WHALE ARTS IS REOPENING / RESTARTING
We would like to ask everyone to have a read of this and pass on the message to anyone who you think might need to know.

THE STORY SO FAR
We have spent the last 12 months adapting and flexing our programmes, activities and services to work alongside the community, other local organisations and groups to support the community of Wester Hailes with food, phonecalls, art and wellbeing packs, digital devices and support and much more. We have all been working hard throughout lockdown doing our best to meet local needs. This has only been possible due to our hard-working and committed staff, freelance artists, volunteers, trustees, tenants, partners including residents groups and our supportive and understanding funders.

RESTARTING
These plans are based on current information and advice and may be subject to change.

We will communicate with participants about exactly when their activity will be restarting, how sessions will be taking place and respond to any questions or queries to ensure everyone feels comfortable taking part in our programmes.

We plan to restart groups and reopen the building from
17th May 2021 onwards. This doesn’t mean that everything will restart straight away, we will communicate with group participants individually to let them know when face to face groups will restart.

FOOD
We will continue to serve a community meal each Friday from 1pm – 2pm at WHALE Arts during April and May 2021.  We hope to start some face-to-face community meal gatherings outdoors over the summer – more information to follow once we have worked out how to do this safely.

Although the WHALE Arts building remains closed to the public the Community Fridge and Pantry managed by SCOREscotland will remain on reduced days.

The Community Fridge is Open Monday and Thursday 1:30pm to 3:30pm while the Community Pantry Opens fortnightly on Wednesday 2pm – 3:30pm

If you would like to use the Community Fridge or Community Pantry please contact SCOREscotland on 0131 442 2341 or 07496 190 916

OUR PROGRAMME
Our groups – Stitch n Time; smARTcraft; Men’s Making ; Let’s Create; Street Arts; Let’s Dance; Play Sense Create; Film Club; smARTies; Mums into Business; Wester Hailes Connects Digital Skills Drop-ins; Members Breakfasts; Community Gardening – have been engaging remotely using different methods of communication.

From 21 May onwards we will begin to restart these groups. This will happen in a staggered way – participants in our groups will be contacted directly once we have more detail to share.

PARTNER PROGRAMMES (which usually happen at WHALE)
Programmes delivered with partners have been postponed for 12 months with many groups taking part in remote and/or outdoor versions of the groups:

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; NuStart.

Our partner organisations will be in touch directly with participants when they are ready to restart sessions and we will share this information with our community when we have it.
Room Bookings, Rentable Office Desks and Office Tenancies
We have been taking bookings for essential services throughout the last 12 months within the health and safety restrictions in place for COVID-19.  We are slowly and carefully opening our doors to having more general room bookings again. We have introduced strict measures to reduce the risk of coronavirus transmission in the building through a thorough risk assessment.

ROOM BOOKINGS
We aim to officially commence with room bookings and rentable office desks in the WHALE Arts building from as a provisional start date (this date is subject to change.)
Rental spaces will be offered from 26th April provided that the type of booking is allowed within government guidelines and risk assessed.

The rental spaces are listed below:

Arts Workshop (activities in line with guidance and risk assessed, meetings in limited numbers)
Performance Space (activities in line with guidance and risk assessed, meetings in limited numbers)
Board Room (activities in line with guidance and risk assessed, meetings in limited numbers)
Green Room (activities in line with guidance and risk assessed, meetings in limited numbers)
Wee Office Space (long-term tenancy available – please email to enquire)

You can send a booking request for all of these rental spaces online. For more details including rental room measurements and capacities please visit our webpage here.

If you are interested in booking our rental rooms in block bookings (4 weeks or more) or are interested in a coworking space tenancy of 6 months or more, please get in touch by calling us on 0131 4583267 or email: roombookings@whalearts.co.uk

Let Us Know If You Need Help
Please get in touch with the WHALE Arts team if you need support or a conversation on 0131 458 3267 or by emailing info@whalearts.co.uk

Kind wishes,
The WHALE Arts Agency Team

We have officially appointed two members of staff for our new Community Development Roles. Michael Bowdidge (also Street Arts coordinator) has been recruited as Community Development Lead for two days per week and Tiki Muir as Community Development Coordinator for three days per week.

