Having daughters studying in
Edinburgh, and knowing it’s a pretty and historic place to visit, was the main impetus
for our holiday there at the start of August this year. I’d heard of the Fringe
Festival and had been in Edinburgh before for day trips. Yet, in all honesty, I
was unaware just how beautiful the city of Edinburgh actually is, and how much
there is to do on the arts scene – especially during August. Or, maybe it’s the
Irish in me - wanting to underestimate how cool a UK city can be.
I’ve been living in Donegal for
20 years now, and occasionally visit cities around Ireland, or more rarely,
further afield. Donegal has been described as the ‘
coolest
place on the planet’ by National Geographic in 2017, and I see and
appreciate its wild, natural beauty. If you want a getaway break, there’s
nowhere like it, and I’m lucky to have it all on my doorstep. If you want beaches and mountains, Donegal is
pretty cool hands down. We have lots
of cultural events too, of course, and arts venues and festivals, and I’m involved
in running a local arts organisation in the North West called
North West Words. But, being in Edinburgh
recently, did make me realise again the sheer volume and ready availability of
man-made, cultural attractions in a major city; I have to admit, it wooed me once more.
In my late teens (many years ago),
I left a town in Northern Ireland to study in Belfast during the height of the
troubles – you’ll not be surprised to hear that arts events were rare. By my
early twenties, I’d moved to Dublin. In those days, cinema was one of the few
affordable arts and theatre was an expensive treat. Eventually, moving
back to town and country was a decision made for family reasons. Still, I remember
well the excitement of moving to Dublin - somehow it seemed similar recently on visiting
Edinburgh after so many years without the experience of living in a city. My
daughters laughed at my excitement, and in turn, I noticed their blasé attitude
to it all – they’re now used to having ready access to independent cinemas, contemporary
art exhibitions and the largest arts festival in the world on their doorstep the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Nowadays, or
maybe more so in the UK, lots of the events are affordable or free of charge.
I know I’m lucky to have a place
to stay in Edinburgh, at this time of year, but if you ever get the chance,
it’s wonderful to experience both the festivals and the city in August. It’s
difficult to get your head around just how big the fringe festival alone is -
over 300 venues and over 50,000 performances between 03rd and 26th
August. I had associated it with comedy, but there are a range of different
events including cabaret, theatre, dance, music, opera, childrens’ shows and
spoken word. The whole centre of Edinburgh becomes a festival with acts on the
streets, in bars, in cafes, in churches, in public buildings and spaces. Its scale, I found, mind-boggling.
I tried to browse online and in
advance about what was on and available during our stay, but the list was too
long to get my head around and to pick anything to go and see. The brochure is
the size of a city phone book.
Not only
that, but there’s the
Edinburgh International
Festival the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the
Edinburgh Art Festival all running
contemporaneously. I was like a rabbit in the headlights. My eldest daughter
advised that we go, float about, and pick a few random shows that appealed –
that had worked for her before.
I was
nervous of this approach as I was afraid of missing something when we’d limited
time there.
In the end, we started with the
old reliable of a walk around some city centre sights and a visit to a museum,
The National Museum
of Scotland What a wonderful museum,
and all free of charge – even the fashion room was a hit (including with my husband). Highlights
for me were the Inchkeith Lighthouse Lens, The Millennium Clock, all of the
fashion room (seriously cool), Dolly the sheep, a cast of Mary Queen of Scots
tombstone (original in Westminster Abbey), the viewing balcony from the
rooftop, and a temporary exhibition ‘Art of Glass’. The glass exhibition displayed
stunning examples of artistic work in glass from around the UK – such a range
of different and beautiful artefacts.
Out on the street again, we were
approached constantly and offered flyers for fringe events. Still no further
on, we started to collect a few flyers to mull over later. We dipped into one of the
many beer gardens around the University of Edinburgh campus. What did we
expect? It was full of twenty- somethings drinking from plastic beer cups –
we dipped out again for now.
That
evening, our daughters gave off to us – we were to stop going to things we could
see another time and to start going to festival events and exhibitions – to live in
the moment.
The following day we took the
duck and selected a few events from the flyers we’d lifted. We also booked ‘
Shit-Faced Shakespeare’ who
were playing Hamlet in the McEwan Hall. Shakespeare as I’ve never seen it before -
with one drunk character. It was pretty hilarious and not for the easily-offended,
with Queen Gertrude the drunk character for that performance. Hamlet certainly
wasn’t left alone for the ‘To be or not to be…’
speech and it wasn’t just the audience doing
the heckling. Inspired, we tried the beer garden again and this time with some twenty-somethings
in tow – somehow, we’d embraced the chaos. The following day we tried to book Foil,
Arms and Hog, but fair play to them, it was a sell-out.
Alongside all the fun, chaos and
craic, what surprised me most was just how much I loved the contemporary art
exhibitions we visited in the Edinburgh Art Festival. The highlight of my visit
(also voted so by my husband) was The Green Man, Lucy Skaer, at the Talbot Rice
Gallery. The exhibition is designed for this particular space and inspired by many found objects from
collections of the University of Edinburgh. WOW is about all I can say – maybe I’ll
manage a poem at some stage that definitely won’t do it justice.
Having recently watched the BBC 2
Imagine
programme on Tacita Dean we had both
noticed that she had an exhibition in Fruitmarket
Gallery, Edinburgh It was one of our few advanced plans. ‘Woman with a Red Hat’ didn’t disappoint. Although, I wish I’d gone
upstairs for the information video first, but apart from that it was very
thought provoking. I’m still mulling over her film about the acting process.
Two final exhibitions were also both
inspirational and haunting. A
Bill
Viola video in the St. Cuthbert’s Church, and
Shilpa
Gupta’s sound installation at the fire station, Tolcross. The former is in
the already intriguing location of an ancient church and graveyard below
Edinburgh Castle and beside the main thoroughfare of Princess Street in Edinburgh.
The short video is played beside the church altar and is both mesmerising and contemplative.
The latter is haunting, disturbing and pensive. ‘For in your tongue I cannot
hide’ records the writings of 100 international poets jailed for their writing.
In a darkened space, with poems speared to metal spikes, microphones are
suspended from the ceiling and poems are read and lines repeated. Sometimes
there’s a chorus of lines, otherwise, one microphone reads a poem – some are in
English but others in Arabic, Hindu, Spanish, Urdu, Chinese, Russian among
other languages. It’s an immersive experience of sound and sight – deeply moving.
Just to top it all, Edinburgh is
also a seriously beautiful and historic city full of sights to see at any time
of year. We’ll be back as soon as possible.
Deirdre McClay
