Five things you need to know today 10 June
The Edinburgh International Book Festival 2025
All news about the Book Festival is embargoed until 10am on Tuesday morning. That means we know what you would like to know but we can't tell you until 10am.
But there is a Front List of events already on sale at McEwan Hall for you to look at meantime.
This year's The Front List series of events, presented in partnership with Underbelly, offers the chance to hear from authors, international voices, critical political commentators, and figures from sports and entertainment.
After sell-out events in 2024, this year EIBF have expanded The Front List to 14 events (including two for just Schools), with most taking place at 1.30pm daily throughout the Festival.
Watch this space later this morning.
Edinburgh Refugee Festival
As part of the Edinburgh Refugee Festival the Mission of Innocents is taking part with 'A Life in One Suitcase' – evocative dance and vocal performance exploring displacement, belonging, and hope.
Event: A Life in One Suitcase
A Life in One Suitcase When: Thursday 13 June at 4:30 PM
Thursday 13 June at 4:30 PM Where: St. Cuthbert's Church, Lothian Road, Edinburgh
St. Cuthbert's Church, Lothian Road, Edinburgh No Admission Free (Part of the Edinburgh Refugee Festival 2025)
This is a powerful multimedia event illuminating the emotional and psychological impact of forced migration through music, movement, and visual art.
The centrepiece of the event is a 40–45 minute live vocal and dance performance, created and directed by Oksana Saiapina, and presented by Mission of Innocents. This performance tells the deeply moving story of a person fleeing their home forever—leaving behind family, memories, and identity—captured through the simple but symbolic object of a suitcase. Inside is everything most precious. Inside is a life.
The show features performances from:
Vocalist Karina Chervyakova
Dance group Flowers of Ukraine
Children's group Kvity Ukrainy, directed by Oksana Saiapina
Children's choir Harmony, directed by Nataliia Khomenko
Dance group MyWay, directed by Tetiana Gordienko
The performance will be accompanied by three visual exhibitions that offer a broader reflection on memory, identity, and resilience:
The Weight We Carried – A display of personal belongings, symbolic objects, and photographs from Ukrainian refugees who fled war. It poses the searing question: If you had to pack your life into one suitcase, what would you take?
Icons on Ammo Boxes – An internationally exhibited project by Spiders of Ukraine, transforming materials of war into sacred icons of peace.
Refugee and Migrant Art Showcase – Paintings, sculpture, textile art and mixed media by displaced artists from across Scotland, marking personal milestones in resettlement.
This event is presented as part of the Edinburgh Refugee Festival 2025, with support from the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, Consulate of Ukraine, and the Scottish Parliament's Cross-Party Group on Ukraine.
The dance segment is organised by Mission of Innocents, a grassroots initiative founded by Joyce Landry, supporting refugee children and families in Scotland through the arts and creative mental health programmes. Their work offers displaced young people tools for expression, healing, and self-worth through song, dance, and storytelling.
Former Scottish Widows building is on the market
One of the previous venues for Hidden Door (which takes place later this week) was the Scottish Widows building on Dalkeith Road. Now that there is planning permission in place owners Schroders have put it up for sale.
There is no hint of the asking price, but the consent involves demolishing five of the twelve hexagonal office modules with the remaining office structure being upgraded and extended.
Five high quality residential apartment blocks are proposed in the north-east portion of the site, containing 174 homes.
The agents also say that there is 'an opportunity to amend existing planning consent to explore alternative uses including Residential, PBSA, Hotel, Education and Leisure'. (PBSA is purpose built student accommodation).
Support Hidden Door Festival
Hazel Johnson Director of Hidden Door Festival has written an open letter to everyone who may just be thinking of attending the festival this week – they really need your support.
This is the letter here:
Arts venues and cultural events need your support now more than ever: Hazel Johnson, Festival Director at Hidden Door, invites you to be part of something special at The Paper Factory this week
Scotland's arts scene is vibrant, innovative, and utterly vital to our national identity, wellbeing and economy. Yet, like many sectors, it faces unprecedented challenges, from funding pressures to the ever-shifting landscape of audience engagement. Cities like Edinburgh are at their best when they have cultural venues that can thrive all year round, not just in festival season.
This week, we launch our most ambitious venture yet. The Paper Factory is a magnificent, abandoned industrial site which we're transforming into a vibrant new arts venue hosting an amazing programme of music, visual art and performance. It's a monumental undertaking, driven by a passionate team of volunteers, and its success hinges, quite simply, on audiences coming along to experience it.
