Edinburgh Art Festival celebrates their 20th Birthday year in 2024 running from 9th–25th August. The
programme this year is the biggest yet for EAF, spanning the work of more than 200 artists and takes place all across the whole of the city so to help you navigate the festival (especially if you haven’t been to Edinburgh before) we have pinned down Kim McAleese, Director EAF and Ellie Edmonson the Curator of EAF to give us some insight into this special & exciting EAF Festival.
What does a 20th birthday mean to you?
Ellie: We have consciously been talking about our 20th anniversary as a birthday, acknowledging this as a moment to pause and think, as well as to celebrate. Alongside thinking about the legacy of EAF, we are using this as an opportunity to connect with historic and contemporary ways of organising that have built infrastructures of care – through developing grassroots services and crisis response networks, and pioneering activist movements over the past 20 years and beyond. We are looking to artists, structures and figures who push back and refuse. We want to connect to our context and city – to those who inspire change, who enable solidarity, and facilitate structures for working together and building collective futures. A birthday feels like a good time for reflection on what has guided how we have arrived here and informed how we live now.
What are your highlights this year?
Kim: As well as the multitude of partner galleries and museums exhibition programmes, we have some incredible events across our opening weekend – on 9th August we launch with a performance in Custom Lane in Leith, by artist Mele Broomes, experimenting with live melodies and choreography, foregrounding health and embodiment practices.
This will lead into our Birthday Launch Party, hosted by queer-led hair salon turned iconic party series Ponyboy, with EHFM’s impressive roster of DJs providing music. Later in the night, follow as we make our way to our after-party at Lost in Leith, and dance the night away with Saint Sunday b2b Percy Main!
Later that weekend on Sunday 11th August, join us for a day of discussions, readings, film, and food, opening lines of conversation on how to sustain creative practices during times of global political crisis. This features perspectives from Cooper Gallery (DJCAD, University of Dundee), Beirut-based cultural feminist collective Haven for Artists, Lighthouse Books, Más Arte Más Acción, Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive, creative collective Sumud, Falastin Film Festival, and artists Firas Shehadeh and Mona Benyamin exploring Palestinian resistance, with food from Gazan storyteller and author Diline Abushaban.
On our 2nd weekend, Friday 16th August, we are presenting a Prem Sahib live vocal performance with Roberts Institute of Art in Castle Terrace Car Park. Alleus – ‘Suella’ spelled backwards – re-orders, re-directs and disrupts an anti-immigration speech by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Performed under Edinburgh Castle, Sahib’s piece works to resist the damaging speech practices often ‘legitimised’ by politicians and echoed through society in hate speech.
The following evening on 17th August, Jupiter Rising will partner with EAF to throw a one-night only party. JUPITER RISING x EAF invites audiences to explore, discover and celebrate underrepresented artistic voices, championing queer and QTIPOC experimental practice.
Throughout the whole festival, you can visit the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to see an artistic public intervention, in the form of a large table around a tree, presented by Colombian cultural foundation Más Arte Más Acción (MAMA). This table, on the lawn at Inverleith House, will be brought to life through discussions across disciplines of art and science; performances and readings; and collective actions. A soundscape, based on recordings made during the festival, building upon stops at botanical conferences including Ireland, Rwanda and Spain will be woven together by the artists to create a marathon of voices, to be presented at COP30 in Brasil.
What do you hope people will gain from looking at Edinburgh through the lens of EAF24?
Ellie: We bring together museums and galleries from across Edinburgh with a programme of specially commissioned work – the EAF24 programme traces lines through personal histories, the climate emergency, post-colonial landscapes, and the global political stage. EAF24 connects to our context and the city of Edinburgh — to the people and movements who inspire change, who resist inequity, isolation, destruction, and despair (in large ways and in quiet ways). We want people to think critically about this city in this way, as well as take in the beautiful surroundings.
What do you hope audiences take away from EAF24?
Kim: I hope people will come away feeling like they have learned something, and shared something really special with other people in a room together. Festivals have the power to do that, and I love the thought that an audience member will be thinking about an experience at EAF for years to come. I also hope they will go back into the world showing solidarity with people who are routinely marginalised, that they have interacted with or experienced in our programme as part of the festival.
Outside of the arts what else would you suggest to do in Edinburgh this summer?
Ellie: Go to the sea (or Porty Sauna), and explore the endless green spaces in the city, made even better with a coffee from Little Fitzroy. People spend so much time in the city centre, and the EAF24 programme sprawls all over, so there is a lot of opportunity to see the parts of Edinburgh you may never have experienced (and sample the best dirty martini in Edinburgh at Nauticus!). Pick up a programme and see what’s on at one of our partner festivals, Edinburgh springs to life in August – there is so much to enjoy.
There’s a lot more to see and do way too much for us to feature here so head over to edinburghartfestival.com or @EdArtFest to find out more.
