Festival of Politics
Parliament may be in recess, but the 19th Festival of Politics will take place over three days, from 9 to 11 August at Holyrood. Extra events, run in partnership with the Edinburgh International Festival, will take place before, during and after these dates.
Featuring events on politics, current affairs, social and environmental issues, the Festival offers every Scot an opportunity to come to their Parliament and discuss the issues facing society today.
The programme is here and tickets are very reasonably priced.

Salmond is back
Former First Minister, Alex Salmond, is back on the Fringe in a show when the audience will have a vote on matters discussed, and the proceedings will be overseen by a variety of “Speakers” including actor Brian Cox, CBE, John Bercow the former Speaker and Dame Eleanor Laing who is the current principal depute speaker in the House of Commons.
Tickets are on sale now. Read more here.
Edinburgh Projects make progress with UK Government funding
Funding has been awarded by the UK Government to two major projects in Edinburgh which are both making great progress.
The sum of £250,000 has been awarded to North Edinburgh Arts (NEA) to continue their project to build a new state-of-the-art hub. This award means that NEA now have 80% of their fundraising target for the capital programme. This will be added to the pot which has been donated by Foundation Scotland, The Garfeld Weston Trust, The William Syson Trust, The Robertson Trust, The Binks Foundaton, and the Scottish Government Regeneraton Capital Grant Fund. Work continued apace and will be completed early in 2024. At present there is a welcome cabin in front of the site for everyone to visit and learn more about the project or join NEA.
Lesley Hinds, Chair of North Edinburgh Arts said: “North Edinburgh Arts is delighted to receive funding from the Community Ownership Fund. This funding from the Westminster Government shows the confdence they have in NEA and its future in the expanded facilites at MacMillan Hub.”
And the sum of £90,000 was awarded to Portobello Town Hall for essential repairs and renovations needed to provide a suitable space for the community to host a variety of events. This is additional funding that the Town Hall had not really expected. They had applied for money to help with accessibility measures such as lifts, ramps and motorised doors. The funding is £75,000 of capital which Portobello Town Hall will have to match and £15,000 of revenue staff costs for the project.
Get back to sewing
The Edinburgh Remakery are running a Sewing Machine Skills workshop at the Lend and Mend Hub in Wester Hailes on 21 and 28 July. Suitable for beginners and those who want to refresh their skills. Book a place by email WesterHailes.Library@edinburgh.gov.uk

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Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.