free

Discover and create amazing works of art in exciting settings throughout the city

ART IN UNUSUAL PLACES

This guide belongs to:

Edinburgh Art Festival at

City Art CentreWhere do I end and you begin1 August – 19 October: Mon–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 12–5pm

2 Market Street, EH1 1DE 0131 529 3993 www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk www.edinburghartfestival.com

ColleCtiveRoss Sinclair: 20 Years of Real Life28 June – 31 July: Tue–Sun 10am–5pm1 August – 31 August: Mon–Sun 10am–6pm

City Observatory & City Dome, 38 Calton Hill, EH7 5AA 0131 556 1264 www.collectivegallery.net

doveCot studiosDalziel + Scullion Tumadh: Immersion1 August – 13 September: Mon–Sun, 10.30am–6.30pm Outside August: Mon–Sat, 10.30am–5.30pm

10 Infirmary Street, EH1 1LT 0131 550 3660 www.dovecotstudios.com

WelCome to All explorers!Edinburgh Art Festival Explorers is a free activity trail through some of the best galleries in the city. Along the way, you’ll see some amazing art and make some of your own.

There are three exhibitions on the route – your mission is to visit each one and complete the tasks contained in this guide. The exhibitions you need to see on the trail are all free to enter.

This year we are exploring art in unusual places: we will discover art in a vegetable market, a swimming pool and an observatory, we will explore art you can wear, a portable gallery and art you can hide inside.

Make sure you pick up your Edinburgh Art Festival Explorers map along with this passport – you might need it to discover all the art to be seen as you walk between galleries. If you see anything interesting or unusual along the way mark it on the map; add your own ideas for city artworks too.

Enjoy exploring and remember: Art can be created anywhere, use your imagination!

www.edinburghartfestival.com www.facebook.com/EdArtFest www.twitter.com/EdArtFest

Part of Edinburgh Art Festival (31 July – 31 August 2014), the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art, including over 45 exhibitions, new public artworks and a month of special events, tours and performances, the majority of which are free to attend.

Commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival, this project has been developed by Alchemy Arts in collaboration with children and teachers from primary schools, family and community groups in Edinburgh, and with participating galleries.www.alchemyarts.org

Where do I end and you begin is an exhibition of contemporary art from around the Commonwealth, chosen by curators from South Africa, New Zealand, India, Canada and the UK. There’s sculpture, painting, film and printmaking by more than 20 artists, all exploring the things that different people, countries or communities have in common.

While you are looking at the exhibition, explore these ideas:

3 Where have these artworks travelled from to be here today? If the artworks could speak, what stories would they tell us? What do the artworks have in common? How are they unique?

Explore in the gallery …flAghAllFind the artwork called Flaghall by Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman. This is a portable gallery space, a tent made up of flags of imaginary communities.

A community is a group of people who come together because they have something in common: they might believe in the same thing, live in the same place or enjoy the same activities. Edinburgh Art Festival is a community that brings people together from all over the world to celebrate and share art.

Like any tent, Flaghall can travel anywhere and be put up in different spaces. Each time it is put up, Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman invite a different artist to show their own artwork in the space. They might show a film, do a performance, hang a drawing or tell a story.

3 Look at the flags that are sewn together to make Flaghall and pick the most interesting one. What community do you imagine this flag belongs to? Look for clues in the colours and shape of the flag.

Edinburgh Art Festival at

City Art CentreWhere do I end and you beginExplored by Tollcross Primary School, Edinburgh

Top: Rushton and Tyman, Flaghall, 2005, mixed media, dimensions variable, installation detail

p Describe your imaginary community with drawings or words:

3 Go inside Flaghall, explore the space and imagine that you are the artist who will fill this space with your ideas. What will you create?

p Draw your ideas here:

Art in unusual places …3 If you could take Flaghall anywhere, where would you put it? Use your imagination to think of an unusual place for this artwork: you could place Flaghall on a rooftop, under the sea or on the moon. Add the new surroundings to the drawing.

r While you are exploring the city, look out for interesting places to put Flaghall, and mark them on your Explorers map.

