Today the first year of the Edinburgh International Festival’s residency at Leith Academy was celebrated with cake.
The pupils also unveiled their new branding for the Leith Academy Residency developed with the EIF marketing team. The brand incorporates the well known EIF yellow within the design.
Caroline Donald Head of Learning and Engagement at EIF told The Edinburgh Reporter : “Well, we’ve been working in the school since 2019. And we’re running a three year residency in partnership with the school, bringing the Edinburgh International Festival together with Leith Academy to enrich the life of the school, but also to enrich the work of the Festival.
“Today, we’re unveiling a branding project which was part of the residency relationship. We’re working creatively looking at creativity skills, but also looking at the skills that are needed by our festival team to make the festival and one of our strongest teams in the festival, our marketing team.Â
“Our yellow brand is well known across the world. And that’s one of the things we wanted to look into with the young people and about the skills it takes to do marketing branding, and to pull that together for the festival. During the festival, they will be coming to see work. They’ll be helping us with some of the talks and events and we’ll have workshops from some of the artists coming to the festival happening in the school.”
Head teacher at Leith Academy Mike Irving said : “So it’s a three year residency, but we’ve now just completed just beyond our first year. We have still got a long way to go and are looking forward to it.
In schools in 2019 we’re trying to be more and more creative with our curriculum to try and get more pathways for young people.
“The residency with the Edinburgh International Festival has not only brought us new partners, new specialists, new courses, but has given some of our young people a real voice in the creative elements of their curriculum and it’s something that we certainly couldn’t do without the partnership work of The Edinburgh International Festival.”Â
The @edintfest may take place in the summer but they have a three year residency going on with @leithacademy and today they unveiled the new branding for it at the school. There was cake! pic.twitter.com/xMsGrqaIwB
— Edinburgh Reporter (@EdinReporter) December 9, 2019
Cllr Ian Perry the Education Convener said : ” This fantastic residency at Leith Academy marks a real commitment from the Festival to working in a really sustained way with a school and its community. It builds on the previous successful Castlebrae residency and offers pupils and staff unrivalled access to cultural and creative opportunities. It also develops skills in real world situations and is supported by mentoring for pupils and high-quality professional learning for staff. We are very supportive of this partnership. I’m looking forward to finding out more about the residency, how it develops over the next two years and the positive benefits for the school and the whole community.”
A three-year residency between Leith Academy and The Edinburgh International Festival follows their previous residency with Castlebrae Community High School (2015-2017).
The creatives have just completed the first year in working with pupils from the school during which there have been four artists in residence, choreographer Ashley Jack, artist Heather Marshall, Battersea Arts Centre’s Beatbox Academy and film maker Aly Wight. The programme also includes teaching pupils to be Festival Ambassadors and a Personal Development Award set up, all designed to improve both social and employability skills.
In-school activity began in January 2019 after a six-month consultancy period, with over 4000 pupil engagements recorded since then across a wide-range of special projects and cultural activity.
Next year there will be opportunities to work with new artists in residence including local theatre makers and performance artists Emma Jayne Park and Peter Lannon who will work with pupils exploring masculinity and gender. Mamoru Iriguchi, Lou Brodie and playwright James Ley will test and inform with Sex Education Xtreme, a project to collaborate on the development of a performance for young people aged 12-15. This will offer insight into sex education and the evolution of gender.
A mentoring programme will be established pairing EIF team members with individual pupils, career talks and a new programme offering instruction and education about behind the scenes, from lighting to sound design.
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