The community Development roles link together a range of strands of our work focused around membership development and engagement. This includes: – Collaborative work on a local community-led regeneration project to create a Local Place Plan for Wester Hailes. – Community and membership conversations aligned with our upcoming community asset transfer – Growth and development of our membership, including introducing a young membership. – Furthering our work on co-production and nurturing new projects and volunteering opportunities locally, based on residents ideas and interests. – Building confidence locally so that people feel empowered to take leadership roles in developing new activities and opportunities with and for the residents of Wester Hailes.

Together, Michael and Tiki will develop a new programme of creative activities and services for WHALE members to take place at WHALE and across the local area. This will support members to improve wellbeing, economic prospects and the physical environment. They will also encourage WHALE members to participate in the conversations around our Asset Transfer (our plan to buy the land underneath WHALE Arts from the local authority.) Additionally, they will be responsible for the creation of a Membership Engagement Plan in order to recruit new members and to support, evaluate and report on their participation and involvement in a wide range of activities.

Michael and Tiki will also do important work with local people on projects based on their ideas, responding to local need in a way that is not linked to specific or pre-defined outputs. They will also work with Wester Hailes Community Trust and other local partners and consultants on local engagement for an upcoming Local Place Plan for Wester Hailes.

Michael Bowdidge is an artist, researcher and educator who has been working in a variety of different roles at WHALE Arts since 2009. After being initially employed as one of our Street Arts artists, Michael went on to work with the Westburn CAN project as one of the three commissioned artists who made work in and for the community garden. He then began running our Street Arts outreach project in 2017 and co-led our recently completed Creative Placemaking Project with Rebecca Green. Michael also works in a variety of other creative, cultural and academic contexts and really enjoys doing so, as he feels that the insights gained whilst working in one sector are usually directly applicable to others.

Michael is unfortunately a lifelong West Ham United supporter, but in his favour he does have a lovely rescue dog called Amber. He lives with his family just outside Glasgow.

Tiki Muir became interested in collaborative and collective working after studying Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art. She returned to Edinburgh in 2020 after living in New Zealand where she worked at The Shift Foundation, a charitable trust working to improve young women’s wellbeing. There Tiki created a youth-led podcast called The Conversation Collective.

Tiki is also a volunteer at the WHALE Arts community garden and the SCOREscotland community fridge. She loves reading, eating tasty food, learning how to grow things, and spending time outdoors. Most of all, Tiki can’t wait to get out of lockdown so that she can start meeting new people and building connections with the Wester Hailes community.

We wish them both the very best of luck with their new roles!

ANIMALS
Edinburgh Zoo Live Webcams;
Panda Cam, Penguin Cam, Koala Cam,
Paigton Zoo Cams with Flamingo’s, Meerkats & Monkey’s

MUSEUMS
National Museum of Scotland has resources HERE including animations, nature trail ideas, arts & crafts & of course you can explore all the treasures of the museum online.

CREATIVE WRITING
Creative writing and reading with Open Book HERE

THEATRE
Online plays and panto with National Theatre online. Watch on YouTube HERE

DANCE
Free online dance classes from Dancebase: Scotland’s National Centre for Dance HERE

ARTIST TALKS/PODCASTS
Photography Down The Line is a series of conversations between artists, photographers and the Director of ‘Stills’, a registered charity and centre for photography based in Edinburgh. Started during the time of the Coronavirus lockdown, this series aims to discuss, celebrate and share the ideas of artists at this challenging time. LISTEN HERE

ONLINE TREASURE HUNT
Escape Room Durham – free online escape room challenge! CLICK HERE

SPACE
Join NASA with a view of the earth from space on their live cameras HERE

WELLBEING & RELAXATION
Lots of great wellbeing and relaxation resources HERE

CALLIGRAPHY
Free online calligraphy resources HERE

MUSIC
Scottish Chamber Orchestra – music for all ages HERE