THE climate change campaign Extinction Rebellion is to have a base at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year.
The campaign, which has been in the news recently with several protests around the UK, is to be given two spaces at the Summerhall venue at the festival.
They will present a "month of performance, visual art, films and documentaries."
Exinction Rebellion was launched in 2018 and its activists have taken part in a series of actions and organised demonstrations, including in Scotland in recent months.
It will be part of the Summerhall Fringe programme, which is revealed today.
Natalie Taylor, an Edinburgh based artist and Extinction Rebellion Scotland representative, said: "[We are] really excited to have the opportunity to engage with a wide range of residents and visitors to Edinburgh.
"The way we respond to the climate crisis, the most pressing issue of our time, will have far reaching effects into our own futures and those of future generations and as an artist I see an opportunity to engage rith people in a new and possibly unexpected way.
"Art offers an opportunity to touch people's emotions in a more poetic way than a scientific graph.
"The exhibition space will be co-curated by a Scotland based team and we will be putting out a nationwide call to artists, performance artists, film makers, poets, sculptors, designers, really every art form, to create a months worth of engagement with us."
In a statement Summerhall said: "Remaining true to its interests the Summerhall Visual Arts programme sees artists cast an eye over current political shifts, taking a stand in the public debate on the challenges we face.
"Extinction Rebellion (XR) have been invited to take over two spaces in the basement of Summerhall...drawing on the power of the arts to communicate the state of climate emergency, XR’s Summerhall exhibition offers a space for personal reflection and collective action.
"The overall aim of the exhibition is to invite the public to engage with XR’s three demands: to tell the truth about climate change and the ecological emergency, to call on governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025, and to create a Citizens Assembly to oversee the process."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here