We care deeply about our participants, team, our membership and the community we serve in Wester Hailes and beyond. Because the current public health situation with Coronavirus is a serious challenge to all of us, we have decided to take a series of measures which are listed below and would ask everyone to have a read of these and pass on the message to anyone who you think might need to know.

WHALE Arts Classes, Group and Activities

From tomorrow (Wednesday 18^th March) we will be adapting our services to temporarily limit face-to-face contact. Activities will not take part in the WHALE Arts building. The only services that will take part will be food provision – please see more details below.

WHALE Arts groups will be cancelled until Monday 4^th May. We will be reviewing this policy as new guidance is made available.

We will revisit this towards the end of April based on up to date Scottish Government guidance and make a decision about the continuation of activities into May and beyond.

We will communicate any changes clearly with all participants, artists, partners and funders.

The WHALE Arts groups that are cancelled until 4^th May are:

Stitch n Time

smARTcraft

Men’s Making

Let’s Create

Street Arts

Let’s Dance

Play Sense Create

Film Club

smARTies

NuStart

Mums into Business

Wester Hailes Connects Digital Skills Drop-ins

Members Breakfasts

Community Gardening

As our building will not be open our programmes delivered with partners will also be postponed:

Room for Art – with Art in Healthcare

Fork in the Road – Edinburgh Tool Library

Expecting Something – with Starcatchers

Open Book

Indian dance – Theiya Arts

Edinburgh Art Festival – art trips and schools groups

Activities related to our Creative Placemaking project will also be postponed between 18 March – 4 May. There will be a separate communication about this.

Our Easter Holiday Programme will also be cancelled, as will our Puppet Animation Festival shows and workshops.

Together with our team of freelance artists we will be developing a range of creative tutorials, fun ideas and exercise challenges for people of all ages to do at home. We will be disseminating these via our website, social media, email and by post. We are also looking at making up art material packs for people to collect, or which we may post out to people. And we are also thinking of some creative and fun ways to keep people connected over the next few weeks, using a range of platforms, but taking into consideration that many of our participants are not digitally connected.

Food Provision

Although the WHALE Arts building will be closed to the public the Community Fridge managed by SCOREscotland will continue to operate on reduced days – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. If you would like to use the Community Fridge please contact SCOREscotland on 0131 442 2341 or 07496 190 916.

Our Friday Community Meal will be replaced with a Community Takeaway – this will be cooked by our chef Paul and packaged up for locals to takeaway and eat at home. This will be from 1:00pm – 2:00pm each Friday at WHALE Arts. Please come to the Performance Space doors – there will be signage if you don’t know the way. We will have measures in place to help with keeping everyone safe.

Room Bookings

We will be in touch with organisations and people individually regarding room bookings which have been booked in over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, please stay safe and look after each other – if there is anything that you feel WHALE Arts could be doing or you would like to contribute to our thinking about how to act in the future, please do get in touch.

info@whalearts.co.uk

0131 4583267