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Message from the Skies 1 to 25 January 2019

SIX OF SCOTLAND’S ACCLAIMED WRITERS SHARE THEIR LOVE LETTERS TO EUROPE

CHITRA RAMASWAMY - KAPKA KASSABOVA - LOUISE WELSH - STEF SMITH - WILLIAM DALRYMPLE - WILLIAM LETFORD - COLLABORATE ON MESSAGE FROM THE SKIES, EDINBURGH’S HOGMANAY 19.

In a unique cross artform collaboration with ten of Scotland’s best artists, designers and musicians, six Scottish or Scotland based writers will pen a love letter to Europe. Each will be projected onto a building in Scotland’s capital, the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature, at the start of the year in which we may leave the European Union.

Message from the Skies is presented as part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay 19 which leads with a passionate celebration of Scotland’s shared cultural, historic and social connections with Europe.

Message from the Skies is free to attend and is supported by Creative Scotland through the Scottish Government’s Festivals EXPO Fund.

Last year, Underbelly, who produce Edinburgh’s Hogmanay on behalf of City of Edinburgh Council, introduced Message from the Skies to Edinburgh’s official new year celebration, opening on 1 January and running until Burns Night, with a new commission of Val McDermid.

This year Underbelly for Edinburgh’s Hogmanay and the Edinburgh International Book Festival are realising the vision of six writers across six sites – Leith Library, Bongo Club in the Cowgate, The National Monument of Scotland on Calton Hill, Tech Cube at Summerhall, Leith Custom House on the Shore and Tron Kirk in Hunter Square. Working with Suzy Glass, each writer is collaborating with visual artists, projection artists and composers – a total of 16 creatives - to bring their letters to life and writ them large on the walls of Edinburgh.

Each writer has written a love letter to Europe marking Scotland’s shared historic, social and cultural connections with this family of nations in a creative response to the context of our times.

Chitra Ramaswamy – Emma Pollock – Daniel Warren – Custom House, Leith Guardian columnist and author, Chitra writes a comment piece about her childhood in London, holidaying in Spain, moving to Edinburgh as an adult, discussing her identity as a second-generation immigrant in the UK and in Europe.

Daniel Warren will work with archive and live action footage to tell Chitra’s story; the film will have an accompanying track composed and performed by Emma Pollock.

Kapka Kassabova – Bright Side Studios – Pippa Murphy - The Scottish Monument, Calton Hill Bulgarian born, Highland based travel writer Kapka writes about the origins of Europa, touching on deep time, mythology and legend. She explores how Europe is more permanent and enduring than detailed political ideas that dominate our everyday world.

Founded by Susanna Murphy and Cristina Spiteri, Bright Side Studios is creating images from Kapka’s writing which come into focus before dissolving into nothing. Pippa Murphy brings together a soundtrack which fuses her music with found audio inspired by ancient Greek, Mesopotamian and Gaelic female chanting.

Louise Welsh – Emlyn Firth – Tech Cube, Summerhall Glasgow-based author of short stories and psychological thrillers, Louise has developed a poetic statement about our shared origins and culture, accompanied by a series of words translated between Scots and European mainland languages which demonstrate that though our dialects are different we can still be understood.

Emlyn Firth will use a typographic approach to illustrate Louise’s work, playing with themes of language and communication.

Stef Smith – MJ McCarthy – Eleanor Meredith – Bongo Club, Cowgate Stef is one of Scotland’s most exciting young playwrighting talents, here she writes a poetic letter that charts the decline of a relationship, an emotion-laden narrative where celebration and excess collide.

MJ McCarthy’s sweeping ambient score and Eleanor Meredith’s saturated watercolours come together to bring Stef’s letter to life.

William Dalrymple – RJ McConnell – Double Take Projections – Tron Kirk One of the world’s leading historical writers, William considers the Scots’ historical relationship with mainland Europe, highlighting significant archeological discoveries both at home and further afield to demonstrate the deep and long bonds that connect us.

Composer RJ McConnell is creating a jigsaw of musical voices reflecting the different places and eras Dalrymple covers in his writing, while Double Take Projections is bringing William’s story to life through animation.

William Letford – James Houston – Leith Library Scottish poet Billy writes a lyrical letter full of nostalgia and humour to a past love with whom he explored Italy as a younger man.

Billy's piece will be brought to life by James Houston, who is developing a typographical approach that responds to the rhythm and pace of Billy's writing.

Message from the Skies is free to attend, and each piece can be enjoyed individually. It runs from dusk till 10pm nightly from 1 January until 25 January 2019 and is developed in partnership with Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature and supported by Creative Scotland through the Scottish Government’s Festivals EXPO Fund.