Explore at home …imAgined Communities3 Write down ideas for an imaginary community. What is the community made up of? It could be people, animals, or aliens. What has brought them together? What celebrations do they have? What is the community called?

Use your imagination to build up a picture of a community that is different from any that has been imagined before. What does this community have in common with others and in what ways is it unique?

flAg designYou will need:pen or pencil and a notepad marker pens or fabric penslining fabric or old sheets

3 Design a flag for your imaginary community. Remember to make the flag bright and bold. Use colours and shapes to describe your community. Make this flag different from any flag that has been seen before.

Perhaps, like the Union Jack, it is a combination of the different nations that make up this country, or like the Canadian flag it shows a tree that grows there. It may have a dynamic shape to signify a country that is changing and moving into the future like the South African flag, or have a symbol of the beliefs of the people like the wheel of Dharma in the Indian flag.

Use marker pens or fabric pens to draw your design on lining fabric or old sheets to make a real flag.

Explore at home …portAble Community hAllYou will need:marker pens or fabric penslining fabric or old sheetssewing materials, safety pins or duct tapean existing structure to drape over (e.g. table)

3 Create your own version of Flaghall with your family, your school or with a group you are part of. Show everyone how to design a flag on fabric using fabric pens or markers.

1 When everyone has made a flag, you need to attach the flags together. They can be sewn together, pinned with safety pins or stuck together with duct tape. If it’s too difficult to attach all the flags together, everyone can copy their design onto one big piece of fabric using fabric pens or markers.

2 Take the decorated fabric and drape it over a structure to make a tent space. You could drape the fabric over lots of different things to create a space: try a table, the side of a bunk bed, the branches of a tree, a gazebo or between two chairs. 3 Keep a look out for interesting places to set up your Flaghall. Every time you set it up, invite someone to be an artist in the space. Use your Flaghall as a place to tell stories, display pictures, perform shows or play music.

4 You could make different context for your character to go in, or why not try creating a series of scenes that tell the story of your character’s life or adventure?

Ross Sinclair is an artist who explores art in “Real Life”. He displays artwork on badges and T-shirts, posters and coasters, he sells his art on market stalls and wears it on his back. His art can be found in the most unusual and ordinary of places, and he finds his inspiration not only in galleries but in real life too.

Art in unusual places …The Collective gallery space was once the old Observatory. This has always been a place for studying the world around us, the place where people came to look closely at the sky, to notice the details of distant planets and learn from the patterns of nature. Now this is a gallery, a place for artwork.

Artists create work as a way of exploring the world around them. They create art to investigate the things they see and feel and to share ideas with people far and wide. Many exhibitions in Collective show artists just beginning their careers, they are at the very start of their journey of exploration.

3 Study the city that surrounds Collective. Can you see the Forth Road Bridge? Edinburgh Castle? Arthur’s Seat?

r Look carefully at the buildings, green spaces and sea. Can you spot any unusual places that would make a good place for an artwork? Mark them on your map.

Ross Sinclair, 20 Years of Real Life, 2014; photograph by Ross Sinclair, courtesy of Collective

ColleCtiveRoss Sinclair: 20 Years of Real LifeExplored byfamilies from Dads Rock and young people from Cameron House Community Centre

Explore in the gallery …Poetry in real lifeRoss Sinclair finds poetry in the everyday. He collects words from songs and displays them in neon lights, on T-shirts and posters. Put together in different ways these found words can make new connections and have fresh meanings. It might be a line from a song played often on the radio, but in neon lights it strikes us with a different force.

3 Look around the gallery for words and sentences that could be the lyrics to a song, an album title or a band name. Look for hidden words that no one would notice, words on the end of a pencil, the bottom of a cup; go outside and look for words on signs and the sides of buildings.

p You could add some of your found words to the spaces on this wall.

ConCrete poetry3 Explore Concrete Poetry by collecting FOUND words from the world around you; REMEMBERED words from songs and albums. Put them together to make new IMAGINED song lyrics, band names and album titles.

p Write the words on these T-shirts.

