The shortlists have been announced for the List Festival Awards 2024 presented in partnership with Johnnie Walker Princes Street.
These recognise many different disciplines within the Art, Book, Film, Fringe and International festivals.
The List says that these new awards pay tribute to the artists who make the festival an actuality. The winners will be announced at a special event on Friday 23 August hosted by Mark Nelson and Zara Janjua. All winners will receive £500 and two will head to SoHo Playhouse in New York to perform. The List reviews around 400 shows during the festivals.
The Sit Up awards champion theatre productions which drive social change. The International Fringe Encore Series Edinburgh Prize provides opportunities for emerging artists that who exceptional talent. These are selected by independent panels.
The shortlists are as follows:
ART – Best rising Scottish artist
Renèe Helèna Browne: Sanctus!
At the City Art Centre, film installation Sanctus! explores devotion in relation to portraiture, faith, and
belonging.
Flannery O’kafka: For Willy Love and Booker T: Blue babies do whatever they want
At Sierra Metro, Flannery O’kafka’s installation presents a soft subversion of gender performance,
respectability, and the picturing of disability.Page | 2
Rory Dixon: Heavy without it II
The vibrantly flamboyant solo exhibition by Sett Studios’ youngest and brightest Rory Dixon, aka DJ
Dynamite, poses a pertinent question: What is style?
BOOKS – Best rising Scottish author
K Patrick
In their ground-breaking debut book of poems, Three Births, K Patrick interrogates the erotic and the
romantic, with the powerful message that we should be able to inhabit the body we want to inhabit
and love freely within this.
Rachelle Atalla
The Salt Flats follows six strangers’ journey to a retreat in the salt flats of Bolivia, desperate to find a
cure for their various ills.
Shane Strachan
Shane Strachan’s poetry collection, DWAMS, is at times humorous and brutal, exploring climate
emergency, xenophobia, and Queer romance in North East Scotland.
FILM – Best Scottish film
Since Yesterday: The Untold Story Of Scotland’s Girl Bands (directed by Carla J. Easton and Blair
Young)
The revealing, funny and engaging documentary tracks the history of Scottish girl bands from the
1960s to the present, exploring bands, cliques and movements that emerged across the decades,
exposing the challenges faced in a male dominated world.
Duck (directed by Rachel Maclean)
A daring deepfake short from avant-garde filmmaker Rachel Maclean.
A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things (directed by Mark Cousins)
Years after her death, filmmaker Mark Cousins looks at the life and work of Scottish artist Wilhelmina
Barns-Graham in this love-letter to an imagination that shows a secret code.
FRINGE – Sit-Up Award for Best Production with a Social Impact
FAMEHUNGRY, Summerhall
A helter-skelter nose-dive into the TikTok universe, the attention economy, and what it means to be an
artist now.Page | 3
300 Paintings, Summerhall
Winner of eight Australian Fringe Festival awards. Sydney artist and comedian Sam Kissajukian
examines 300 paintings created during a five-month long manic bipolar episode. An epic story
exploring art, mental health and creativity.
The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return, Summerhall
Two best mates. One huge party. Luton pinned by austerity. An evening of noughties bangers and
shots of shitty gin mixed with the chaos of violence. A night to remember!
FRINGE – International Fringe Encore Series Edinburgh Prize
Weather Girl, Summerhall
A dizzying rampage into the soul of American strangeness, this blistering dark comedy is all about
wrecking the places we love.
A Giant on the Bridge, Assembly Roxy
Unflinching, spellbinding gig theatre devised by award-winning theatre maker Liam Hurley and
songwriter Jo Mango, also featuring Louis Abbott (Admiral Fallow), Raveloe and Solareye.
A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First, theSpace
Boyhood is all about spit-shakes, rope swings and playing soldiers. But what happens when the
pretend becomes all too real and the childhood tales become harder to retell?
My Mother’s Funeral: The Show, Summerhall
With power and playfulness, Kelly Jones’s new play tackles the inequalities around death, and the cost
of turning your loved ones into art.
FRINGE – Best show from Adelaide
Lewis Major: Triptych, Assembly @Dance Base
Three unique repertoire pieces investigate various poetic possibilities, universal rhythms and
cycles performed by Major’s company of dancers.
B.L.I.P.S., Summerhall
A wild ride of real-life circus psychosis, acrobatic madness, hula-hoop hope and radical resilience,
B.L.I.P.S. is a touching retelling about the chaos of psychosis, told through beautiful imagery, physical
feats, lip-sync, home videos and circus virtuosity.Page | 4
Ten Thousand Hours, Assembly Hall
Gravity & Other Myths new show is an ode to the countless hours needed to achieve great things.
Eight acrobats investigate physical skill: how we obtain it, how we perfect it and how it can transform
our lives.
Fool’s Paradise, Pleasance Courtyard
Rising-star Britt Plummer’s bittersweet long-distance love story is a heartbreakingly hilarious show
which fuses storytelling, puppetry, and clowning into a modern-day fringe rom-com.
FRINGE – Best Show
Natalie Palamides: WEER, Traverse Theatre
Edinburgh Comedy Award Winner Natalie Palamides (Nate, Netflix) presents an achingly tender 90s
rom-drom (romantic dramedy) which asks you to look at every argument from two sides.
These Are The Contents Of My Head (The Annie Lennox Show), Assembly Checkpoint
Annie Lennox’s transcendent solo album DIVA stands at the centre of this sparkling story about strong,
defiant women and the little gay boy who loves them. Salty Brine defies the cabaret form in ways that
must be witnessed to be believed.
So Young, Traverse Theatre
Thumbing through a record collection, having a glass of wine, remembering the old times. There’s
nothing better than catching up with old friends. Douglas Maxwell’s So Young sees an innocuous
evening slide into ruin as old friends face the challenges of middle age, growing apart and losing those
close to them.
Sawdust Symphony, ZOO Southside
In Sawdust Symphony, Michael Zandl, David Eisele and Kolja Huneck combine their passion for crafting,
object manipulation and fresh wood as carpentry and circus collide, exploring the human desire to
create.
Monkeys Everywhere, Pleasance Courtyard
Award-winning Garry Starr tries to find calm amongst the mayhem that fills his monkey mind.
Monkeys Everywhere is a show for all ages – but especially for those who can’t always keep their
monkeys under control.
INTERNATIONAL – Best Show
Songs Of The Bulbul
Aakash Odedra’s spiritual and captivating new work, creates a sensitive dialogue between the Indian
classical dance Sufi Kathak and Islamic poetry. This dance piece explores an ancient Sufi myth about a
captured bulbul, which sings an exquisite tune before perishing from despair.
Up Lates: Wynton Marsalis
Legendary American jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis launched the Festival’s Up Late series. Wynton
Marsalis is one of the world’s most renowned jazz musicians, whose performances and compositions
have earned him nine Grammy Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Please Right Back
Combining handcrafted animation and bold storytelling, Please Right Back from award-winning
company 1927, swept audiences into a magical, mischievous world, inspired by the writer-director’s
own childhood.
FRINGE – Spirit of The Fringe Award
An open award that pays tribute to a person, place or event that sums up the true spirit of the
Edinburgh Fringe, to be announced on the day of the awards 23 August.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
