Wendy McMurdo: The Digital Mirror (art exhibition)

The Digital Mirror showcases 20-years of ground-breaking photography from Wendy McMurdo. Using digital photography and inspired by traditional games and online gaming, McMurdo explores the influence of the online world on creativity and imagination particularly in children. 

Her photos show children variously in drama groups, at computers, dressed up as robots and viewing museum exhibitions. These photos are shown alongside some of McMurdo's inspirations, including a doll's house and sculptures by the Scottish sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. This presents online gaming as a continuum of traditional imaginative play, while at the same time allowing the viewer to appreciate the specific value of older forms of imaginative play.   

With the digital landscape changing faster than ever before, this is a very timely exhibition and well worth visiting.  

Wendy McMurdo: The Digital Mirror showing at The National Portrait Gallery until Sunday 25 October.  

Free entry.  

Celebrating Creativity - 35 Years of Supporting Mental Health through Education

World Mental Health Day (10 October) this year also marks 35 years of Outlook, a City of Edinburgh Council service providing free adult education for people who access mental health services. The Celebrating Creativity Exhibition at the Wee Museum of Memory at Ocean Terminal will showcase Outlook students' creative work including pottery, stories, collages and photography. 

I've delivered classes for Outlook for several years now, focusing on creative writing and nature studies. Specifically for this exhibition, I've just finished teaching a course using historical photos of Edinburgh (from the archives of The Living Memory Association) to inspire creative writing. I've been very impressed by the stories the students have written and am looking forward to seeing their work at the exhibition. It will be a very worthwhile exhibition for anyone to pop into while shopping in Ocean Terminal. So do pop along if you can, while you're in Edinburgh. 

I'll write more about this once I've been to the exhibition launch! This is just an advance notice so that you can put the dates in your diary.  

Celebrating Creativity, 10.30 - 4.30, 11th - 20th October at the Wee Museum of Memory, Exhibition Space 2, on the first floor of Ocean Terminal, next to a well known coffee outlet.   

Sandra George at The City Art Centre, Edinburgh

Sandra George (1957-2013) was a community and youth worker in Edinburgh and a prolific social documentary photographer. A range of her photos are now collected together in an exhibition at Edinburgh's City Art Centre. 

The exhibition groups the photos into themes including family, disability and youth-work and features areas of Edinburgh that many people, even lots of long term city residents, aren't familiar with. It's certainly a good exhibition to have on during Edinburgh's summer festivals, as hopefully it will give many tourists a view into the Edinburgh communities that they generally won't see during their visit. 

George's photos are documentary, so she focussed on capturing the people and activities around her and her relationship with her own son. Many of the photos show her ability to elevate an ordinary moment into a timeless memory.

You can read a longer review by Lee Sharrock, along with a few selected photos from the exhibition here. 

 

Sandra George: Start from the Level showing at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun, 27 Sept 2026

TrippyTakka at Edinburgh Canal Festival

 Yesterday we spent time at the Edinburgh Canal Festival. After walking along the canal, we sat in the sunshine at Lochrin Basin and listened to the excellent local band TrippyTakka. 

They're a rock and blues band who write their own music (not a single cover version while we were there) and they deserved a much bigger audience than they got yesterday. They had a bubble machine on for some of their songs, and I tried to capture the lovely way the bubbles were catching the sun, but without any great success!  

There are a couple more photos from the day on my Crafty Green Poet Blog here. 

Barnton Bunker - Edinburgh's Nuclear Bunker

 The day before going on our recent holiday to Dumfries and Galloway we visited Barnton Bunker, Edinburgh's Nuclear Bunker, that is currently being restored and reimagined as an arts venue. We were there for a programme of 'films set in bunkers' with a guided tour of the bunker taking place in between the films. The films were Day of the Dead and a 70s horror film set in the London Underground that I think was called Deathline, though a different title showed up at the beginning of the film. I wasn't there for the films to be honest, too gory for me, though I sort of enjoyed them. I was there for the guided tour of the bunker, which is a fascinating place, with a central area which has the most amazing acoustics, and which will become a wonderful concert venue. Our photos didn't turn out great, because the venue is so dark, but here are a few to give you an idea of the interior of the bunker. The photo below shows the BBC Radio room which will be used as a recording studio in the future

 Here's the entrance tunnel 

 Here's part of the area that's being developed as a museum of the Cold War 

 and my partner holding one of the books on display 

and here's one of the offices

The charity looking after the bunker is developing a community garden, which was opened with a public event earlier today, which I had intended to go along to with a friend, who sadly had to cancel, and I didn't feel like going along by myself. You can see some photos of the outdoor area around the bunker (and the unexpected residents!) on my Crafty Green Poet blog here. 

