Shelf Life

Citizen Writer in Residence Eleanor Thom reflects on the sharing shelf at North Edinburgh Arts – a community resource helping people in need access food and other essential items – as Christmas and a momentous General Election approach.

The Citizens of the Future

The Book Festival’s first Citizen Schools Writer in Residence, the poet and novelist Claire Askew, summarises her inspiring experience working with three Edinburgh high schools to explore ideas of belonging and identity.The Citizen Schools programme was wide-reaching in its first year: I was invited to engage with three very different groups of young people from three different schools in Edinburgh. …

Citizen: Women of Wester Hailes

In this audio blog, Eleanor hears from the women of the Create group which meets at WHALE Arts in Wester Hailes, one of our Citizen partners. These women share their stories of home and community, food, family, work and more.

Citizen: Making Zines with Claire Askew

“When I needed to get to know them, I asked the three Citizen schools groups to make zines. I wanted to find out which issues and activities most interested the students; I wanted to give them a creative activity to do and ideally, one which related to books, reading, publishing”

Citizen: Meet Eleanor Thom

Our community writer-in-residence for Citizen, Eleanor Thom, introduces herself and her approach to this new creative programme – read on to find out how you can get involved in sharing stories and shaping events that will take place around Edinburgh and at the Book Festival in 2019 and beyond.

Announcing Citizen

A new long-term creative programme working in partnership with organisations across EdinburghToday we announced the next phase of our year-round programme taking the Book Festival On the Road. Following on from the 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 …