WHALE Arts are pleased to announce a new appointment – artists Rebecca Green and Michael Bowdidge – who will take the lead on the Big Lottery funded Creative Placemaking Project.

The WHALE Creative Placemaking Project is funded for 3 years by The National Lottery Community Fund to deliver a comprehensive programme of community-led activities using placemaking approaches – inspiring people to creatively and collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of their community by working with local residents to co-design arts activities and permanent artworks. This project aims to harness the creativity, skills and assets of local people in the 7 distinct neighbourhoods that make up Wester Hailes.

Rebecca Green and Micheal Bowdidge replace Helena Barrett Duncan who led the first half of the project between autumn 2017 and January 2019. Helena spent a creative and productive 18 months building relationships locally as well as across Edinburgh and Scotland, delivering a broad range of creative activities, and amongst many other projects, commissioned a new mural by artist Fraser Gray; worked with Tom Flint from Napier University on Digimapping with primary schools locally; worked with Scottish Poetry Library to support a new poetry group; worked with City of Play on Tinkertown, and worked with local people and cultural partners to produce Wester Hailes first Film and Moving Image Festival.

The role of the Creative Placemaking Lead is to coordinate and deliver workshops and activities in the community with a range of local partners including schools and community groups and city-wide cultural partners. In addition the Creative Placemaking Lead will commission artists and creative practitioners to create public placemaking projects in each of the 7 neighbourhoods, responding to existing interest and demand. Each year the Creative Placemaking project will support the development of a neighbourhood wide event – in 2019 this will be a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Wester Hailes.

As the project moves into its next phase WHALE Arts are looking forward to working with Michael and Rebecca who will deliver the project as a job share.

Michael Bowdidge is an artist, educator and researcher who likes to work with found objects, images, places and people. He has a degree in Fine Art from Middlesex Polytechnic and a PhD in Sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art.

Michael has been involved with WHALE Arts since 2009 and has worked on a wide range of projects for us, including smARTies, the Westburn CAN community gardening project and our summer educational programmes. He currently runs our award-winning Street Arts young people’s outreach programme, and is very much looking forward to getting out and about even more in Wester Hailes over the coming months and helping to make lots of creative things happen.

Rebecca Green is an artist and a nurse. She has worked with WHALE since 2011 on the Street Arts programme and summer educational projects. She also works as an artist in hospitals with Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity. Her background is in the performing arts and she has a degree in drama and an MA in Cultural Performance. She is interested in the role of art within everyday life and its impact on people and their quality of life. Her own work spans performance and visual art practice.

Leah Black, Chief Executive of WHALE Arts says:
“The WHALE team and many local residents were sorry to say good-bye to Helena who brought bucket loads of energy and creativity and did a wonderful job developing the first 18 months of the project. However as one door closes another one opens, and are very excited to be able to bring Micheal and Rebecca into the team and look forward to seeing how they take the next phase of the Creative Placemaking project forward.”

Our Mums into Business group will be running their 4th market day, selling a selection of hand-made arts, crafts and pampering goods.

Come along to WHALE Arts on Friday 8th March, to look at the range of great value gifts.

For further information, please give us a call on 0131 458 3267 or email us at info@whalearts.co.uk

The Travelling Gallery will be returning to WHALE Arts on Friday 8th March, 10.30 – 4.30pm.

The exhibition, Displaced, explores how artists and creative industries are responding to global migration. With ongoing international conflicts and the continued displacement of human beings we are questioning how we view, understand and represent refugees. Can artists give a voice to those who don’t have one?

This thought-provoking exhibition buy ambien online cheap features work from a variety of artists including Halil Altindere, Brendon Bannon, Broomberg and Chanarin, Elizabeth Kwant and Alberta Whittle.

Admission is free of charge and the exhibition will include photography, printmaking, film and painting.

The Travelling Gallery is a custom-built, mobile, contemporary art space inside a big bus, which brings high quality contemporary art exhibitions and events to schools and communities throughout Scotland.

WHALE Arts is delighted to announce that we have received funding of £2,500 from the Wester Hailes Community Trust for our smART CRAFT group. These funds will be used to run the group up to June 2019.

smART Craft is a weekly visual arts and crafts group for adults with complex or additional support needs. The group explores creativity and expression with varied art materials and encourages participants to develop their own projects within the group time.

If you or someone you know is interested in joining this friendly and relaxed group then please call us on 0131 458 3267 or email us at info@whalearts.co.uk to register.

