Day: July 20, 2025

Edinburgh Art Festival

When: Wed 6 August

Time: 10am – 12pm (noon)

Where: The EAF25 Pavilion. Located at Outer Spaces, 45 Leith St, EH1 3AT and then across the city to visit partner venues and artists across the city including Linder, Mike Nelson, Wael Shawky, Andy Goldsworthy and Jonathan Baldock. 

Save the date as the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art returns to Edinburgh this August (7th—24th) with a packed programme of exhibitions, events, and collaborations taking place across the city for the three week festival — the biggest of its kind in the UK. 

More information on this year’s programme:

Opening EAF25 is Linder’s A kind of glamour about me at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, a large-scale performance coinciding with her retrospective Danger Came Smiling at the same venue.  Further new commissions include film work by CJ Mahony and Lewis Hetherington, and long-term research projects with Trans Masc Studies. Closing EAF25 is BORNSICK, a new performance co-commissioned with Serpentine by Lewis Walker, a London-born queer, non-binary artist working with the extremes of movement.

EAF25 will be based in a new central EAF25 Pavilion, supported by Outer Spaces, bringing together new works and residencies. Here, Lewis Hetherington and CJ Mahony’s installation will draw intimate connections between Scottish queer people across the span of the country’s history.  

Memory Is A Museum, an EAF-commissioned ongoing research project by Trans Masc Studies traces the histories of masculine-leaning gender diversity in Scotland. EAF’s support of emerging artists continues with Hamish Halley, the first recipient of the new Early Career Artist-in-Residence Award, with an installation at The People’s Story Museum. The Pavilion will also host screenings of My Blood Runs Purple, an experimental short film by Ria Andrews and Jj Fadaka.

Alice Rekab’s Let Me Show You Who I Am unfolds across billboards, examining legacies of migration and strategies of survival within the family unit, with a focus on intergenerational experiences of Irish, Black and Mixed-Race life, co-commissioned with Liverpool Biennial. Brandon Logan presents Little Low Heavens, an intimate collection of paintings, curated for the domestic spaces of Bard in Leith. Más Arte Más Acción’s Around a Tree from EAF24 will return permanently for EAF25 activated by performance from trans-Indigenous artist and biologist UÝRA.

The UK premiere of Voiceless Mass by Diné/Navajo and composer Raven Chacon will take place at St Giles Cathedral as a collaboration between EAF and Fruitmarket. 

JUPITER RISING X EAF will return for a one-night-only music and art festival, with line-up including TAAHLIAH, Florence Peake, Roxanne Tataei, and Ponyboy. At Blackie House Library and Museum’s RING OF TRUTH brings together visual artists, musicians, and writers in response to the enigmatic Music of the Spheres manuscript.

Fruitmarket will present a new body of work by Mike Nelson, known for his immersive, absorbing installations that entirely transform spaces. Talbot Rice Gallery will present a solo exhibition by Wael Shawky, following his representation in the Egyptian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024. At Stills Centre for Photography is an extensive collection of photos from Siân Davey’s series, The Garden. Jonathan Baldock is set to bring queer folklore to Jupiter Artland new sculptural work that combines earthly delights with surreal mythologies to bring together new stories. Alongside this, a new film by Guy Oliver traces social, cultural and personal histories and interrogating notions of masculinity. 

Ingleby Gallery will present Mirror Matter, a first major UK show of work from Aubrey Levinthal. The Scottish Gallery will present Victoria Crowe at 80: Decades, an exhibition showcasing a powerful collection of new paintings, which reflect six decades of Crowe’s working career. 

Sett Studios present FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, inviting the local artist community to participate in a salon-style exhibition, and Get in Loser, We’re Going to Sett Studios, showcasing the work of studio-holders as collaborators in a non-hierarchical art space. The Travelling Gallery will be presenting SEEDLINGS: DIASPORIC IMAGINARIES, a group exhibition exploring new ways to connect with our worlds through other-than-human perspectives. 

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop presents Beachheads by Louise Gibson, an exhibition of monumental sculpture crafted from the detritus of late capitalism and work by Megan Rudden which explores the idea of the ecotone, a transitional space between two states. Edinburgh Printmakers will display work by Robert Powell, a multidisciplinary printmaker and the work of Aqsa Arif, whose printmaking, textile, sculpture and film explores elements of Pakistani folklore. 

Collective presents Fire on the Mountain, Light on the Hill, the first solo presentation in Scotland by visual and performance artist Mercedes Azpilicueta. At Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh  Fungi Sessions marks the première of Hannah Read’s albums The Fungi Sessions, and at Dovecot Studios, IKEA: Magical Patterns explores six decades of groundbreaking textile design.

