Around Town list.co.uk/festival list.co.uk/festival
‘WE MADE THE WHOLE BUILDING SILVER ONE YEAR, USING TINFOIL’ Hitlist AROUND TOWN, LGBT & KIDS*
✽✽ Book Signing: Julia Donaldson and Emily Gravett The Gruffalo author has teamed up with the award- winning children’s illustrator for their new book, Cave Baby, which they’ll doubtless be signing this week for the fanatical mobs Donaldson tends to attract. Waterstone’s West End, 16 Aug, 2pm, free. ✽✽ The Edinburgh Military Tattoo The big guns roll out for the loudest military spectacle in town. Castle Esplanade, Edinburgh Castle, 225 1188, until 28 Aug (not Sun), prices vary. ✽✽ Courtyard Readings Open, outdoor space for poets to read their work or an old favourite. See picture, page 93. Scottish Poetry Library, 557 2876, until 21 Aug (not Sun), 2pm, free. ✽✽ BAFTA Young Games Designers Workshops An exciting new project to get 12 to 16-year-olds working with expert game designers. See picture, page 94. EICC, 300 3000, 13–15 Aug (Fri 2–5.30pm; Sat & Sun 10am-5pm), £70. ✽✽ The Village Store & Tinker Tailor The return of the Drill Hall’s popular Village Store – a weekly local shop for Leithers in search of quality ethical goods including food, drink and household items. The Drill Hall’s friendly fixers will also be on hand to help you learn how to make do and mend. Out of the Blue Drill Hall, 14 Aug, 10am–2pm, free. ✽✽ Forest X If it’s possible to be a bohemian paradise and an Edinburgh institution, the Forest Café has managed it for a decade. See preview, left. Forest Café, 220 4538, 14 Aug, free. ✽✽ Cameo Curio A pop-up art event with things to see, do and buy from Marvel Comics, Godiva Fashion, Lindstrom Effect and more. Enjoy a little live music from Digital Jones or Manje, munch on cakes and coffee, and feast your eyes on photography, crafts, installations, fashion and comics. Sonic Lodge, 553 8952, 15 Aug, free. For Festival Index see page 136.
The Forest of Edinburgh The Forest Café is a true original in Edinburgh, and it’s been around for a decade this month. Kirstin Innes gets her party hat on
The Forest Café’s tenth birthday, happening mostly on Saturday 14 August, but spreading its shambolic, joyous tentacles throughout the rest is one of those true causes for of the month, celebration. That an entirely volunteer-run, hippy- hearted freespace for the arts has been able to survive in the relatively staid Edinburgh for ten years, through love alone, is absolutely miraculous. If it’s possible to be both a bohemian paradise and an Edinburgh institution, then they’ve managed it.
‘Over ten years, literally hundreds of people have come to the space, got involved and put time into it,’ says Chris Palmer, one of Forest’s founder members, who still takes an active role in the day-to-day running of the place. ‘Painting, cleaning, fixing windows, doing a kitchen shift, putting on an arts exhibition, running a gig: unpaid people doing that stuff is unbelievable. It’s become this dynamic hub that people just seem to want to be involved in.’ The Forest Café was born in August 2000 in a tiny empty space off the West Port. ‘A group of us were looking for something that was missing in the city,’ explains Palmer. ‘We wanted a free arts space in Edinburgh, a place that we liked, that we could have a say in how it was run and managed, where bands could play, we could show films, like an exciting living room that you could hang out in with your friends in.’ After three years, it was pretty clear they’d outgrown the original venue; the current Bristo Place location has been on loan to them from the local charity Edinburgh University Settlement (not connected to Edinburgh University) ever since.
Yes, between the veggie food, comfy shabby furniture
92 THE LIST 12-19 Aug 2010
and proliferation of dreadlocks, the Forest might seem like slacker Nirvana, but over the years some very driven people have used its easy, anything-goes ethos to launch major arts projects. Ryan Van Winkle’s monthly spoken word/ performance night The Golden Hour has spun off into Forest Publications, a platform for great new writing. Visual art wing TK Gallery is an important stopping point for emergent Scottish artists, while Forest Fringe, originally organised as a free alternative to the corporate bloat of the Fringe proper, is now a year-round, London-based arts organisation, showered in awards and generally regarded as the best place to go for excellent new work. So, how to celebrate all this? Palmer laughs. ‘We’ve had some extraordinary parties over the years. We made the whole building silver one year, using tinfoil; there was the naked bouncy castle thing; and for our eighth, the band Silk played and we issued everyone with white boiler suits (although some of them chose just to get naked) and the band handed out tubes of paint. People just smeared themselves in colours. It was pretty amazing.’
He’s quieter about plans for Forest X. The press notes say: ‘Featherface, granny flats and baptism tank.’ ‘Yeah, pretty much exactly that!’ he says. Baptism tank? ‘Yeah. Just imagine, if the Forest was a church. And you wanted to get baptised, in a really big tank. That might actually be a hot tub.’ Oh, Forest Café. Never change.
Forest X is on at Forest Café, Bristo Place, Sat 14 Aug. For more information on the month of celebrations, see: www.theforest.org.uk