Festivals Edinburgh Blog

The Edinburgh International Science Festival hs just launched with a significant environment strand, a great example of how the approach to sustainability across Edinburgh's Festivals spans all the work we do. We're ensuring that sustainability is considered in programming as well as impact monitoring, supporting public engagement alongside carbon footprinting.

Edinburgh's Festivals are such a complex and chaotic landscape during the peak summer season that it's often difficult to describe it to people. So we wondered could we take the old adage 'a picture paints a thousand words' and adapt it for the digital age through visualising social media activity?  What would all the tweets and flickr photos look like across 28 days for 6 Festivas in 1 city? Well, here's the answer:

Given that social media is radically altering the nature of public/media relations, we are trialling a new project this winter with Edinburgh's Hogmanay - Blogmanay - to more fully understand these changes.

The Edinburgh Festivals successful Geek-in-Residence programme has now been rolled out nationally by Creative Scotland, with the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo chosen as one of the hosts for the initial year of the programme.

Building on from the publicly sourced Ideas Challenge in 2011, the Festivals have created a prototype website to help individuals with access needs navigate their way around Edinburgh's 12 major festivals.

[the following article appeared in EventScotland's recent publication and is reprinted here with their permission]

This summer while London hosted elite athletes and the new generation of sporting talent from around the world, Edinburgh celebrated its essential role as a platform for elite and emerging cultural talent and as a beacon of internationalism – through the worldwide cultural phenomena that are Edinburgh’s Festivals. Here we take a quick look at this year’s Summer Festivals.

Another successful summer season saw Edinburgh’s Festivals showcase the depth of their international cultural offering, while widening and broadening their audience reach.

Through our partnerships with the BBC, we are able to showcase such work to a much wider audience and thus further our message that Edinburgh remain the wrold's leading festival city.

Building on our current environment work, the Festivals have been instrumental in the creation of a new national body, Creative Carbon Scotland.

Creative Carbon Scotland brings together a powerful partnership from the creative and knowledge sectors in Scotland in a timely and important project: to prepare for and adapt the cultural sector to the new, low-carbon environment resulting from the Scottish Government’s ambitious Climate Change Act.

This year sees the biggest, most ambitious programme of British Council-partnered activities taking place during Edinburgh’s Festivals.

From a high-level culture summit at the Scottish Parliament to a tour by the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq; from debates on philosophical problems of our age to bursaries for aspiring festival directors to attend the World Fringe Congress - all of this is set against the backdrop of the 2012 Olympics, the Paralympics, and their diverse cultural offerings..