00:00 I'm Gemma Kearney, I do lots of things, but in this context I'm the Chair of the Board
00:04 at the Edinburgh Art Festival.
00:06 My name's Kim McAleese and I'm the Director of the Edinburgh Art Festival.
00:09 So the Edinburgh Art Festival is the visual art arm of the umbrella of fun that happens
00:16 in this city every August.
00:18 It's a massive celebration of visual art all across the city of Edinburgh, from the 11th
00:23 until the 27th of August, so in all of the museums, in all of our partner galleries,
00:27 in lots of different spaces, right across the city from Jupiter Artland, which is right
00:32 on the outskirts of Edinburgh, right through to Westerheels, where we have a community
00:36 wellbeing space.
00:37 There are lots of commissions, artistic projects, talks, events and performances that we're
00:41 programming.
00:42 It's sort of become something that is multi-form, hugely celebrated, and one of the smaller
00:49 festivals in the offering that there is, which there is so much, there honestly really is,
00:54 there's so much going on, and the art festival remains quite kind of agile, potentially subversive,
01:03 and really, really multicultural, I think.
01:08 The EAF is a really, really interesting festival.
01:11 I mean for me, I believe very strongly that as a kind of holder of culture, a director
01:18 of a festival or arts organisation, that we have a very important civic role, and that
01:24 we are all operating with public money, and so that we do have that civic duty and responsibility
01:29 to really think about who we're platforming and why.
01:32 So I was first involved in the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2021, and I'd only just moved
01:38 to Edinburgh, having been a wide-eyed theatre, either student or lover, since the age of
01:47 18, and coming to Edinburgh every August for The Fringe.
01:50 In 2021, as a broadcaster by trade and a published author, I decided that Edinburgh was a good
01:58 place to position myself, to continue to kind of challenge myself, I think, in new locations,
02:05 and I was asked to host an online version of what the EAF were offering that year because
02:11 of the pandemic.
02:12 I find it more interesting and I feel very strongly about platforming people who have
02:17 been historically minoritised or underrepresented, so I don't want to shy away from difficult
02:24 political questions because I think it's really important that in the realm of art, that's
02:28 where we can talk about them and how we can shift things and change things in the world
02:32 going forward.
02:33 At the end of introducing so many different amazing artists, I felt so impassioned that
02:42 more people have access to EAF because I think that it really does offer something very different
02:50 when it comes to what Edinburgh is known for in August.
02:53 Art is a really interesting space, everything feels really flexible.
02:57 We're outside of the kind of, we still have to operate under certain structures, but we're
03:02 outside of lots of the confines of lots of very powerful and difficult structures in
03:08 the world, and I actually think that art has the power to bring people together to discuss
03:14 very difficult and quite traumatic things in ways that are not necessarily verbal as
03:19 well.
03:20 I mean, there'll be experiences you have in a performance, experiences you have with
03:24 music, with an installation, a film that you might see that is able to convey very complex
03:30 ideas and issues, but in a way that words kind of fall short, and that's what I'm really
03:35 interested in, the power that art and artists have to kind of help us think together.
03:42 The fact that it is an art festival really gives it an opportunity to not be quite so
03:52 commercial perhaps, and platform a new wave of thinkers that don't necessarily want to
04:00 be put into a box or category.
04:02 What's really interesting for me about the City of Edinburgh is, you know, the art festival
04:07 has done an incredible job, like working with many partners all across the city, working
04:11 in public spaces, and working with really difficult topics, questions, ideas.
04:18 EAS has the potential to be the most accessible festival, because it's multi-form, so much
04:26 of it is free, and it's everywhere, it's all over Edinburgh, and it's not in the obvious
04:33 places, which just makes me so excited because the democratisation of art in all forms is
04:40 fundamental to an ethos that's very important to me.
04:45 The city is completely captivating and magical and beautiful, but actually whenever you scratch
04:50 under the surface a bit, we're living in a city where lots of the wealth is based on
04:55 kind of colonial power, and that's something that I wanted to think about with this festival.
05:00 You know, it's really easy to be completely swept away by the beauty of the city, but
05:04 actually there are difficult histories that I think that we should and need to address.
05:08 Feel like my mind and heart in unison are always expanding, and it comes out in so many
05:21 ways, and one of those ways is to support and hold space for the arts without thinking
05:29 about them in the ways that we do when we over-intellectualise them.
05:35 Come together and organise, find people who are like-minded, or maybe not even like-minded,
05:40 but people who will teach you something, and use that and channel that into something that
05:47 is going to help other people.
05:49 Digital art, the arts, multi-form, breaking down the barriers and not having the categories
05:56 and boxes to tick is part of a future that I want to be part of.
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