Culture
Katie Lynch: Ventures in lockdown
“The arts, like everything, have absolutely fallen victim to capitalism. The ‘product’ of artists ripped from them while people in charge decide its value.”
We’re all islanders in a pandemic
In retrospect it seems eerily prophetic. Those faces framed in small screens, distant voices interconnecting in the ether. Yet that’s not really it. What interests Giles Perring is something simpler, but more profound than a…
When did you last see your father?
On security and surveillance trade-offs: ‘Even if the government is well intentioned, as many people doubtless think, are they competent to build a secure system? As the Scottish Government pauses for reflection, declining to adopt…
Optimism of the will in Future Library
Camus speaks for our era: ‘The time of the irresponsible artists is over… The freedom of art is not worth much when its only purpose is to assure the artists comfort‘. Katie Paterson’s work (Future…
A very Scottish spy
‘His life-story has contemporary resonances, with the resurgence of the far right and what the French call fascisant mentality along with nativist protectionism in response to both pandemic and economic collapse. From his school days,…
Declan Welsh: Ventures in lockdown
‘Feeling helpless, isolated, scared, alone, trapped, nostalgic, missing people, missing the pub: these are all feelings we will always feel. Except for maybe the pub bit. My songwriting tends to be really misty eyed over…
Strictly street dancing: a poem for a pandemic
Coronavirus brings powerful new poignancy to a remarkable poetry collection gathered by Edinburgh’s former Makar, Christine De Luca to celebrate “those who daily undertake some of the lesser-seen jobs in our city…night bus drivers, lollipop…
Introducing Ventures in Lockdown
Covid-19 has stopped live music in its tracks. No gigs. No tours. No plans. What is it like to be a musician in lockdown? Writer/Musician Craig Angus opens our new series by asking himself.
Remembering Edwin Morgan at 100
Edwin Morgan became Scotland’s first makar in 2004: a tribute to him on his centenary from his biographer. ‘He was an acrobat of words and identities. Perhaps his own identity as a gay man, risking…
Being 90: a poem for a pandemic
‘Perversely, in the wars evoked by politicians it was the flaming of youth untimely snuffed out. Such thoughts emerge from a new poem, written before the pandemic, the reflections of a man in his tenth…
Distanced but not divided: digital media helps us define our new normal
What will the new normal feel like when the pandemic is over? Can we come together to look after the most vulnerable, can we continue to use technology ingeniously, interacting to support communities?
