.co.uk
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