A community exhibition of thoughts, paintings and photographs will be held in Rodney Street Tunnel next month.
Locals of all ages can start contributing photographs now.
Hold Me Dear: Four Cities, (Extra)Ordinary Places will feature images of people’s most treasured spots in Edinburgh, with 50-word explanations of why they feel a special connection to that particular place.
The idea is to then create a series of walking/cycling trails … all starting at the Tunnel.
The organisers would love photos (and written explanatory captions) from Spurtleshire and the immediate environs in particular. Send your submissions to THIS LINK by 17 September.
Anyone can take part, but the sooner you send, the better your chances of being accepted.
Where and when?
The open-air, 24-hours-a-day show will run for a month from 24 September.
A launch event will start at noon on Sunday 27 September, with locals, visitors and international guests meeting at the park end of the tunnel for picnics, speeches, live music, bike workshops, cycle tours and live mural painting.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the exhibition, its associated workshops, or about volunteering to help organise it, pop along to the Tunnel this Friday (21 August) for an informal chat.
Who and why?
The group behind the event is Edinburgh-based ‘codesign studio’ HERE + NOW.
They’re a ‘small team of landscape architects, designers and photographers who specialise in engaging people in their local places’. They're interested in exploring new ways to really find out what people really think about their environments, so that plans to change or improve them are genuinely representative.
H+N organised a ‘PEP Talk’ here in April, talking to community members about what they wanted for the area. The plan that resulted was to turn Rodney Street Tunnel into a creative destination. As part of this, they will donate exhibition boards for reuse by locals at future exhibitions.
Involved behind the scenes are sustainable transport charity Sustrans (as sponsor), Friends of King George V and Scotland Yard Parks, City of Edinburgh Council and Inverleith Neighbourhood Partnership. The exhibition is part of the wider City Link Festival 2015, which this year twins Edinburgh with Copenhagen and has strong ties back to last year's host Hamburg and next year's host Istanbul.
For more information have a look at the HERE + NOW website or their Facebook page.
See also our coverage of the Tunnel two years ago here.
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@theSpurtle it would be a great venue for a saxaphone concert
New Town Flâneur @NewTownFlaneur
@theSpurtle It's very creative already. This'll make it more bourgeois.