A free app, developed by Edinburgh based Odd Panda, accompanies Message from the Skies, containing the letters in their written form, audio versions for visually impaired and foreign language versions of each work in Chinese, Spanish, German and French.

Alongside Message from the Skies, Underbelly is working to encourage creative writing in schools in Edinburgh, the Lothian, Fife and Stirlingshire. The Message from the Skies competition is open to all under 18 year olds living or attending school in EH, FK and KY postcodes. Young people are invited to write their own letter to Europe, with the winners seeing their work projected onto buildings Edinburgh in January. The deadline is the 21st December and further details of the competition are available at https://www.edinburghshogmanay.com/get-involved/message-from-the-skies-writing- competition

Ed Bartlam & Charlie Wood, directors of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, said: “Over two hundred years ago, Burns penned the poem to Mrs Dunlop that inspired this project and wrote that “something in us never dies, on [our] frail uncertain state, hang matters of eternal weight”. So it’s wonderful at the start of 2019 to invite these amazing artists to Hogmanay and ask them to collaborate with other artists and respond to this “matter” and explore our ties to Europe by writing, animating and composing a love letter. These letters celebrate our deep, eternal and passionate connections with Europe and it’s exciting to be able to share them with Scotland and the world as they come to celebrate Hogmanay in our capital city.”

On announcing the exciting artists and locations of Message from the Skies, Minister of Europe, Migration and International Development, Ben Macpherson, responsible for the Winter Festivals, said: “Edinburgh is one of the world’s best known cities for bringing in the New Year. Few places celebrate quite like Scotland – the home of the world-renowned Hogmanay celebrations.

“Scotland’s ties with our European friends and neighbours stretch back many centuries. This initiative reflects those ties of friendship, business, culture and commerce – strong ties that the Scottish Government is determined to see endure, whatever the New Year holds in terms of the Brexit process. “The Scottish Government is a long-time supporter of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, having provided £180,000 for this year’s festivities via our Expo fund, to enhance this festival and make sure it continues to have the same massive international reach – and so that Hogmanay continues to demonstrate Scotland’s values of fairness, diversity and openness, as well as our unique and inclusive culture.

“A range of events are on offer this year, continuing Edinburgh’s reputation as one of the best cities in the world in which to start the New Year.”

Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, said: "We have thoroughly enjoyed working with Edinburgh's Hogmanay to select these six authors, all of whom will bring something different to this excellent project. Following on from the success of the project last year, Message from the Skies once again brings the city to life in the dark days of January."

Ali Bowden - Director, Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, said: “Message from the Skies is a bold and dazzling project that brings literature to the streets of our capital, for the world to see. These superb artists and writers are speaking to us all, opening up a conversation with us about one of the most important issues of our time.” edinburghshogmanay.com #edhogmanay @edhogmanay facebook.com/edinburghshogmanay

/ENDS

For further information, interviews, media passes and any other media enquiries please contact Susie Gray [email protected] 07834 073 795 Kate Bouchier-Hayes [email protected] 07825 335 489

NOTES TO EDITORS

“Message from the skies” is a line from Robert Burns’ poem “Sketch New Year's Day. To Mrs Dunlop” (1789).

BIOGRAPHIES

Writers

Chitra Ramaswamy is an award-winning journalist and author. Her first book, Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy, was published by Saraband in April 2016. It won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize. She contributed essays to Nasty Women, The Bi:ble, The Freedom Papers, and What is Race? Who are Racists? Why Does Skin Colour Matter? And Other Big Questions. She writes a weekly column and is a TV critic for The Guardian, regularly broadcasts for BBC Radio Scotland, and lives in Edinburgh with her partner, two young children, and rescue dog.

Kapka Kassabova is the author of Border (2017) which was shortlisted for the British Academy Al-Rodhan Prize, the Baillie-Gifford and Ondatjee Prizes, and won the Saltire Book of the Year, the Edward Stanford Book of the Year, and the Highland Book Prize. She is a poet, novelist, and the author of two earlier books of narrative non-fiction: Street Without a Name and Twelve Minutes of Love. Raised in Bulgaria and educated in New Zealand, she lives in the Highlands of Scotland.

