TRADFEST Edinburgh · Dún Éideann
A Feast of Culture in the Festival City
24 April to 6 May 2013
This is an extremely welcome development and will go a long way to ensuring that Edinburgh's Festivals offering is diverse, entertaining and of excellent quality. Scottish cultural traditions will have a new platform and reach new audiences. It is an exciting prospect.
Councillor Steve Cardownie | Festival and Events Champion | City of Edinburgh Council
TradFest Edinburgh · Dùn Èideann embraces all the folk arts with a contemporary edge, passion and flair. For 12 days the city will be a hive of music, song, storytelling, dance, crafts, folk drama, and environmental celebrations for Mayday/Beltane.
There is something here for residents and visitors, artists and audiences, professionals and community activists – and all of them together.
TradFest digs deep into the city’s history with Beltane and the Mayday plays, but it also rides the radical edge with contemporary songs of struggle and protest. From earliest times the people of Edinburgh marked the start of summer with hilltop fires and silent dawns. Harvesting fresh boughs they then danced and performed street plays about mythical heroes such as Robin of the greenwood.
Here are some events embracing this theme:
Beltane
Hope’s Beautiful Daughters
Songs of Peace and Protest
Robin Hood: The People’s Hero
The Mummers Ball
The Mummers Workshop
The Armagh Rhymers
TradFest re-animates ancient traditions and equally, participating artists are catalysts for creative change. Harnessing new ideas to old sources, the programme has been shaped by partner artists and co-curators including Alasdair Roberts, Steve Byrne, Sandy Brechin, Fred Freeman, Wendy Welch, Karine Polwart, Dave Francis, Simon Thoumire, Hamish Moore, Dannsa, Cruinn, TMSA Edinburgh & Lothians Branch, Andy Cannon, David Campbell and Edinburgh Folk Club.
You can see these artists in the following events:
Northern Streams
Scots Music Group Concert
Flowers of Edinburgh
Alasdair Roberts and Friends
The Selkie Wife
The Big tales with Bob Pegg
Tales and Music from Highland Perthshire
Many venues have been involved in the programme, with events taking place in Teviot Row House, The Pleasance, Queens Hall, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Dance Base, Greyfriars Kirk and many other local sites.
TradFest is delighted to contribute to the Year of Natural Scotland, with explorations into Arthur’s Seat – the ‘Mountain-within-a-city’ – as well as family friendly activities, such as Fun Fiddles Prom on the Prom in Portobello:
Discovering the Arthurs
Dawn Rising
Arthur’s Seat: Journeys and Evocations
The Prom on the Prom!
Take me back to top
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