Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF24) closed on Sunday, with record numbers of attendees and of participating artists.
For the 2024 programme, which marked 20 years of the festival, EAF invited audiences to join them in a moment to collectively pause and reflect upon the conditions under which we live, work, gather and resist with a festival hub at City Art Centre.
The programme, the biggest yet for EAF, spanned the work of more than 200 artists in more than 30 venues, across 55 projects and with over 130,000 visitors across all venues, including 21,000 visitors across the EAF commissioned programme.
Kim McAleese, EAF Festival Director, said: “We wanted to create a festival that felt rooted here in Edinburgh and connected to people local to the city but which was also balanced with a critical and nuanced global dialogue.
“We are delighted that audiences, collaborators and artists were so generous with their engagement, criticality and time for EAF24. At the core of our programme this year was over 200 artists who brought work to the city.
“Without them we would not be able to do what we do and we must continue to support those artists who share their ideas and knowledge with us year on year, especially in the face of devastating, life changing cuts to public funding such as those announced this week here in Scotland.”
The festival programme spanned from the city centre, with large scale works by Ghanaian artist El Antsui and flags by Rosie’s Disobedient Press visible for those in the city to see from the streets, to the glowing light of Prem Sahib’s nocturnal work at Bard, in Leith to the outer limits of the capital both East and West.
A festival within a festival took place at Jupiter Artland, with the theme of a ‘queer fete’ and Más Arte Más Acción (MAMA) were invited to present an artistic public intervention at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, in the form of a large table around a tree, to discuss the interconnections between humans and plants in times of rapid biodiversity loss and which now travels to COP30 in Brasil.
Performances peppered the EAF24 programme including the highly acclaimed opening performance by Mele Broomes and Prem Sahib’s Alleus, which took place in a stairwell of Castle Terrace Car Park.
Four of Scotland’s emerging artists showcased work that surmised their current concerns to critical acclaim in the City Art Centre, and recent and current socio-political history were explored in new ways at Women in Revolt! at the National Galleries of Scotland in a survey of feminist art that celebrates the women who challenged and changed the face of British culture which was reimagined for Edinburgh to include new Scottish women artists.