MUST-SEE THREE: Ray Mears, Tinderbox Orchestra, Yoko Pwno
With our big top headliner Del Amitri SOLD OUT (sob, sob) many weeks ago, it’s just as well we have oodles of other fab musical extravaganzas on next Saturday 3rd August…
In the Lodge Tent, you’ll find Yoko Pwno deliver their brilliant mash-up of original folk and electronic beats – a sound to behold.
Earlier in the day the Tinderbox Orchestra will have the big top bouncing with a live musical experience that’s like no other. “This is an orchestra Jim, but not as we know it…”
And if you’re after something more sedate or tips on how to survive on the wild side, Ray Mears is your man. What he doesn’t know about living in the great outdoors probably isn’t worth knowing.
Of course, there’s plenty more comedy, kids shows and outright creative brilliance on show next Saturday, so take your pick and make a great big day out to the seaside complete.
Don’t leave it too late, or you might just miss out like many a Del Amitri fan…
Detectives investigating an attempted murder in North Berwick are appealing for witnesses, CCTV or dashcam footage.
This follows an incident involving a white Audi A3 and a red Ford Focus (registration plate YM65 WWF) at around 8pm on Sunday 30 July 2023 on Clifford Road, roads near Tantallon Castle, Whitekirk, Tyninghame, all in North Berwick and roads near the entrance to Foxlake, Dunbar.
Detectives are also seeking information on the whereabouts of the Red Ford Focus (registration plate YM65 WWF).
Detective Sergeant Jade Wardell said: “I am appealing to anyone who was in the area around the time of this incident. It is important we gather as much detail as possible, and any small piece of information could prove vital.
“Also, if anyone has dash cam equipment, please check it as there may be footage which could aid our investigation.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Police Scotland via 101, quoting incident number 3501 of 30 July, 2023. Alternatively, you can pass your information to Crimestoppers anonymously by calling 0800 555 111.
The tents are up, the sun is out and we are now counting down the days until we bring you our 2023 festival!
We open the gates to our site in the Lodge Grounds at 10am on Friday and we can’t wait to welcome you inside.
Fringe by the Sea is for everyone: big people, little people, four-legged friends so, whether you’re coming to see a show or not, you can still soak up the festival atmosphere at the North Berwick Trust Festival Hub with free live music and performances from the Lighthouse Live Stage, have a wander round the stalls at the Coulters Makers’ Market, grab a bite to eat at our Street Food Village or Pincho tapas bar, or a drink from our new container bars.
All the big headline shows have now sold out but with more than 225 events in the programme, there is a lot more to uncover whether you’re looking for family fun, musical gems or inspiring talks.
East Lothian coffee entrepreneur puts the planet before profit to win inaugural Food Hero award
An East Lothian entrepreneur who runs her business on the principle of leaving the planet a better place has been named Scotland’s first sustainability Food Hero.
Catherine Franks ofSteampunk Coffee Roasters andCafé, North Berwick, has been recognised by the visual storytelling campaign #FoodHeroScotfor her commitment to positive change, doing things differently and sharing her vision of a more sustainable business model.
She wins an in-kind support package, including marketing and PR, worth over £25,000 – the first of ten such awards which will highlight the sustainability efforts of the successful brands.
Launched last month by Medialiciously and its partners, #FoodHeroScot’s mission is to put sustainability at the heart of Scotland’s recovering post-pandemic food and drink industry and create a platform to connect conscious consumers with ethical and sustainable food and drink brands, as well as helping the brands with finding sustainable food and drink suppliers.
The non-profit campaign, is supported by STV’s £1m Green Fund which champions the efforts of sustainable Scottish SME businesses by profile-raising, communicating with consumers and encouraging Scots to reduce their carbon footprint.
