Waverley Mall Edinburgh is thrilled to announce the latest addition to the Centre as The Fruitmarket Gallery signs up to move in from mid-September 2019.
The move comes as plans to extensively renovate and extend The Fruitmarket Gallery on Market Street are approved, resulting in the temporary closure of the Gallery while works are completed.
Waverley Mall will become the temporary home to The Fruitmarket Gallery and ‘Bookmarket’ – an independent, award-winning bookshop run by the Gallery. With an admiration for good books at its core and a mission to help customers find beautiful, useful, and unique books, the Bookmarket pop up will be accessed via Williams and Johnson Coffee Co. just off Princes Street at the top of Waverley Steps.
It will offer expertly selected niche titles, hard-to-find arts resource texts, artist’s books, and specialist books on typography, art theory, design, architecture, and fashion, plus a curated selection of design-led products and cards from all around the world.
Waverley Mall is excited to work with The Fruitmarket Gallery, welcoming its loyal customers and introducing some new ones to the Gallery in its new home. Gallery staff will also enjoy new office space at the Centre, during this year of transition, with workshops, talks and performances happening in the space, as well as a series of pop-up exhibitions.
The first of these will be the culmination of 6 weeks of workshops on zine making by Fresh Fruit, the Fruitmarket’s peer led group of young people aged 16-25 years. Zines are quick and cheap to produce and have a radical underground history where anything goes and different voices can be heard. The results can be seen at Bookmarket from Saturday 26 October.
The addition of Bookmarket to Waverley Mall is truly reflective of the Centre’s vision for the mall as a hub of music, arts and culture in the heart of Edinburgh. The aspirations of Moorgarth Group, who own the Centre, include the offering of products, services and experiences that are surprising and unexpected and very much not what you’d find on the average high street.
The busy city-centre shopping mall has recently enjoyed a series of new store openings including Mademoiselle Macaron – an Edinburgh-based French patisserie and Clicks and Mortar – a new concept collaboration between Amazon, Enterprise Nation, Square and Direct Line for Business, who together create a space through which small, independent businesses can trade.
Daryll Bunce, Director of New Revenue Solutions, Moorgarth Group Ltd. says: “The addition of this Edinburgh institution, The Fruitmarket Gallery to Waverley Mall is fantastic news for us as they provide a very current and relevant offering to our customers, which ties in perfectly with the overall vision we are striving for.
“This journey started 12 months ago with the opening of Williams & Johnson – Leith’s best coffee roaster in an amazing new store on the upper level of Waverley. This has become a real destination for great coffee in the city centre and following the success of this, we have established a brand new space for the Fruitmarket Gallery which continues to expand our offering and adds a whole new dimension to the mall.”
Fiona Bradley, Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery said: “We jumped at the opportunity to work with our neighbours Waverley Mall, embracing the chance to meet new audiences in this busy part of Edinburgh.
“It is great to be able to keep our much-loved independent bookshop open, and to have a space for our Engagement team to run events and workshops during our closure.”