Explore at home …To carry your concrete poetry out of the gallery and into REAL LIFE, make your poems into band T-shirts and pin badges.

pin bAdgesYou will need:pencil and paper and felt pens badge maker, or card, tape and safety pin

3 Chose your favourite words and phrases that you have collected throughout the city. You can join found words together to make new slogans.

1 Practise writing these words in bright bold letters. Make a striking design so that everyone will know this is your artwork. Make a style that can be used for all your artworks so that they can connect together like a sentence.

2 When you are happy with your design, copy the phrase onto a circle of paper and colour it in with felt pens.

3 Use a badge maker to make this into a badge, or stick your picture onto card and tape a safety pin onto the back.

4 Make lots of different badges and pin them together to make a new poem. Wear them out in the world as a real life exhibition.

bAnd t-shirtYou will need:T-shirtpencil, stencils, rulers for marking out fabric pens or markers

3 Think of the title of a song, an album or the name of a band. Think of parts of the songs that people don’t notice. If you didn’t know the music behind those words, what new meanings might they have? Or use some found words that could be the lyrics or name of an imaginary band. What would the band sound like? What would the song be about?

1 Put your T-shirt on a table with some scrap paper inside to stop the pen going through.

2 Using pencils, stencils and rulers sketch the words onto the T-shirt. Fill the whole space so that people far away can see your artwork. Use fabric pens or markers to colour the words in bright bold colours.

3 Wear your artwork out in the real world. People may not realise it is an artwork when they see it, but they might think about the words and imagine what they mean. This is how your artwork can travel, by sparking ideas in the people around you.

merChAndise stAll3 Create a collection of T-shirts and badges with your friends and family. Hang these together on a wall to make a merchandise stall, set up your stall at a car boot sale, school fair or community fun day. The more chances people get to see your artwork in real life, the more your ideas will travel and grow.

doveCot studiosDalziel + Scullion Tumadh: ImmersionExplored by families from Multicultural family base, pupils from St Crispin’s School and Castleview Primary

The title for this exhibition, 'immersion', means to be completely surrounded by something, so that everything else disappears and all your senses are full of this thing. You can be immersed in water when you jump into a swimming pool; the sounds of the world seem distant and all you can feel is the water around you.

Another way you can be immersed is when you are deeply involved in a favourite hobby, time disappears and you forget all your worries.

Art in unusual places …Before it became a gallery, Dovecot Studios used to be a swimming pool. When you go up to the balcony you can look down to the space where the pool used to be. In the place that people used to swim, completely immersed in the water, you can now see the weavers working, deeply immersed in their work.

r As you travel around the city, notice places where you can be completely immersed in the environment around you. Perhaps the trains at Waverley, a downpour of rain or bagpipes on Princes Street fill your senses for a moment so that everything else disappears. When this happens, mark it on your Explorers map.

Top: Dalziel + Scullion for Dovecot Studios, Silhouette garment, 2014

Explore in the gallery …Explore the unusual clothing in the exhibition. Notice how these outfits are different from ordinary outdoor clothes; unusual shapes, cushions and pockets will all give us clues to their uses. How could these outfits help us to become immersed in our surroundings?

3 Can you find:An outfit that allows you to change your shape? What could this be useful for?

An outfit that helps you to collect things? What is the best thing you have collected from your environment?

An outfit that helps you to better experience the rain? What kinds of weather do you like to feel?

Imagine an outfit that would help you to become immersed in your favourite parts of nature. Perhaps it disguises you so that animals will come close, it might have compartments for gathering interesting shells, flowers or stones, your outfit could help you to feel the wind in your hair or the snow on your tongue.

p Draw your outfit on one of the figures here:

Explore at home …Fabric of natureThe outfits in this exhibition are made from Harris Tweed. This is fabric woven on the island of Lewis. In the olden days, the colours in the tweed came from dyes made from plants, this meant that the colours of the landscape were woven into the fabric.

lAndsCApe WeAvingYou will need:old posters, magazines or calendars scissors

3 Make your own landscape weaving.

1 Cut pictures of natural landscapes out of old posters, magazines or calendars. Look out for colours and tones that you would like to weave into your fabric and cut these pages into even strips. These will become the “weft” of your fabric. This is the part of the weaving that run from side to side.