Louise Welsh is the author of eight novels including, The Cutting Room, Death is a Welcome Guest and No Dominion. She is the editor of Ghost, One Hundred Stories to Read with the Lights On (2016). Louise was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Arts by Edinburgh Napier University (2015) and was a University of Otago’s Scottish Writers Fellow at the Wallace Arts Centre in New Zealand (2016). She has presented over thirty BBC radio features and written many short stories and articles. Louise has written libretti for four operas including Scottish Opera’s production of Anthropocene (music by Stuart MacRae) which will hit the stage in January 2019. She has also written for the stage, most recently King Keich based on Alfred Jarry’s Pere Ubu. Louise is co-director (with Jude Barber) of the Empire Café, an award winning collective exploring Scotland’s relationship with empire. Louise is Professor of Creative Writing at University of Glasgow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature @louisewelsh00

Stef Smith is an multi award-winning writer working for both stage and screen to international acclaim. Work includes: Girl in the Machine and Swallow (Traverse Theatre); Human Animals (Royal Court); Remote (National Theatre Connections Festival); Tea and Symmetry (BBC Radio); Smoke (and Mirrors) (Traverse Theatre & DOT Istanbul for Theatre Uncut); Back To Back To Back (Cardboard Citizens); Cured (Glasgay! Festival); Grey Matter (The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen); Woman Of The Year (Oran Mor, Glasgow) and Falling/Flying (Tron, Glasgow). Stef's critically acclaimed show, Roadkill, won numerous awards, including an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. Stef’s Traverse Theatre Commission Swallow opened to widespread critical acclaim, and won a Scotsman’s Fringe First Award and the Scottish Arts Club Theatre Award, as part of the Edinburgh Festival. Recently Stef took part in the BBC Drama Writers Room and her current commissions include the Traverse Theatre, the Citizens Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, the National Theatre of Scotland and the National Theatre. She is also an Associate Artist at the Traverse Theatre and Leeds Playhouse.

William Dalrymple http://www.williamdalrymple.uk.com/biog

William Letford’s debut collection Bevel was published by Carcanet in 2012. A chapbook of his poetry And then there was skin was translated into Slovakian and published by Vertigo in 2014. He has travelled to India with Commonwealth Poets United, Iraq with Highlight Arts, and, with an Edwin Morgan Travel Bursary, helped to restore a medieval village in the mountains of northern Italy. His second full collection Dirt was published by Carcanet in 2016.

Animators

Bright Side Studios - www.brightsidestudios.co.uk Bright Side Studios deliver innovative experiential design, which connects people with brands, stories and spaces. They are established innovators in the creation of immersive environments and work on ambitious projects for architects, interior designers, museums, galleries, broadcasters, brands and theatres. They are driven by a huge passion for creative storytelling across digital and physical spaces and use a myriad of technologies to craft, animate and play with interactive space and experiences.

Daniel Warren Since 2000, filmmaker Daniel Warren has collaborated with artists, musicians, choreographers, writers, poets and theatre makers on large scale projects. His films with Scottish Ballet (Public: Private, commissioned by the National Galleries of Scotland 2004, Marionettes, 2007 and Mercury 2009) were shown at festivals in Brighton, Cannes, Sofia, Budapest, Istanbul, Belfast, and were subsequently brought together as the Bodies of Work screening programme in 2011. The Nation // Live, filmed over 2 years for the National Galleries, was created in collaboration with a number of artists (including Martin O Connor, Catherine Weir, Sarah Forrest, Kevin Reid and Drew Wright) and was the centrepiece of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2013. Meanwhile, a road movie for the Arches’ multi-faceted project “Whatever Gets you Through the Night,” featured a suite of music films with prominent Scottish musicians (including Rachel Sermanni, Withered Hand and many others), who also played live sets to accompany film screenings around Scotland in 2012. Long-term collaborators include Linder Sterling (Darktown Cakewalk, 2010, Children of the Mantic Stain, 2015 and Mirror Mirror, 2016) Hanna Tuulikki (Away with the Birds, 2012-15) and Kirsty Law (Young Night Thought, 2018).

Double Take Projections Double Take Projections Ltd is an innovative Scottish design consultancy specialising in creating immersive visual experiences using a technique called Projection Mapping. We are a bespoke company, creating unique one-off spectacles. Projection Mapping is a new and exciting technique which harnesses the recent advances in high powered projection equipment to allow us to animate any surface. We are able to radically alter the character of an environment or object by projecting from different angles onto a variety of surfaces. Video mapping creates an illusion, with moving images, which will captivate live audiences, leaving them with an unforgettable impression of your brands or events.

The public are becoming desensitised to traditional marketing techniques and events. Our product will impact on audiences creating abiding memories. Our product is versatile. We can project onto practically any surface corporate events, product launches, music videos as well as guerrilla and PR campaigns. The public are becoming desensitised to traditional marketing techniques and events. Our product will impact on audiences creating abiding memories. Our product is versatile. We can project onto practically any surface corporate events, product launches, music videos as well as guerrilla and PR campaigns.