Hidden Door was born from a belief that Edinburgh needs vibrant cultural venues that offer something different. By literally and figuratively opening up forgotten spaces for the arts, we create a place where creative talent can flourish. We exist to provide a vital platform for new and emerging artists in Scotland, offering them the crucial opportunity to experiment and reach new audiences. From our diverse music lineup, including promising local bands selected from hundreds of open call applications, to the captivating, site-specific art installations and immersive performances that bring The Paper Factory's history to life – every element of Hidden Door is designed to be unique and unforgettable.
We were fortunate this year to benefit from the Creative Scotland Development Fund – a fiercely competitive pot of funding. We are also hugely grateful to the sponsors and partners who believe in us enough to generously give their support.
This support has meant we can be as accessible and inclusive as possible. This year we have offered more concessions and free tickets than ever before, including a 'pay what you can' option to help us better serve the many different communities across the city.
But the stark truth is that as a volunteer-run charity, we rely on ticket sales. The magic we create, the opportunities we provide for artists, and our ability to keep opening up new, surprising spaces for the arts across our city – all of it depends on you stepping through our 'hidden door'.
Your ticket isn't just access to a great night out; it's an investment in Edinburgh's creative future, a vote of confidence in the artists who are shaping our cultural landscape, and a lifeline that allows us to continue our unique work. Without you, non-profit organisations like Hidden Door simply can't exist.
We've all seen much-loved venues and arts organisations forced to close, a worrying trend accelerated by ongoing economic uncertainties. The impact from these external factors on the arts sector is all too real, with arts venues and cultural events needing your support now more than ever.
So I invite you to join us at The Paper Factory this week, from Wednesday to Sunday. Come and discover the energy, witness the innovation, and be part of a truly unique cultural moment. If you want Hidden Door to keep doing what we do, transforming forgotten spaces and championing incredible local talent, then please come down and support us. We've been doing this for over a decade, and with you on board, we'll keep doing it.
Hazel Johnson Festival Director, Hidden Door
https://hiddendoorarts.org
The Paper Factory
The Paper Factory
Bike Station – opening this week
The new Bike Station hub at Lauriston Place will open on Thursday 12 June.
'The Bike Station is opening its doors at 141 Lauriston Place this June — and we're setting our sights on a cycling future for all generations. From first bikes to lifelong journeys, we've spent 20+ years making cycling accessible across Edinburgh, Perth and beyond. Now, our new city-centre hub puts us closer to key infrastructure, communities, and the people who need us most.'
Sales and servicing begin on Thursday with an official opening in July.
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The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Edinburgh Festival faces a summer of Gaza sponsorship rows
A quick recap, then a look at why this matters. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg pulled out of an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) in 2023 on account of its long-standing relationship with Edinburgh-based investment firm Baillie Gifford. She viewed this hook-up as an example of 'green-washing' by a firm gaining from investments in companies whose interests were inimical to her beliefs. 'Green-washing efforts by the fossil fuel industry, including sponsorship of cultural events, allow them to keep the social license to continue operating,' she said in a statement. 'I cannot and do not want to be associated with events that accept this kind of sponsorship.' Following Ms Thunberg's withdrawal, and on the eve of the festival, over 50 authors published an open letter calling on the EIBF to end its relationship with Baillie Gifford. In May 2024, the EIBF announced it was doing just that. The Hay Festival, also sponsored by Baillie Gifford, announced the same decision a week earlier. Full disclosure: I was entirely on the side of the authors in the 2023 row and had little time or patience for the arguments of those who opposed them. Certainly not the cultural warriors of the right, who viewed the campaign as a chance to pour scorn on the 'wokerati' – but not even those festival directors and high-placed arts practitioners in the invidious position of having to defend tie-ins with companies such as Baillie Gifford. Grow up, they said, the arts wouldn't exist in their current form without this sort of corporate sponsorship. Really? I'm not so sure. Anyway, if you're right would that be such a bad thing? Fast forward another year and we have just had the launch of the 2025 EIBF. In the absence of Baillie Gifford as a corporate sponsor (a relationship which was always and self-evidently transactional in nature) we now have (cue drum roll) Sir Ian Rankin. As revealed in The Herald, the sainted knight has stepped in – though stepped up might be a better phrase – and agreed to help back the festival financially, along with fellow author Jenny Colgan and other organisations and companies including Edinburgh-based legal firm Digby Brown and privately funded arts charity the Hawthornden Foundation. I'm not saying it was easy to fill the funding gap left by Baillie Gifford, and I don't know how well it has been plugged, but the festival has announced its