The Edinburgh International Book Festival announced the next phase of its year-round programme taking the Book Festival On The Road. Following on from the Festival’s extremely successful ReimagiNation series across Scotland’s five New Towns, Citizen is a new long-term creative programme working in partnership with organisations across Edinburgh, listening to people’s views about the communities in which they live. Led by Scottish-based writers-in-residence, Citizen aims to give a voice to communities, offering residents an opportunity to explore their connection to each other and their relationship to their local area, looking at how local conversations are heard or echoed on a national or global level.
Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, said:
I feel passionately that book festivals are not just about books: they are much-needed forums for public discourse. If we are going to sustain a genuinely inclusive forum for grassroots democratic discussion in Edinburgh, we must reach out more effectively to give everyone the chance to take part.
After an open recruitment process, Claire Askew has been appointed as the Citizen Schools Writer-in-Residence and will be working with three secondary schools including Liberton High School and Craigroyston Community High School. Claire is a poet and novelist and her debut novel All the Hidden Truths featured in the Book Festival programme this year. Eleanor Thom has been appointed as the Citizen Community Writer-in-Residence and will be working through North Edinburgh Arts with groups living and working in the North of the city as well as in partnership with WHALE Arts Agency (Wester Hailes) and Goodtrees Neighbourhood Centre (Moredun). Eleanor, a novelist (The Tin-Kin) and short form fiction writer, will be meeting regularly with local people from a variety of backgrounds and of all ages to hold creative conversations about what being a citizen today means. The writers-in-residence will work with a host of fellow writers, musicians, illustrators and other artists to inspire community members and school pupils to tell their stories of life in their areas, and share their views on community, home and their relationship to the wider world.
In collaboration with North Edinburgh Arts, local residents will be invited to join a group of Community Programmers who will work closely with Eleanor Thom and the Book Festival. The group will create events showcasing the conversations to community audiences, and curate a special strand of Citizen events at the 2019 Edinburgh International Book Festival, ensuring the voices and concerns of people across the city are heard on the Festival’s international stage.
The same group will work to create a mini Book Festival to be held in North Edinburgh Arts in May 2020, which responds to the ideas developed across the previous eighteen months of the programme. Citizen will continue until August 2021 and will draw in communities in and around Musselburgh with the support of the Brunton Theatre. The Book Festival will share regular updates from these community conversations on social media and at Edinburgh Book Festival On the Road, enabling more people from the city and beyond to get involved in the discussions.
Citizen is part of Edinburgh International Book Festival On The Road, a series of events and activities around Scotland throughout the year, and is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery and through the PLACE Programme (funded by the Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council, and the Edinburgh Festivals, and supported and administered by Creative Scotland).
Councillor Donald Wilson, Culture and Communities Convener, said:
For centuries Edinburgh has exported stories to the world, leading to its designation as the first ever UNESCO City of Literature. Since the Book Festival launched 35 years ago, the city has welcomed some of the greatest minds and most interesting writers on the planet to exchange ideas and share their stories with us!