2 Choose a piece of coloured paper as the “warp” of your fabric. This is the part of the weaving that run from top to bottom. Cut this piece into strips, stopping just before the edge of the paper.

3 Take your first magazine strip. Weave this into your coloured paper, going over and under the coloured paper each time.

4 Take your second magazine strip, this time go under the coloured paper first, and then over, so you are weaving opposite to your first row. Keep weaving the strips into the coloured paper until you see the pattern of your fabric emerge.

sensory WeAvingYou will need:empty picture frame, embroidery hoop or piece of card string or strong yarn

3 Make a sensory weaving from natural materials in your environment.

1 Make a hand held loom from an empty picture frame, a piece of card or an embroidery hoop. Tie string backwards and forwards across your frame to make the warp of your weaving.

2 Go for a walk in a natural environment. Look out for plants, stones or shells that are interesting to touch or smell. Try touching them with your feet or against your cheek. See if the leaves smell differently when you rub them with your fingers. Try covering your eyes and listen to the sounds of nature. Explore the environment with your senses.

3 As you go, gather leaves, flowers, grass and plants and add them to your hand held loom. Experiment with the different ways these plants can be woven over and under the string.

4 When your loom is full you will have a woven memory of the walk you have experienced, and an artwork that was inspired by nature.

Make sure that these materials are allowed to be collected before you start, and try to collect fallen rather than growing plants.

Woven environmentA giant loom can be made in just the same way as your handheld loom.

3 Look out for tree branches, chair backs, gates and fences that have a space between them that could become a loom. Wind string backwards and forwards across the structure to make the warp of your weaving.

Weave fallen branches, leaves and flowers into your loom. Explore different natural materials in each season, try plants that smell nice or ones that are interesting to touch.

Art in unusual places …3 Artist Shane Waltener has made a loom from the staircase in Dovecot Studios, and woven rainbow-coloured wool like a web down the bannister. Where would you spin a web?

ColleCtive:Free Instruments for Teenagers Summer 2014

Collective and artist Ross Sinclair are giving away enough instruments to start five new bands in Edinburgh during Summer 2014.

Ross Sinclair has made art and music for the last twenty years. 2014 marks the twenty-year anniversary of Real Life projects and to celebrate he is giving away instruments to start new bands. The bands will work with Ross and others over the next year to write and perform new music.

You can get:y Free instrumentsY Free mentoringy Free recording timeY Free distribution

You need to be:y 20 years old or youngerY Committed to starting a new bandy Able to and want to take part in the project over the next yearY Interested in performing

There will be the opportunity to come and try out the instruments at the gallery every Saturday during the exhibition between 1–5pm until 31 August 2014.

If you are interested please email Collective via mail@collectivegallery.net and Collective will add you to the list to receive more information about the project.

There is plenty more to see at this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival and the vast majority of it is free to attend. The festival runs from 31 July – 31 August 2014.

There are over 45 exhibitions at galleries across the city, amazing new public art works and a range of tours, events and live performances. Why not discover your new favourite artist?

For more information, pick up the full Edinburgh Art Festival map from any participating gallery, visit our website, follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page.

www.edinburghartfestival.com www.facebook.com/EdArtFest www.twitter.com/EdArtFest

Thank you

Many thanks to our funders and to all the children, teachers and galleries that made Edinburgh Art Festival Explorers possible:

Special thanks to the Edinburgh Art Festival explorers from Cameron House Community Centre, Castleview Primary School, Dads Rock, Tollcross Primary School, St Crispins School and Multicultural Family Base. The enthusiasm, ideas and creativity of all the participants has been truly inspiring.

Edinburgh Art Festival Explorers was developed by Alchemy Arts.

www.alchemyarts.org

Explore the rest of Edinburgh Art Festival …

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