It is also supported by leading Scots business figures including: Alan Mahon, Founder of Brewgooder; Nick Nairn, Owner of Nairns Ltd; Carina Contini, Director at Victor & Carina Contini; Karis Gill, Co-Founder of Social Stories ClubandLoral Quinn, CEO of Sustainably
Catherine Franks began Steampunk Coffee in 2012 supplying coffee and cakes from the back of a vintage camper van at events including markets and festivals with coffee roasted in her garage.
Steampunk supplied other cafes and ran pop-ups before moving to the warehouse at Kirk Ports which is the current home of their roastery and café.
Catherine is thrilled with the #FoodHeroScot award and says: “It’s such a fantastic campaign and to get this recognition is hugely appreciated. It just shows everyone can make a difference. Our ethos underpins everything we do – it’s never an add-on.”
Steampunk never serves bottled water, instead makes tap water freely available to customers and non-customers alike. Even through Covid, they promote the use of reusable cups. Catherine has long campaigned for re-usable cups and offers a discount to customers who use them.
She has a tin refilling process – temporarily suspended due to the coronavirus – which she is very anxious to resume, and her coffee comes in fully compostable or recyclable packaging. They collect their food waste and disposables for composting and aim to educate customers about the need to dispose of compostable responsibly.
“As a business we are conscious of the waste streams we produce and we want to ensure that at the end of its life the waste from any of our packaging can be recovered and put into the correct waste stream. We also recognise that it is important to give clear information to customers about how to deal with the waste to ensure this happens.
“During the last year many people had more time to think about the world we live in and how we want to change it as we come out of lockdown. I think that kind of crystallised priorities for a lot of people.”
Commenting on the first #FoodHeroScot award, Lee Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of Medialiciously and key founder of #FoodHeroScot said: “When we launched this campaign we were confident there would be great examples out there of businesses driven by sustainability and Steampunk is exactly that, a truly worthy inaugural winner.
“A number of other exciting initiatives are in the pipeline for recognition but we would encourage anyone who knows a real Food Hero to nominate them and highlight the great work being done to help the Scottish food and drink industry emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever.”
The campaign includes ten powerful mini documentaries on businesses or social enterprises that will be featured in coming months, shared on the #FoodHeroScot website and spotlighted through a media campaign delivered by STV, as part of their Green Fund commitment.
To find out more about supporting positive recovery of the industry or for more details on how to nominate businesses in the food and drink sector, visit:
To find out more about Steampunk and their efforts to promote sustainability and to contact them directly, please visit their website: https://www.steampunkcoffee.co.uk
We’ve been working towards this momentous occasion for months now and it has been a herculean effort given the challenges we’ve faced putting on a festival that is both safe for our artists, staff and visitors and full of what we all need right now: joy.
We’re delighted to say that our FULL online programme has now gone live and you can leaf through it in your own time by clicking on the image to the right.
If you’re in East Lothian, our printed programme will drop with the next issue of the East Lothian Courier, out Thursday 8th July.
We’ve kept a few class acts up our sleeve until the big programme reveal and here are a few of them …
Mica Paris was an absolute sensation when she last performed at Fringe by the Sea in 2018 and she will be back this August after releasing Gospel, her first album in over a decade.
Fourteen year-old singer/songwriter from Bellshill, Connor Fyfe, is one to watch. His tour has completely sold out so get in quick! Connor will be supported by local indie band Bluetile.
The latest track from Edinburgh’s swim school ‘Anyway’ was featured in Spotify’s June New Music playlist. We’re expecting great things from this four piece whose debut EP will be landing next month.
Neu! Reekie! has been performing multi-arts extravaganzas around the world for over a decade and FBTS21 will see them joined on stage by a host of special guests including ex-Makar Liz Lochhead.
Maggie O’Farrell is the author of The Sunday Times no. 1 bestselling memoir I AM, I AM, I AM and eight novels including The Sunday Times bestseller HAMNET, ‘Immersive, at times shockingly intimate… ought to win prizes’ – Guardian. Maggie talks to Jennifer Crichton, editor and founder of The Flock.