largest number of events since the pre-pandemic days. Just saying. But don't think this issue is going away. Even as I write this, in Tel Aviv Greta Thunberg is being forced onto a plane, a method of travel she abhors and avoids for conscientious reasons. This is following her detainment while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza aboard UK-flagged humanitarian vessel The Madleen. Greta Thunberg was detained by Israeli authorities while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza (Image: AP) Along with the wider situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the ongoing climate emergency – and as tensions, tempers, emotions and body counts mount – there will be more and more scrutiny by more and more activists of more and more companies and institutions with links to, say, arms sales to Israel or fossil fuels or [insert injustice of your choice]. This will inevitably impact on the UK's arts institution and, as Edinburgh gears up for August, it will be inevitably be felt in Scotland. Actually it already is. A body signing itself the 'Edinburgh International Festivals' was one of the co-signatories supporting a recent open letter by Sir Alistair Spalding and Britannia Morton of London's Sadler's Wells venue published in the Financial Times (ha!). In it the authors complained about the 'relentless negativity' of 'activist groups' such as the one which 'pushed out' Baillie Gifford from its place as a sponsor of the arts. They added: '[P]artnering with businesses ensures our work goes further and has a greater impact. It adds more value and enables growth, ambition and risk taking.' Quoted in The Art Newspaper last week, corporate fundraising expert Martin Prendergast addressed the open letter and said 'the causes are right but the targets are wrong'. But creative producer Naomi Russell had a different take. 'I think protest and resistance drive change and historically this has great precedent,' she told the publication. 'That can be uncomfortable for the powers and established structures.' And so we come full circle: which side are you on? It's a question being asked a lot these days. Think carefully before you answer. Read more: Reel life Do you remember your first time? No not that. I mean the first time you realised there was more to the big screen than the latest James Bond or superhero offering. The first time you had your eyes opened to the kinds of films that maybe did not have car chases or shoot-outs and maybe did have subtitles and which – just as important – were shown in venues dedicated to what you later learned was called 'art-house cinema'. If you don't, I'm sorry. If you do, you'll know why I'm so delighted that Edinburgh's Filmhouse has announced its re-opening date: Friday June 27, just in time for this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) to return to its spiritual home. I was 16 the first time I went to the Filmhouse – in 1982, to see Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva. It was also the first subtitled film I had ever seen. A little later, still at school, I saw Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish. It's still my favourite of his films and definitely in my all-time top five. Matt Dillon in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish (Image: Universal/Criterion) In the same year I also saw director Nicolas Roeg discuss working with Gene Hackman in a Q&A following a screening of Roeg's film Eureka. Many decades later I found myself in my usual spot on the back row of Cinema One and chatting to an older man in the next seat. I told him about my love of the Filmhouse, and about these seminal events in my cinematic life and how vividly I could still remember them. It turned out I was talking to former EIFF director Jim Hickey, who ran the Filmhouse between 1979 and 1993. He was the one on stage interviewing Roeg that night 30 or so years earlier. I could have cried. Him too, probably. It's a very personal story, but it is in no way meaningless because so many people in Edinburgh have similar ones to tell. That's why the Filmhouse's absence since the collapse in 2022 of parent organisation the Centre for the Moving Image has left such a huge hole. Sure there's still work to do to keep Filmhouse 2.0 afloat. But now, thanks to the efforts of those who battled to keep the flame alive, it has returned. Eureka! Read more: And finally The Herald's theatre critic Neil Cooper has been busy recently. His peregrinations have taken him first to Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum where he watched The Mountaintop, a production of Katori Hall's Olivier Award-winning play about Martin Luther King Jr's last night alive. Five stars for that one. Just around the corner at the Traverse Theatre he took in Ramesh Meyyappan's radical reworking of King Lear, then watched the entertaining Meme Girls at Oran Mor in Glasgow, part of the ongoing A Play, A Pie And A Pint season, and hot-footed it to Pitlochry for Nan Shepherd: Naked And Unashamed, the latest chapter in the cult Aberdeenshire writer's move from the margins of literary history to the centre. Elsewhere music critics Keith Bruce and Teddy Jamieson have also been busy, Keith at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall where he heard the Royal Scottish National Orchestra perform 'the mighty juggernaut' that is Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 and Teddy at Glasgow's O2 Academy where he watched Morrissey. A slew of Smiths songs will have pleased many in the audience but Teddy was left wondering who the bequiffed Narcissus is really addressing these days.
The Herald Scotland
15 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Can Scottish arts community survive without its sponsors?
