Notes from the North 9



You can read the question on billboards, programmes, street signs and banners throughout the centre of Edinburgh. Can you read it in Wester Hailes, Craigmillar, Granton or Muirhouse? Perhaps not. Like the multitudes of visitors streaming up and down the streets of hectic Edinburgh, I haven’t been to those parts of the city to find out. 



I am fairly sure though that, despite Festival director Nicola Benedetti’s good intentions and best efforts, the event she’s in charge of is still stuck hard and fast in the inner reaches of the town. So, one answer might be – ‘Why don’t we start by going to the out-lying parts of the city?’ That would tie in rather well with the themes Benedetti has chosen to underpin the ethos of these three weeks of intense (and generally quite pricey) culture. They are:  

 

1.     Community out of chaos

2.     Hope in the face of adversity

3.     Exploring a perspective that is not one’s own

 

The themes are being debated in free events in the Hub at the top of the Royal Mile. I went to the first of them with Nigel Osborne and Travis Alabanza. 


Travis Alabanza

It was well-attended but seemed unsure of its remit, finally producing one or two interesting ideas towards the end. If nothing else it served quite nicely as an illustration of how even a very short-lived 'community' - in this case a random bunch of interested strangers - can emerge out of chaos. The second discussion on hope and adversity, with poet Jackie Kay hosting, is fully booked. The third (at 14.30 on 21 August), will give Chita Ramaswamy, Dina Nayeri and Fairouz Nishanova the chance to tell us what they make of ‘being open to other perspectives’. N.B. Dina Nayeri has a book just out, ‘Who Gets Believed?’ which starts with, ‘Why are asylum-seekers treated as liars?’, another question in urgent need of an answer.

 

One Festival that will perhaps be less well attended than the many being hosted here is the Deaf Festival. It runs from 11 -20 August and is masterminded by Deaf Action. Deaf Action goes all the way back to 1835 when it was first set up. For almost the same length of time Edinburgh also had Donaldson’s School for the Deaf, a colossal landmark on Wester Coates. 


The school was bought by Cala Homes for redevelopment into luxury homes in 2005 and Donaldson’s School moved to a purpose-built campus in Linlithgow. Now there is Deaf History Scotland too. It only dates from 2008 but is building an archive and has its own tartan, launched at the tenth anniversary of the charity in 2018. 

The tartan was designed by Sylvia Maria Cera while she was a student to at Heriot-Watt University to celebrate the passing of the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act in 2015. 

 

The National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge has both a café and a shop – which museum or gallery doesn’t these days? It is also running a couple of exhibitions during the Festival, both free. ‘Blood Sweat and Tears, Scotland’s HIV story’ (until 2 December) recalls the stigma attached to being HIV-positive in the 1980s when Edinburgh was in the grip of that health crisis. It celebrates the care AIDS sufferers found at Milestone House, now run by Waverley Care. 

 

If that aspect of Scottish history doesn’t interest you there is ‘Sgeul, folktales from the Scottish Highlands’. It gives you the chance to read and hear a little Gaelic, being mainly about the work of John Francis Campbell of Islay who travelled throughout the Highlands collecting the old stories before they were lost forever. He took his watercolours with him too and there are several soft-tinted studies of the landscapes he passed through. 





The exhibition is not all faded photos and hand-written notes. There are some good videos, in particular one of a group of primary school children writing a Gaelic story of their own. And the shop is doing a good trade in prints, bags and tea-towels with Campbell's paintings on them. However, if you're looking for a book in Gaelic you will have to look elsewhere. In Scotland's national library shop there are none for sale - not even a children's story book. 




                                                An Taigh-tasgaidh ’s an Leabhar

 

                                              Feumaidh mi dhol chun taigh-tasgaidh

                                              dh’fhaicinn uidheaman m’eachdraidh

                                              a shad mo sheanmhair às,

                                              a shuath mo sheanair

                                              le bhoisean cnapach sgìth

                                              air a’ chuairt mu deireadh

                                              a ghabh e

                                              dhan t-sabal

 

                                             Feumaidh mi dhol chun taigh-tasgaidh

                                             as aonais duslach an fheòir

                                             air m’aodach,

                                             dh’fhaicinn uidheaman m’eachdraidh

                                             mus tèid an leth-shealladh

                                             den leth-sgeul

                                            a th’agam

                                            a dhìth

                                            leis an sguab th’air cùl mo shàil.

         

                                            The Museum and the Book

 

                                            I must go to the museum 

                                            to see the tools of my history

                                            my grandmother threw out

                                            my grandfather stroked

                                           with his tired knobbly hands

                                           on the last round

                                           he made

                                           of the barn.

 

                                           I must go to the museum

                                           without the dust of the grass

                                           on my clothes

                                           to see the tools of my history

                                           before the half-sight

                                           of the half-story

                                           I have

                                           is swept

                                           away by the brush at my heels. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 















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