North Edinburgh Arts is working with local artist Natalie Taylor on a butterfly and bee friendly art project in Muirhouse and West Pilton.
Not only does this landscape art intervention offer nectar rich flowers for our struggling pollinators, but also it delivers a serious message in Scottish slang whilst adding a splash of colour to a busy roadside verge
SCRAN FIR BEES is a huge community artwork written large near the Red Bridge on Ferry Road, passed by hundreds of cars and buses every day, and highly visible from the cycle path bridge which passes over it nearby.
The North Edinburgh Arts building will be closed from 5pm today (Friday 17th December) for a festive break, and won’t be open to the public again until the planned Macmillan Hub is complete.
Due to this ongoing redevelopment our 2022 programme will run from partner venues across North Edinburgh, with West Pilton Neighbourhood Centre offering us a temporary home.
We’ll be announcing more details soon, sign up to our monthly newsletter to get all our news directly.
As 2021 draws to a close, big changes are on the horizon for North Edinburgh Arts. As part of the ongoing regeneration programme around MacMillan Square, development work at North Edinburgh Arts should begin in the next few weeks.
One of the last events before the planned makeover will be the Festive Community Event on Monday 13 December, kindly funded by Police Scotland.
North Edinburgh Arts will be host to many local community stalls on the day, so it’ll be a great opportunity to learn more about what’s going on in the local area, get together with other local residents and go away with a free goodie bag including some wonderful books to read this winter!
Whether you’re a regular user or occasional visitor to the North Edinburgh Arts space, you’re invited to say goodbye to the North Edinburgh Arts building. You can drop-in any time between 10am and 3pm when you can find out more about our temporary relocation while having a wander, a chat, a festive mince pie and hot drink.
We’ll be exploring the unique shoreline and all its treasures, from rock pooling and wildlife ID to seaweed gathering, bird spotting and more … Bring your nets and binoculars for a fun-packed wild shoreline discovery session, and don’t forget to wear your wellies …
Suitable for ages 8+
Free but advance registration is required.
To book your place: go to www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/183463433067 call us on 0131 315 2151 (Mon – Fri, 10am to 4pm) pop by and see us in person.
North Edinburgh Arts’ FREE October Film Club for local children and young people starts tomorrow (Monday 18 October), and we’ll be showing a different film every day at 10:30am until Friday 22 October.
Places are available on a first-come basis for local residents living in EH4 2 (Drylaw and Telford only), EH4 4, EH5 1 and EH5 2.
This free offer is suitable for families and children (up to 12 years of age) to attend.
Children under 7 years old must be accompanied by a guardian (aged 14+) with no more than 2 children per guardian. A healthy snack will be provided.
Create Community Wealth is looking for two (2) Lead Creative people to join the project!
Create Community Wealth is an exciting long-term collaborative project that aims to develop micro-enterprises across the communities in Wester Hailes and Muirhouse.
Inspired by the grassroots movement of the Granby Four Streets in Liverpool and other Community Wealth Building initiatives around the world, this project aims to tackle social exclusion and improve wellbeing and local economic prospects through creativity.
Jimmy Cauty’s ESTATE ‘Municipal Disaster Zone Tour’ has stopped off in Muirhouse and there’s still time to experience this thought-provoking art installation before it moves on to Easterhouse.
ESTATE is a dystopian model village featuring four abandoned concrete tower blocks at 1:24 scale (approx 2 metres high) housed in a 40-foot shipping container in the goods yard off Muirhouse Avenue (beside North Edinburgh Arts).
The tower blocks – Icini Heights, HMP Camp Delta-Zulu, Roman Point and Watch Tower 4 – each serve a different function in the ESTATE and each building contains chilling scenes in miniature of mass social, economic and environmental devastation.
Visitors experience a mini-walking tour like no other. A dark, menacing environment is pierced by spotlights, floodlights and strobes against an aural backdrop of helicopters, alarms, sirens and even the dulcet tones of former Home Secretary Amber Rudd help to set the scene (and chill the blood).
There’s smoke, too, to add to a distinctly unsettling atmosphere; shrouding the brutalist tower blocks and giving them an even greater brooding presence. But for all all the darkness there is also light, and peering through the shattered windows of the blocks tiny scenes are picked out in beautiful detail.
There is so much to see through those blasted windows: a plastic duck here, a faded portrait of Queen Victoria there … but everywhere – destruction and desolation.
Cheerful it’s not, but ESTATES is a powerful experience which haunts you long after you leave the dark confines of the shipping container. As I stepped back into the Muirhouse sunlight I thought: “I must go back.”
You can still catch ESTATE at Muirhouse this afternoon and Saturday morning.
go to 
There are still places on North Edinburgh Arts’ September Wildlife Watch next Friday 17th September, 2 – 4pm at Gypsy Brae 