A quick recap, then a look at why this matters. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg pulled out of an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) in 2023 on account of its long-standing relationship with Edinburgh-based investment firm Baillie Gifford. She viewed this hook-up as an example of 'green-washing' by a firm gaining from investments in companies whose interests were inimical to her beliefs. 'Green-washing efforts by the fossil fuel industry, including sponsorship of cultural events, allow them to keep the social license to continue operating,' she said in a statement. 'I cannot and do not want to be associated with events that accept this kind of sponsorship.' Following Ms Thunberg's withdrawal, and on the eve of the festival, over 50 authors published an open letter calling on the EIBF to end its relationship with Baillie Gifford. In May 2024, the EIBF announced it was doing just that. The Hay Festival, also sponsored by Baillie Gifford, announced the same decision a week earlier. Full disclosure: I was entirely on the side of the authors in the 2023 row and had little time or patience for the arguments of those who opposed them. Certainly not the cultural warriors of the right, who viewed the campaign as a chance to pour scorn on the 'wokerati' – but not even those festival directors and high-placed arts practitioners in the invidious position of having to defend tie-ins with companies such as Baillie Gifford. Grow up, they said, the arts wouldn't exist in their current form without this sort of corporate sponsorship. Really? I'm not so sure. Anyway, if you're right would that be such a bad thing? Fast forward another year and we have just had the launch of the 2025 EIBF. In the absence of Baillie Gifford as a corporate sponsor (a relationship which was always and self-evidently transactional in nature) we now have (cue drum roll) Sir Ian Rankin. As revealed in The Herald, the sainted knight has stepped in – though stepped up might be a better phrase – and agreed to help back the festival financially, along with fellow author Jenny Colgan and other organisations and companies including Edinburgh-based legal firm Digby Brown and privately funded arts charity the Hawthornden Foundation. I'm not saying it was easy to fill the funding gap left by Baillie Gifford, and I don't know how well it has been plugged, but the festival has announced its largest number of events since the pre-pandemic days. Just saying. But don't think this issue is going away. Even as I write this, in Tel Aviv Greta Thunberg is being forced onto a plane, a method of travel she abhors and avoids for conscientious reasons. This is following her detainment while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza aboard UK-flagged humanitarian vessel The Madleen. Greta Thunberg was detained by Israeli authorities while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza (Image: AP) Along with the wider situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the ongoing climate emergency – and as tensions, tempers, emotions and body counts mount – there will be more and more scrutiny by more and more activists of more and more companies and institutions with links to, say, arms sales to Israel or fossil fuels or [insert injustice of your choice]. This will inevitably impact on the UK's arts institution and, as Edinburgh gears up for August, it will be inevitably be felt in Scotland. Actually it already is. A body signing itself the 'Edinburgh International Festivals' was one of the co-signatories supporting a recent open letter by Sir Alistair Spalding and Britannia Morton of London's Sadler's Wells venue published in the Financial Times (ha!). In it the authors complained about the 'relentless negativity' of 'activist groups' such as the one which 'pushed out' Baillie Gifford from its place as a sponsor of the arts. They added: '[P]artnering with businesses ensures our work goes further and has a greater impact. It adds more value and enables growth, ambition and risk taking.' Quoted in The Art Newspaper last week, corporate fundraising expert Martin Prendergast addressed the open letter and said 'the causes are right but the targets are wrong'. But creative producer Naomi Russell had a different take. 'I think protest and resistance drive change and historically this has great precedent,' she told the publication. 'That can be uncomfortable for the powers and established structures.' And so we come full circle: which side are you on? It's a question being asked a lot these days. Think carefully before you answer. Read more: Reel life Do you remember your first time? No not that. I mean the first time you realised there was more to the big screen than the latest James Bond or superhero offering. The first time you had your eyes opened to the kinds of films that maybe did not have car chases or shoot-outs and maybe did have subtitles and which – just as important – were shown in venues dedicated to what you later learned was called 'art-house cinema'. If you don't, I'm sorry. If you do, you'll know why I'm so delighted that Edinburgh's Filmhouse has announced its re-opening date: Friday June 27, just in time for this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) to return to its spiritual home. I was 16 the first time I went to the Filmhouse – in 1982, to see Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva. It was also the first subtitled film I had ever seen. A little later, still at school, I saw Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish. It's still my favourite of his films and definitely in my all-time top five. Matt Dillon