It wouldn’t be Fringe by the Sea without a good dose of Phil and Aly! Together, they have established themselves as the epitome of excellence in the world of traditional music.
With their musical magic and quick-witted humour they will pull your emotional strings one moment and have you falling off the seat with laughter the next.
To be able to put on performances this year, we need more space than we usually would and so FBTS this year is spread out over the town in various open-air venues. How beautiful is this venue map, designed by our artist in residence, Eilidh Muldoon!
The North Berwick Trust Harbour Home is where you will be able to pick up tasty food and drink at our Streetfood Market and handcrafted wares at the Mactaggart & Mickel Makers’ Market. It’s also the place where a lot of the music will happen with the Lighthouse Live Stage hosting open mic talent daily from 12pm till late.
Up at the Lodge Grounds will stand the Belhaven Big Top and SSE Renewables Envirozone tent, the Glenkinchie Lowland Stage located at the library. Further afield, the newly-reopened Marine North Berwick Hotel will be putting on masterclasses on an array of subjects from crime-writing and brewing to baking and whisky.
The show simply wouldn’t go on without all our amazing supporters, from our sponsors to our volunteers and to everyone who buys a ticket and shows up.
So thank you one and all and we look forward to seeing you seaside next month!
Engineering apprentices bring mechanical gannet to life
Engineering apprentices from Edinburgh College dealt with an unusual animal rescue operation – they used their skills to bring a feathery robot back to life!
Daniel Dewar and Sean Devine worked with their lecturer Terry Healey to perform extensive repairs on the Scottish Seabird Centre’s mechanical gannet, which is on display at the Centre in North Berwick.
The Seabird Centre asked the students to repair its broken bird so it could head back into action and continue raising money for the charity and educating visitors.
The fabrication and welding apprentices used their skills to shape replacement parts and weld and braze them into place on the intricate bird structure.
Now fixed and back home at the Seabird Centre’s Discovery Centre, the gannet springs to life when a donation is made, making the distinctive gannet call, rotating to show the inner workings of its skeletal structure and revealing a metal fish struggling in its beak. It is ideally located close to the Centre’s interactive Bass Rock cameras, where visitors can zoom in on the real life gannets on the Bass Rock, the world’s largest Northern gannet colony.
Daniel and Sean are on the second year of a four-year modern apprenticeship in fabrication and welding. They visit the college’s Midlothian Campus in Dalkeith two days a week to receive training they can apply to their job roles at Scotia Security.
Daniel said: “This has been a great chance to put the skills we have learned through our course into practice. This was the first time we’ve done a job for somebody that will be seen outside the college, and you take a lot of pride in your work.”
Ross Milligan, the college’s curriculum manager for Engineering, said: “This was an exciting and unusual opportunity for our students to work with the Seabird Centre. The students and Terry have worked hard to refurbish, repair and get the mechanism working again, and now it is as good as it was when it first built. Our fabrication and welding students usually work on water tanks, spiral staircases, gates and railings, but projects like these give them a taste of the more unusual ways they could use these skills in the future.”
Tom Brock OBE, Chief Executive of the Scottish Seabird Centre, said: “It is brilliant to have our kinetic gannet sculpture back in operation. It has always been a very popular attraction. The Bass Rock has had a phenomenal year, being named the world’s largest Northern gannet colony and also BBC Countryfile Magazine’s Nature Reserve of the Year. To have our mechanical gannet back in the Centre is the ideal way to celebrate.
“We would like to say a huge thank you to Terry, Daniel and Sean for all their hard work. We are very grateful to Edinburgh College, and will look forward to collaborating with them on future projects.”
The gannet was originally designed by Jim Bond, an artist who specialises in kinetic sculpture, and was described by Terry as like something from TV’s Scrapheap Challenge, as the artist had welded die nuts into the skeletal structure, used a spoon in the working mechanism and used bolts to create the feet.
The bird has been entertaining visitors to the Scottish Seabird Centre since it opened in 2000 and is now back in its rightful home.
