For our first blog post of the year, find out about what the Communities Programme has planned for 2022.
Celebrating the Citizen Winter Warmer
Looking back on an action-packed week of activities in North Edinburgh and Musselburgh for our Citizen Winter Warmer
Introducing Ryan Van Winkle: Our Schools Writer in Residence
We’re delighted to welcome Ryan Van Winkle as our new Citizen Schools Writer in Residence. Find out more about Ryan and the projects he has planned for the coming year.
Event Launch: Citizen Winter Warmer
Get ready for our Citizen Winter Warmer, which is taking place on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 November hosted by The Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, and North Edinburgh Arts, Muirhouse. Read on for further details and to book your tickets.
Citizen Events at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2021
With the 2021 Festival now behind us, we look back on our most recent Citizen events. Read on to find out how you can catch up on anything you missed this August!
Tollcross Stories – Portraits and Audio Trail
As the Book Festival moves to its new location at Edinburgh College of Art, we wanted to find out more about the area from local people who live, work and have grown up in the Tollcross area. Listen to their reflections, memories and connections to the area.
Spotlight on our Community Programme in August
Take a look at the Citizen events that are coming up in the August Book Festival programme, and find how we are taking the joy of the Festival to those who can’t join us in person.
R-Words meets Citizen and Story Nation
Several community writing groups have been creating inspiring group poems as part of the R-Words project.
Citizen with the Saheliya Champions
We reflect on our five online Citizen sessions with Saheliya, an organisation which supports and promotes the positive mental health and well-being of Black, minority ethnic, asylum seeker, refugee and migrant women and girls (12+) in Edinburgh, Glasgow and other parts of Scotland.
Snapshots from Spartans
Explore the Zine created by young people at Spartans Alternative School, which uses original photographs and writing to show us a snapshot of their world.
Sign up to The Citizen Collective summer sessions
The next batch of sessions of The Citizen Collective is just around the corner. If you’re Edinburgh-based, aged 16-18 and love creative writing, join us!
How To Make Friends With Floating Heads
Lucy uses this guest blog to reflect on her experience of being part of The Citizen Collective. This community of creative writers have only ever met online: what this might mean for life beyond the Zoom Room?
The Citizen Map of Musselburgh
Explore our map and listen to audio recordings of creative writing by local Musselburgh residents, inspired by the town’s sights and sounds.
A teenager’s pandemic
In this guest blog, Hollie from The Citizen Collective shares her view of what it’s like to be a teenager living through a pandemic
Reflecting on 2020: Community, Covid, and Courage
Our Communities Programme Director, Noëlle Cobden, reflects on her first 12 months leading our year-round work in Edinburgh, the Lothians and beyond. Read on for her highlights of a strange year, how we pivoted our communtiy work to the digital realm, and the importance of connection to everything we achieved in 2020.
Citizen Goes Online
Last week we launched The Citizen Collective, an online creative writing initiative for young people across four local high schools. We’re also starting an online writing group for adults in North Edinburgh and Musselburgh
Looking back: Spotlight on Citizen Events
In this blog, we highlight three Citizen events from the August 2020 Book Festival Online which examine what ‘community’ means in a time of crisis
Precious objects inspire Citizen writers
Listen to the work of two of our Brunton Citizen writers, where they take precious objects as a starting point for a piece of reflective writing.
Where Dandelions Go: the film
Here we’re sharing in full the story written by children and families from North Edinburgh, in collaboration with Craigroyston Primary School, North Edinburgh Arts, and our Communities Writer in Residence, Eleanor Thom.
“A citizen is…” – your responses in poetry
Discover a new poem, Citizen, created with ideas from our Stories & Scran participants, put together by Leyla Josephine
Creative challenge: turning fridge magnets into poetry
We challenged our Citizen collaborators to create some poetry using 30 randomly-allocated fridge magnet words. Here we share Karen’s response to the challenge and tell you how you can give it a go at home.
Stories & Scran: A Special Citizen Event
Our first ever virtual community meal – cook along with us at home!Tune in on Thursday 27 August at 7pm for Stories & Scran, an event with a three course meal catered by Scran Academy. If you’d like to cook along with us at home, scroll down to find the recipes below. It’s not long now until our Stories & Scran …
Enjoy Edinburgh International Book Festival from your own home
A spotlight on three Citizen events from our August 2020 programme, which aim to help us understand the meaning of community in the time of Covid-19.
Musselburgh’s Hidden Treasures – Making Stories from Stones
Discover a collection of stories in film, inspired by a game where families in Musselburgh hid and found ‘Story Stones’. Created by Eleanor Thom.
Teaching Children to Fail
In this Guest Blog, Leyla Josephine reflects on her time as Schools Writer in Residence for Citizen.
Book Bags for Citizen
This week we have been packing and distributing book and activity packs to children and adults in Musselburgh and North Edinburgh.
The Keys to Our Lives – a Citizen Podcast
In this podcast, two Musselburgh-based groups join together through poetry and discussion. We invite you to be part of the conversation by submitting your poems, songs and pictures exploring what the theme means to you.
Summer 2020 – Communities Update
An update on where we are with our Communities Programme: Citizen, Story Nation and our Online Festival, in Summer 2020
Musselburgh: Write Where You Belong!
Our Citizen Communities Writer in Residence Eleanor Thom is leading a series of 5 workshops involving writing, stories and crafts in The Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh over the next few months! We want to know about residents’ experience of life in the area and your ideas of home, community and belonging.
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 comes to the Book Festival
After a hugely successful event at North Edinburgh Arts in May, we’re excited to bring the discussions, ideas, stories and passion of those who have been involved so far to the 2019 Edinburgh International Book Festival – the biggest public event of its kind in the world. Read on for details.
Join in with Citizen @ North Edinburgh Arts
A feast of fun, food, and stories for all awaits as we hold a celebration of our Citizen programme, including loads of free activities and a special performance from two top musicians.
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 …