Walking The Maroon Mile

 The Maroon Mile stretches from Tynecastle Stadium to the Haymarket War Memorial. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Hearts Football Club, the mile has been punctuated with information boards highlighting local history and the history of the football club itself. I'm not a football fan at all, but we do live very close to the route of the Maroon Mile and North Merchiston Cemetery (where I'm a member of the Friends Group) has connections with Hearts, so the other day, we decided to walk from the war memorial to the stadium and read all the information boards. I'll give a very brief outline here (with photos). 

The Maroon Mile starts at the Haymarket War Memorial which commemorates the members and supporters of Hearts Football Team who fell in the two world wars.  

 The next information post is found near the Co-op, next to this sculpture marking the brewing and distilling history of the area

Further down Dalry Road, near Lidl is an information board about Dalry Primary School which opened in 1878 (and is found on the opposite side of the road, with no good space for erecting an information board next to the school itself). 
 

The next information board is outside the church of St Martin and Tours, which was originally built in 1883 as a Baptist church but which is now a Scottish Episcopalian Church

Moving onto Gorgie Road, Gorgie Farm, the much loved city farm, is marked with an information board. The farm is currently on hiatus as its future is being discussed, with the farm allotments being used for growing vegetables, but the site not currently open to the public and no animals currently live on site. Hopefully the farm will become fully operational again soon. I have many happy memories of the farm.
 

 

 From here, the next stop is Tynecastle Stadium itself, the home of Hearts Football Club

 A slight detour is required to then move onto North Merchiston Cemetery, where several people with connections to Hearts have been buried. The cemetery has two information boards, which you can see on this post on my Crafty Green Poet blog. 

After walking the Maroon Mile, it seems appropriate to have a pie and a pint in the Athletic Arms (aka The Diggers), which recently won Whisky Bar of the Year in the 2025 Scottish Bar and Pub Awards, which is a great achievement. I don't drink whisky, but the pub also offers a good range of beers and the best pub pies in Edinburgh. 

Modern 2, National Galleries of Scotland

 Today I went to see the excellent Women in Revolt exhibition at Modern 2, one of the National Galleries of Modern Art in Edinburgh. I'd got there early and while I was waiting for my friend to arrive I took time to take some photos of the impressive architecture. 

The grounds offer views over to Dean Cemetery, which is one of Edinburgh's private cemeteries, so not one that I've done a wildlife survey of! 

The Women in Revolt exhibition looks at feminist art and activism in the 1970s - 1990s and includes paintings, zines, videos and other materials covering topics such as the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, wages for housework, lesbian identity, racism and other issues. It's well worth seeing (in fact I'm going back to see it tomorrow with a different friend!) before it closes on 26 January.

Commemorating the Women and Girls of the Dalry Magdalene Asylum

The Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, also known as Magdalene asylums, were institutions, usually run by Roman Catholic orders, which operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries. They housed so called "fallen women", an estimated 30,000 of whom were confined in these institutions in Ireland. Less well known is the fact that Magdalene asylums also operated in Scotland. They were not quite as strict as those in Ireland, but that doesn't mean they were pleasant places to be incarcerated. 

The Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum stood for a time in the Dalry part of Edinburgh and a number of the girls and women who were housed there are buried in North Merchiston Cemetery. One of the projects that the committee of the cemetery friends group has been involved with is preparing a plaque to commemorate the lives of these women. 

We are very pleased to report that the plaque is now in place on the burial mound in the cemetery. 

The plaque says: 

"The Dalry Magdalene Asylum. Conceived with the notion of Christian charity and philanthropy, the first Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum opened its doors in 1797 in Canongate as a kind of half way house for women leaving prison. In the mid 1800s, The Dalry Magdalene Asylum (subsequently renamed Springwell House) was founded as a reformatory school for what were then called 'fallen women'. The Asylum remained a reformatory school for women and girls until the 1950s. It has now been converted into apartments on the corner of Ardmillan Terrace and Gorgie Road. This is the mound in which some of the residents of the asylum are buried."

The burial mound was formerly marked only by this pretty but uninformative gravestone: 

Thanks are due to our committee member Lauren for putting the plaque together, and to Dr Jowita Thor for helping with the research.
 

Chimneys at Lauriston Castle

 There's something quite beautiful about the chimneys at Edinburgh's Lauriston Castle!

You can read more about today's walk around the castle grounds over on Crafty Green Poet.