Incredible Distance Exhibition at WHALE Arts

WHALE Arts, SCO and residents of Wester Hailes have unveiled an original audio-visual installation which explores the sonic and visual identity of the Edinburgh suburb. The exhibition is a collaboration between residents of Wester Hailes, composer Suzanne Parry, musician Emma Smith, artist Ewan John, WHALE Arts and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

A day in the life of Wester Hailes as told through the eyes and ears of the people who live there. Incredible Distance is a creative and collaborative arts project with adults living in Wester Hailes, Edinburgh, which has been unveiled as part of the Society of Scottish Artists 121^st Annual Exhibition and will also be exhibited at WHALE Arts (22 January – 9 February) and the Fruitmarket Gallery (12 February – 16 February).

Over six weeks of sessions at WHALE Arts working in collaboration with SCO  composer Suzanne Parry and workshop leader Emma Smith, participants have created an original audio-visual installation which explores the sonic and visual identity of the Edinburgh suburb, capturing snapshots of daily life through the collection of found sound, imagery, film and original musical composition. Woven into an intricate tapestry of sound and imagery by composer Suzanne Parry and artist Ewan John, the result is part tone poem, part dreamscape, which loosely reflects 24 hours in the life of Wester Hailes.

Through individual fieldwork and group sessions with each other and with SCO musicians, a 12-minute soundscape with accompanying imagery and footage has been created alongside four 30-second miniature musical representations of key “Wester Hailes sounds” performed by classically trained musicians. Together with accompanying scores of handwritten sketches printed on sheets of aluminium, a “cultural soundmap” of Wester Hailes has been created.

A 24-hour timeline was pinned to the wall of the room at WHALE Arts where the workshops took place and at each session a different three to four-hour window of time was explored and discussed. In between sessions, participants would reflect on that time period, capturing sounds and sights from their daily routines which they would upload into a shared Dropbox for the next session. In a hectic world, the project encouraged the participants to look up and around – to stop, to observe, to listen, to have a heightened appreciation of their surroundings and to explore how our everyday soundworlds can influence how we connect with our local environment and with other people.

Incredible Distance is on display at the Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition until 17 January 2019, at WHALE Arts in Wester Hailes from 22 January – 9 February and at the Fruitmarket Gallery during the Connecting Communities Exhibition from 12 – 16 February.

The project is part of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s three-year residency in Wester Hailes, Edinburgh. From October 2017 to summer 2020, through creative workshops, projects and public performances with young people, adults and families from across the Wester Hailes community, the SCO hopes to open new worlds of musical learning and enjoyment for local residents and to inspire people of all ages to explore and develop their musical potential and creativity.

Kate Griffin, Creative Programme Manager for WHALE Arts says:

WHALE Arts is delighted to have been working in partnership with the SCO to offer this exciting and engaging project in Wester Hailes. We look forward to sharing the results with participants, the local community and across the city.”

Kirsteen Davidson Kelly, Creative Learning Director for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra says:

This project has been a fantastic opportunity for us to get to know Wester Hailes residents and for them to start to get to know the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. It has been a very rich opportunity for everyone involved to co-create a unique piece of work which articulates the lived experiences of all participants. We’re really delighted to be able to show Incredible Distance in two city centre venues and at WHALE Arts.

Notes to editors:

WHALE Arts:

Since being set up by local people in 1992 WHALE Arts has firmly established itself as the cultural anchor organisation for Wester Hailes. As a community-led arts charity and social enterprise, WHALE Arts’ mission is to be the creative heart of a vibrant, thriving community. WHALE Arts acts as a conduit between our community and creative opportunities through the direct delivery of projects, programmes and events and by connecting our community with city and national cultural partners.

Scottish Chamber Orchestra:

The internationally celebrated Scottish Chamber Orchestra is made up of a unique collection of talented musicians who inspire and connect with people of all ages. The SCO aims to provide as many opportunities as possible for people to hear their music by touring the length and breadth of Scotland and around the world as proud ambassadors for Scottish cultural excellence. In recent years, the Orchestra has travelled throughout Europe, the Far East and the USA.

The SCO makes a significant contribution to Scottish life both on the concert platform and beyond, working in schools, universities, hospitals, care homes and community centres through the its award-winning Creative Learning programme. The Orchestra receives core funding from the Scottish Government as one of Scotland’s five National Performing Arts Companies and is based in Edinburgh.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s innovative and imaginative Creative Learning programme is designed to enable people of all ages and musical abilities to make music, learn and experience the joy of the Orchestra. We run creative music workshops and performances in schools, hospitals, community centres and arts venues around Scotland. See https://bit.ly/2GseCGZ for more details.

SCO Wester Hailes Residency: 

For more information about the SCO’s unique programme of creative music projects and performances in Wester Hailes see https://bit.ly/2itbHyV.