North Edinburgh Arts (NEA) is a purpose-built cultural centre offering local residents a place to relax, explore, learn, meet, volunteer and have fun.
Our award winning venue incorporates two studios, a 96 seat theatre, recording studio, gallery, offices and a café with children’s play area leading onto a large garden. It is loved by the local community attracting over 40,000 visits in the last year before Covid. Read our highlights of that year here, and our highlights of 2021 here. North Edinburgh Arts is working out of pop-up spaces from March 2022 to September 2023 as we undergo an ambitious capital programme, details at www.northedinburgharts.co.uk/development.
The following case study is based on a 2021 conversation with Kate Wimpress, Director of NEA
Over 30 hours of creative activities are on offer each week, most with a family focus, alongside a wide range of other events such as exhibitions, dance shows, circus skills workshops, community theatre, poetry readings and film clubs. We are also home to Muirhouse Link Up and Tinderbox Orchestra.
NEA has a purpose-built venue in one of the most deprived wards in Edinburgh with a theatre space, café, studios, offices, a community cinema, a children's play area, an early-years library and a half-acre community garden play space. NEA also works to develop placemaking on brownfield sites around the wider North Edinburgh area.
“Our approach in North Edinburgh arts is about trying to work holistically across space and work with the whole person [….] People come in and curate their own journey through our activities”.
The garden, café and play space act as access points for arts centre: "everybody understands a café and a garden, and come in and feel safe, and secure and connected to it. … the arts centre really benefits from that, because not everybody understands an arts centre, or even wants to come into an arts centre, God forbid."
Basing their ideas on the Tara Arts model (a 14-year residency), NEA pushes for long artists residencies where they can "just pay artists to be with us". (Anthropologist Clifford Geertz has spoken about "deep hanging out".) NEA is also part of a wider North Edinburgh Action Group working for better services for the community.