Eleanor Meredith studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, followed by a MA in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins. Since then she worked multidisciplinary artist, working in the fields of Illustration, printmaking and animation. Her illustration clients range from the Thames and Hudson, The Southbank Centre, BBC Education, Hotel Bloom, and the Scottish Government. Her time based work working with a combination on animation and live drawing has led her to be artist in resident, through AIR Central Satin Martins. She created a large scale animation for Islington Council, as Part of their A Million Minute Programme. She collaborates with her sister, composer Anna Meredith; creating large installation work Anno, creating a 360 degrees insulation which was played at the Tramway in Glasgow, and in the ICE in Edinburgh as part of the international festival in 2018. She has exhibited in solo and group shows Royal Scottish Academy, Nobrow, Recoat, The Zetter Hotel and the Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre, National Media Museum. As well as her own practice she now teaches delivering workshops at, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Film Institute, UCL and Norwich University of Arts.

Emlyn Firth (a visual agency) Emlyn Firth is founder and director of A Visual Agency, a design practice based in Glasgow.

A Visual Agency specialise in the delivery of visual identities, communication strategies and marketing projects, with expertise spanning typography, letterpress, print, packaging, books and exhibitions, overlapping with digital strategy, web, social media and motion graphics.

Early in his career, Emlyn was recognised with a number of design awards, among them Young Designer of the Year ('06) and the Grand Prix ('02) at the Roses Creative Awards (UK) and numerous Scottish Design Awards.

More recently he has been the recipient of Craft Residency at Cove Park, and has been working on a British Council funded project researching, making and exhibiting block printed textiles in India.

Emlyn has also taught on the Masters of Design course at The Glasgow School of Art and lectured at Edinburgh College of Art. He co-runs a letterpress facility at SWG3 in Glasgow.

James Houston James Houston is a motion designer who lives and works in Glasgow. Technology continues to serve as a prompt in his work which ranges from video experiments to commercial motion graphics. He has found a tested and worthwhile strategy for finding creative forms of expression via revisiting old or nostalgic ideas through the lens of contemporary technology.

Composers

Emma Pollock A founding member of critically acclaimed Scottish band The Delgados, Emma Pollock co- wrote and shared lead vocal duties on the 5 studio albums the band released between 1995 and 2005. 2000’s album ‘The Great Eastern’ was awarded a Mercury nomination.

In the mid to late 90s Emma co-founded influential Glasgow record label Chemikal Underground and recording studio Chem19 with the band, both of which continue to run today.

Following the band’s demise in 2005, Emma became a solo artist and has since released 3 solo albums; ‘Watch The Firewoks’ (4AD) in 2007, ‘The Law Of Large Numbers’ (Chemikal Underground) in 2010 and ‘In Search of Harperfield’ (Chemikal Underground) in 2016.

In addition to these records released, she has also taken part in many collaborative projects; most notably The Burns Unit featuring amongst others King Creosote & Karine Polwart, which resulted in 2010’s debut album for the band ‘Sideshow’ and a ‘Later With Jools Holland’ appearance.

2010 also saw the formation of The Fruit Tree Foundation with Rod Jones (Idlewild), a project commissioned by the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival to promote awareness of mental health issues within the music industry by producing an album of new material written by 8 Scottish songwriters.

Emma also regularly works with Glasgow organisation Vox Liminis, which arranges songwriting workshops in Scottish prisons and is due to release its debut album of original material in May 2018.

MJ McCarthy Michael John is a Cork-born, Glasgow-based composer, musician & sound designer.

Work for performance includes: Jimmy's Hall (Abbey Theatre); The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, Glory On Earth, A Number, The Weir, Bondagers (Lyceum Edinburgh); Rocket Post, In Time O’ Strife, Blabbermouth, The Tin Forest & The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (National Theatre of Scotland); Ulster American, What Girls Are Made Of, Gut, How To Disappear, Grain In The Blood (Traverse/Tron); August: Osage County, George's Marvellous Medicine, The Cheviot, The Stag & The Black, Black Oil, The BFG & Steel Magnolias (Dundee Rep); The Gorbals Vampire, Trainspotting, Rapunzel, Into That Darkness, Fever Dream: Southside & Sports Day (Citizens Theatre); Light Boxes, Letters Home & The Authorised Kate Bane (Grid Iron); Pride & Prejudice, God of Carnage, The Lonesome West, Under Milk Wood (Tron Theatre Glasgow); Heads Up (Kieran Hurley/Show & Tell); The Interference (Pepperdine Scotland); The Red Shed (Mark Thomas/Lakin McCarthy); JRR Tolkien's Leaf By Niggle (Puppet State Theatre/Red Bridge); A Gamblers Guide to Dying (Gary McNair/Show & Tell).