At City Art Centre is John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture which  captures the span of an extraordinary life and career through the lens of the artist’s own eyes and Out of Chaos: Post-War Scottish Art 1945—2000, a range of artworks from the permanent collection. The National Galleries of Scotland hosts a major retrospective by sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and an exhibition conceived by acclaimed artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen, Resistance, which explores how acts of resistance have shaped life in the UK, and the powerful role of photography in documenting and driving change.

At Edinburgh College of Art, Tipping Point and Authenticity Unmasked explore how artists can help us more wisely respond to AI. The King’s Gallery will showcase Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography, an exhibition that charts the evolution of royal portrait photography from the 1920s to the present day. 

Full EAF25 Programme 

UK Government pledge to cut sewage pollution in half by 2030

ENVIRONMENT SECRETARY TAKES ON ENGLAND’s WATER COMPANIES

Sewage pollution from water companies will be cut in half by the end of the decade, the Environment Secretary Steve Reed will pledge today. 

Our rivers, lakes and seas will be the cleanest since records began, meaning millions of families will benefit from cleaner beaches and rivers.  

For the first time the Government has made a pledge to cut sewage pollution with a clear target which they will be held accountable to, but campaigners say the Government’s pledge is ‘too little, too late’.

The Government, in partnership with investors, has secured funding to rebuild the entire water network to clean up our rivers. 

In one of the largest infrastructure projects in this country’s history, a record £104 billion is being invested to upgrade crumbling pipes and build new sewage treatment works cutting sewage pollution into rivers.  

Over the past year, the Government has introduced a package of measures to slash pollution levels. Bills are now ringfenced to force companies to invest in upgrades and over £100 million of water fines are being spent on local clean-up projects.  

The commitment comes as the Government vows “root and branch reform” to usher in a revolution in the water industry, ahead of the Independent Water Commission’s final report, which will be published tomorrow.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed said: “Families have watched their local rivers, coastlines and lakes suffer from record levels of pollution.

“My pledge to you: the Government will halve sewage pollution from water companies by the end of the decade.

“One of the largest infrastructure projects in England’s history will clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good.” 

 The Government has already taken decisive action to clean up England’s waterways:

  • Record investment: with £104 billion to upgrade crumbling pipes and build sewage treatment works across the country.  
  • Ringfence customers’ bills for upgrades: customer bills earmarked for investment must now be spent on new sewage pipes and treatment works – not spent on shareholder payments or bonuses.  
  • Reinvesting company fines into local projects: with over £100million being invested into local clean-up projects in communities.  
  • Largest budget for water regulation: the Environment Agency received a record £189 million to fund hundreds of enforcement officers to inspect and prosecute polluting water companies. 
  • Polluter Pays: companies will now cover the cost of prosecutions and successful investigations into pollution incidents, enabling the regulator to hire more staff and pursue further enforcement activity.  
  • Banning wet wipes containing plastic in England: introducing legislation to reduce microplastics in our waters. 
  • The Water (Special Measures) Act: banned unfair bonuses for ten polluting water bosses this year and threatened prison sentences for law-breaking executives. 

This package of measures will slash storm overflow spills by 50% by 2030 and halve phosphorus from treated wastewater by 2028. 

Both contaminants choke our rivers, suffocate wildlife and destroy ecosystems. In 2024, sewage spilled into waterways for a record 3,614,428 hours.  

Pollution levels were a decisive factor in the Government launching the Independent Water Commission last October – the largest review of the sector since privatisation.     

Led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, the Commission’s final report will be published tomorrow with recommendations on regulation, strategic frameworks and support for consumers.

The Government will respond to the recommendations in Parliament on Monday.  

Environment Secretary Steve Reed’s pledge is based on:   

  • A 50% reduction in spills from storm overflows – an outlet from the public sewer that spills both sewage and rainwater into the environment – by 2030. 
  • A 50% reduction in the amount of phosphorus from water company treated wastewater entering our waterways by the end of January 2028. 
  • Work with devolved governments to ban wet wipes containing plastic across the UK. We will go further to tackle the issues caused by unflushables to reduce plastic and microplastic pollution, particularly in our waters. 
  • Continued work on pre-pipe measures, such as sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) which help to reduce pressure on the sewerage system.     
  • The start of trials by water companies of nature-based solutions, such as constructed wetlands, to investigate if they can be used in the treatment process to reduce harm.