Public Art Fest – 27 August to 3 September – Portobello, Edinburgh: What Makes Art Public?
A week long festival of public art projects, workshops and discussions. Take part in an exciting mass participation human installation or sign up for one of our free workshops.
Big Things on the Beach, Portobello’s community based public art trust, presents a week long, free programme of participatory public art projects, workshops and discussions. The Public Art Fest has been developed in collaboration with the Edinburgh College of Art and with GeoArte, an international cultural exchange organisation based in Puglia, southern Italy.
The Public Art Fest will create opportunities for exchange and learning between artists and the public about their roles in the production of public art. The purpose of the event is to provoke creative thinking about the future possibilities of public art practice and to lay the ground for the development of an ongoing programme of learning about public art – a “Public Art School’ - in the coming years. We intend this to be the first of a series of similar events that will include an increasing range of international partners and participants.
GeoArte is bringing three Italian artists to engage the public in art projects located in a number of sites in Portobello, including a mass participation human installation on 3 September. Venues include the Indoor Bowls and Leisure Centre, Mum’s Cafe, the Dalriada bar and St. Philip’s Church. Click here for more details of the Italian artists and their projects.
Toxme, Portobello is a human installation created by Federico Calo. The idea is born from a very simple reality: every year, everybody eats almost 6 kilos of additives contained in food, but toxification also includes noise, urban anger, environmental pollution, intellectual conditioning and the distortion of our personal right to exercise and express freely what we really think. The aim of Toxme is to bring this reality into public awareness through the medium of public art. Big Things on The Beach and Federico Calo, with the art direction of Guglielmo Greco Piccolo are recruiting local volunteers who want to take part in this groundbreaking public event. All aspects of humanity will be represented, from infants to seniors, people with all kinds of occupations, lifestyles and abilities. Everyone is invited to take part. Click here for more details about Toxme.
To register your interest in this event go to our Facebook page or e –mail enquiries@bigthingsonthebeach (please put ‘Toxme’ in the subject).
The Edinburgh College of Art is coordinating three active workshops led by UK artists that take the Portobello townscape as their point of departure to explore what makes art public and what public art might become. For more information and to book a free place, see http://tiny.cc/publicschoolprospectus
On 3 September at 2.00pm Big Things on the Beach invites everyone to join us in Mum’s Cafe at the Edinburgh Indoor Bowls and Leisure Centre, Westbank Street and Promenade to discuss the question ‘What Makes Art Public?’. More information on this event coming soon.
More program me details will be published shortly. Keep checking the website for details and follow Big Things on the Beach on Facebook and Twitter. The Public Art Fest is supported by the Portobello and Craigmillar Neighbourhood Partnership.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Big Things on the Beach is a public art trust in Portobello, a seaside suburb close to the city centre of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was formed by a group of residents in 2003 to explore the potential of the seafront as a site for engagement with public artworks by both emerging and established artists.