Other companies he has worked with include The Arches, Janice Parker Projects, Lung Ha, macrobert, Platform, People’s Light & Theatre Philadelphia, Playgroup, Poorboy, Theatre Uncut, Vox Motus and Youth Music Theatre UK.

To date he has collaborated on the making of seven Scotsman Fringe First award winners & has been thrice-nominated for the Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland in the category Best Use of Music & Sound.

Michael John's primary instruments are guitar and piano accordion. He has toured Europe & Japan with Zoey Van Goey, Lord Cut-Glass and Aidan Moffat. He appears as an accordionist on albums by Alasdair Roberts, RM Hubbert, Niall Connolly, Emma Pollock, Trembling Bells & Bonnie Prince Billy amongst others.

Work for film includes co-composing/performing the score for Where You're Meant To Be (Paul Fegan) and music for Pitching Up (Guardian Documentaries). He has also composed & recorded several series' worth of radio music for the BBC.

He is lead artist on Turntable, a participatory arts music project in association with Red Bridge.

Pippa Murphy - Composer & Sound Designer

Pippa Murphy is an award winning Scottish composer and sound designer who writes for theatre, dance, film, choirs and orchestras.

Pippa is known for her stylistic breadth, depth, and originality, as well as a unique cross- disciplinary understanding of storytelling and creative collaboration. Pippa’s works are multi- layered and multi-sensory. Some pieces draw on the full effects of combining sound design with orchestral instruments and voices. Her music has an immediacy, which is often dramatic and expressive. She is particularly interested in vocal techniques, phonemes and ‘found’ sound.

She has written music for BBC 2, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 3, Scottish Opera, Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, Edinburgh Book festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, St Magnus International Festival, and numerous theatre companies including The Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, Stellar Quines, Dundee Rep, Birmingham Rep, Grid Iron, Tron Theatre, Eden Court, Traverse Theatre, 7:84. She composed Anamchara with writer Alexander McCall Smith performed by Scottish Opera as part of the Commonwealth Games 2014. Recent projects include orchestral arrangements for Celtic Connections with Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis and the BBC SSO, original songs for POP-UP Duets with Janis Claxton Dance Company now on International tour. She won the CATS award 2017 for best Music and Sound for Wind Resistance and her album with Karine Polwart ‘Pocket of Wind resistance’ was nominated for best album at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

Pippa was classically trained on piano, violin and percussion from an early age. She completed her BMus, MA and PhD in composition at University of Birmingham. She lectures at Edinburgh University and guest lectures at RCS, Aberdeen and St Andrews University. She was Artist in Residence at the Scottish Parliament 2014. http://pippamurphy.com FB: /pippamurphymusic/

RJ McConnell RJ is a composer and sound designer based in Fife, working in theatre and film. His work combines the use of transformed recorded sounds with a minimalistic composition style to create a homogeneous blend of both disciplines. He has created music and soundscapes for a vast array of theatre productions for Dundee Rep, Tron Theatre, Pilot Theatre, The Arches, Pitlochry Festival Theatre and others - creating complex and layered atmospheres whilst evoking an emotive audience reaction through music. He has composed eight soundtracks for the multi award-winning Enchanted Forest in collaboration with Jon Beales, contributing to the growing popularity of the event. RJ’s recent work in film has been a natural progression where he has enjoyed constructing meticulous compositions.

About Underbelly: Underbelly is a UK based live entertainment company the beginnings of which are rooted in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2000. Its events and festivals division now operates one of the largest operations at the Fringe, selling over 460,000 tickets for over 200 shows in 22 venues over 25 days in 2018.

2019 will be the seventh Edinburgh’s Christmas that Underbelly has produced for City of Edinburgh Council (2017/18 saw a record breaking 781,520 tickets issued to visitors from 47 different countries), and the second Edinburgh’s Hogmanay also on behalf of City of Edinburgh Council, which in 2018 welcomed 160,000 over 3 days. Elsewhere Underbelly also produces Underbelly Festival on the Southbank in London, this year in its 10th year and one of the biggest multi-arts offerings in London, Christmas in Leicester Square, Udderbelly Festival in Hong Kong, West End Live in Trafalgar Square for Westminster City Council and the Society of London Theatre.

Through its Underbelly Productions arm it produces and promotes live shows in London's West End at the Edinburgh Fringe, and throughout the UK and on tour internationally.

In 2017 Underbelly sold over 1.4 million tickets to its various events. www.underbelly.co.uk