in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish (Image: Universal/Criterion) In the same year I also saw director Nicolas Roeg discuss working with Gene Hackman in a Q&A following a screening of Roeg's film Eureka. Many decades later I found myself in my usual spot on the back row of Cinema One and chatting to an older man in the next seat. I told him about my love of the Filmhouse, and about these seminal events in my cinematic life and how vividly I could still remember them. It turned out I was talking to former EIFF director Jim Hickey, who ran the Filmhouse between 1979 and 1993. He was the one on stage interviewing Roeg that night 30 or so years earlier. I could have cried. Him too, probably. It's a very personal story, but it is in no way meaningless because so many people in Edinburgh have similar ones to tell. That's why the Filmhouse's absence since the collapse in 2022 of parent organisation the Centre for the Moving Image has left such a huge hole. Sure there's still work to do to keep Filmhouse 2.0 afloat. But now, thanks to the efforts of those who battled to keep the flame alive, it has returned. Eureka! Read more: And finally The Herald's theatre critic Neil Cooper has been busy recently. His peregrinations have taken him first to Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum where he watched The Mountaintop, a production of Katori Hall's Olivier Award-winning play about Martin Luther King Jr's last night alive. Five stars for that one. Just around the corner at the Traverse Theatre he took in Ramesh Meyyappan's radical reworking of King Lear, then watched the entertaining Meme Girls at Oran Mor in Glasgow, part of the ongoing A Play, A Pie And A Pint season, and hot-footed it to Pitlochry for Nan Shepherd: Naked And Unashamed, the latest chapter in the cult Aberdeenshire writer's move from the margins of literary history to the centre. Elsewhere music critics Keith Bruce and Teddy Jamieson have also been busy, Keith at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall where he heard the Royal Scottish National Orchestra perform 'the mighty juggernaut' that is Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 and Teddy at Glasgow's O2 Academy where he watched Morrissey. A slew of Smiths songs will have pleased many in the audience but Teddy was left wondering who the bequiffed Narcissus is really addressing these days.
Daily Record
2 days ago
- Daily Record
Outlander's Sam Heughan to host cocktail class at Edinburgh's International Book Festival
Outlander star Sam Heughan is set to host a cocktail masterclass in the capital this August to promote his new cocktail recipe book and fans will be able to snatch up tickets for the event very soon. Outlander's Sam Heughan is set to host a cocktail class at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) later this summer to promote his new cocktail recipe book. The beloved Scots actor, who is famed for his role as Jamie Fraser in the Starz show, is also soon to make his Royal Shakespeare Company debut in Macbeth. As a man of many talents, the 45-year-old is set to discuss the significance of cocktails in his journey to stardom in the Capital in August. He will also show fans and cocktail lovers how to create some of his personal favourites drinks in an event linked to his book, The Cocktail Diaries: A Spirited Adventure, which is to due to be published in September. Sam reposted the news of his appearance at the festival to his Instagram stories where he boasts 4M loyal followers. The post, which was uploaded by the Scotsman, quickly garnered fans attention as one excited Outlander fan commented: "WHEN?!" Another user called @german,outlander simply responded with three clapping emojis as they expressed their joy over the news. Someone else exclaimed: "Yes! Bravo Sam! Slainte!", alongside a mix of love heart and beer emojis. A fourth penned: "Awesome!", accompanied by a heart eyes emoji. Sam is expected to be making his appearance to host the cocktail class 'Sam Heughan: On The Rocks' in the Capital on August 23. The event will last for one hour from 18:15 until 19:15 on the second last day of the festival, which will run from Saturday August 9 until Sunday August 24. The website details what fans can expect on the day: "Outlander actor, founder of Sassenach Spirits, and local lad Sam Heughan launches his new book, The Cocktail Diaries. "Journey around the world with Heughan as he shares his favourite cocktails, the stories behind them, and the memories they made. Join us for a truly spirited and intimate evening (and there might even be a wee tipple). Sláinte!" Fans can snatch up tickets for Sam's cocktail class when they go on sale later this month on June 21 at 10am. Other actors who are set to appear at the EIBF, which announced its full programme today, include Brian Cox, Viggo Mortensen and Vanessa Redgrave. The Edinburgh festival will see an element of performance alongside a more traditional schedule of events, with Olivier Award-winning Harriet Walter delivering an overdue voice to the women of Shakespeare, and a cast including Ms Redgrave and Mr Mortensen conveying 'powerful messages of protest from around the world' in The People Speak. According to publisher Penguin, Heughan's book, The Cocktail Diaries includes chapters on the Outlander star's top ten all-time favourite cocktails. The book will also feature a final section titled Made by Friends, featuring recipes created by international bartenders for the actor. Heughan, who originally hails from Kirkcudbright, moved to Edinburgh with his family when he was 12-years-old before going on to study at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.