Join the Campaign to Save the Edinburgh Filmhouse

Cinema goers were saddened last month when it was announced that the Centre for the Moving Image was going into administration, meaning the end of Edinburgh's Filmhouse Cinema (and its online sister Filmhouse at Home), Aberdeen's Belmont Cinema and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The reasons given for the collapse of the charity include the effect of the pandemic on reducing cinema audiences (I've rarely been to the cinema since COVID struck and have watched films online including on Filmhouse at Home), the recent huge hike in energy prices in the UK and the general cost of living crisis. In truth, apparently, the signs had been there for years, but the charity hadn't made them public. I think if problems had been made public, then people would have rallied round to save the cinemas and festival before all this happened. 

At the same time, one of the major art galleries in Edinburgh has closed its doors until the Spring and there are rumours of other closures across the Scottish arts sector.

We need our cultural institutions! Depending on the film, cinema can offer escapism or directly address the issues that face the world. 

So, a campaign has been launched to Save the Filmhouse. You can read about the campaign on the Edinburgh Evening News website here, find out more on the campaign website or follow @SaveFilmhouse on Twitter. 

Edited to add: A crowdfunder has now been set up to secure the future of Filmhouse. 

 

Inch House

I'm looking forward to leading some nature walks in Inch Park in the early summer. I recently had a guided tour of Inch House, which houses the Inch Community centre. 

Inch House is based on a traditional Scottish tower house, built in the 16th century. 

 

New wings were added to the building in 1634 and again in the mid-18th century. In the 1890s, additions were made round the courtyard in Scots baronial style, giving the building its current appearance. 

Later additions mostly were very sensitive to the original style of the building - look at how the newer chimney piece in the background here echoes the shape and detail of the older chimney piece in the foreground (click on the photo to enlarge it and get a better look at the detail)

The building contains many well-preserved rooms, complete with special features such as 17th century fireplaces, decorated ceilings, window shutters and carved wooden door surrounds, 

 

as well as original stone garderobes (toilets). A very narrow spiral staircase leads to a turret, where (apparently!) you can get magnificent views across Edinburgh. (I had to admit defeat on this staircase, I've hated tiny spiral staircases ever since a childhood visit to a lighthouse!)

Edinburgh Council bought the building in 1946. It was first used as a primary school, and then in 1968 converted into a community centre serving the local Inch community. As well as being a community centre, the building offers practice space for a number of local bands 

You can find out more about the building here.

Angels in Canongate Kirkyard

 Perhaps these two are cherubs rather than angels, but they are certainly beautiful. 

You can see these in Canongate Kirkyard in Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

An Angel in Liberton Cemetery

 I'm really enjoying exploring the cemeteries of Edinburgh as I survey them for wildlife. Here is a beautiful angel in Liberton Cemetery. 

You can see the angel from Corstorphine HIll Cemetery in my recent post here. 

You can read my first blogpost about the wildlife of Edinburgh's cemeteries over on my Crafty Green Poet blog here.

An Angel in the Woodland cemetery

 

This beautiful angel stands in Corstorphine Hill Cemetery, one of the 43 cemeteries in Edinburgh that I've been contracted to do wildlife surveys of over the next six months. 

Last week I surveyed this cemetery and Greyfriars Kirkyard, and you can read more over on my Crafty Green Poet blog, here.

Celtic Crosses of North Merchiston Cemetery

 Over lockdown, Crafty Green Boyfriend and I discovered two of the local cemeteries as wonderful wildlife havens. (I've blogged quite a lot about the wildlife of the cemeteries in my Crafty Green Poet blog). A Friends group has been set up for the North Merchiston Cemetery and I've joined the committee as the Wildlife Officer. We recently set up a Twitter account (@FofNMC which you can follow here). I'm tweeting about the wildlife, but also about some of the gravestones.

There are some beautiful Celtic crosses in the cemetery, the photos below show just a selection:

It's an old cemetery, few people are buried there now (unless you already have a family plot, you can't be buried there in fact). Some headstones have been vandalized in the past, some have been placed face down by the council because they were deemed dangerous. It would be nice to see all the stones replaced in their rightful positions, but apparently that would take many years to complete.

The cemetery has been neglected over the years, and is now fairly overgrown, which makes it a wonderful wildlife haven. There's a fine balance to be found between managing the area as a cemetery, while allowing nature to thrive.

Snow People of Edinburgh February 2021

 We've had a lot of snow recently and more snow people have appeared around town. These are just two of them

My favourite snow creations though have to be these snow cats that someone built outside the flat where the most beautiful cat in the world lives, the snow cats are looking into the window

 

though I'm not sure the cat herself is too impressed

You can see more snow people of Edinburgh, photographed during the last heavy snow a few weeks back, in my previous blogpost here.