From 2020-2021, Pester & Rossi worked with Edinburgh Art Festival in partnership with Whale Arts, on a project based at the Union Canal at Wester Hailes called ‘Finding Buoyancy’; exploring ways we can connect to the environment to help us stay buoyant in uncertain times. The project includes a guided audio journey made by Pester & Rossi, featuring voices from Fallope & the Tubes, produced by Charlie Knox (Trudat Sound), inviting WHALE Arts groups to listen, look closely and make creative responses whilst spending time at the canal in Wester Hailes. Their responses will be used to make a collaborative artwork.

Finding Buoyancy - Sound Meditations by Pester and Rossi

The result of a workshop at University of Edinburgh's St Cecilia's Hall with the artist and musician Chizu Anucha, who showed members of SCOREscotland Youth Club how to record their own beats to make their own sound artworks. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival's 2021 project 'Young Programmers', supported by University of Edinburgh Community Grants.

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Edinburgh Art Festival is working with SCOREscotland youth group across 2021 as 'Young Programmers', exploring and responding to associate artist Tako Taal's 'What happens to desire...' programme and thinking about how they want to take art forward in their group. The programme reflects on themes, ideas and histories explored in Isaac Julien’s 'Lessons of the Hour' exhibition, featuring 6 new commissions by artists, including Chizu Anucha, for public and digital spaces.

Chizu Anucha (b. 1995, Edinburgh) is a musician, artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Glasgow. His practice meets at the intersection of music, moving image, installation and site-responsive performance. His films often centre the politics of Afro Diasporic representation on-screen and explore escapism and healing.

Strengthening Communities for Race Equality Scotland (SCOREscotland) is a voluntary organisation serving the minority ethnic communities in the West of Edinburgh. The organisation strives to eliminate racism in our society by working for and with those who are affected by racial discrimination.

EAF - SCOREscotland Workshop with Chizu Anucha

Suitable for all ages.

‘Feeling Lost, Feeling Found – A Companion Compilation’ highlights how Pester & Rossi’s artistic approach can help us to use creativity to welcome feeling lost; to embrace it’s arrival as a useful interruption; as feeling lost can often lead us to alter our course to new, unexpected and exciting places.

The ‘Companion Compilation’, complements ‘Finding Buoyancy – Sound Meditations’, developed by Pester & Rossi, in 2020-2021 in dialogue with Edinburgh Art Festival and WHALE Arts, in response to the Wester Hailes stretch of the Union Canal. ‘Finding Buoyancy’, explores ways we can connect to the environment to help us stay buoyant in uncertain times. The project includes a guided audio journey made by Pester & Rossi, featuring voices from Fallope & the Tubes, and invites WHALE Arts groups to listen, look closely and make creative responses whilst spending time at the canal in Wester Hailes. Their responses will be used to make a collaborative artwork.

Audio recording by artist Nadia Rossi.

Supported by The R S Macdonald Charitable Trust.

DIY - Art // Feeling Lost, Feeling Found

Suitable for age 11+ (visually impaired and sighted people) 

‘Drawing: Explore and Expand’, devised by Louise K Fraser and visually impaired artists Anne Dignan, Kasia Jakimczuk and Alan McIntyre, is Edinburgh Art Festival’s first ‘DIY Art – Home Creativity Kit’ made with, and for, people with visual impairment.  

Together the artists worked through how materials and new techniques could be explored by visually impaired people in a home creativity kit. ‘Drawing: Explore and Expand’ through three building blocks, supports building confidence in materials, style, composition and ideas.

Audio recording by artist Louise K Fraser,

Supported by The R S Macdonald Charitable Trust.

DIY - Art // Drawing: Explore and Expand

For ages 11+ and their families

Tune into your senses to make a mini float for the future inspired by your favourite outdoor green space.

Pester and Rossi’s work, A Float for the Future, was a community made raft created by people from Wester Hailes in response to living, working and playing on the Union Canal. It was launched during their 2022 event Setting Sail, as part of Finding Buoyancy.

Find out more: https://www.edinburghartfestival.com/about/learning-engagement/diy-art/a-float-for-the-future-by-pester-and-rossi/

DIY - Art // Float for the Future

Drawing: The space in between is the second home creativity in the
Edinburgh Art Festival - DIY Art series, made with and for people with visual impairments. It was devised by artist Louise K Fraser in consultation with Kasia Jakimczuk, Anne Dignan, Alan McIntyre, Alex Maxtone-Graham and Steve Oliver.

In this audio recording Louise guides us through the art pack which is designed for everyone to explore drawing and mark making, using positive and negative space in new ways. In the kit you will explore a set of drawing materials, find different ways to think about space on a page and find prompts to decide where you would like your skills to go next.

The kit is divided into 3 sections – Explore, Develop and Expand – and
open to all levels of experience. You will build a set of skills and are able to dip in and out of the pack. Each section of the kit takes about 30mins to complete, or longer if you are enjoying the process.

Link to the Home Creativity Kit: https://www.edinburghartfestival.com/about/learning-engagement/diy-art/drawing-the-space-in-between

DIY Art - Home Creativity Kit - Drawing: The space in between

Founded in 2004, Edinburgh Art Festival is the platform for the visual arts at the heart of Edinburgh’s August festivals, bringing together the capital’s leading galleries, museums, production facilities and artist-run spaces in a city-wide celebration of the very best in visual art. Each year, the festival features leading international and UK artists alongside the best emerging talent, major survey exhibitions of historic figures, and a special programme of newly commissioned artworks that respond to public and historic sites in the city. The vast majority of the festival is free to attend. 

Alongside our main festival programme we run a year-round series of learning and engagement activities around our Commissions Programme and partner exhibitions as well as bespoke tours, workshops and projects for community groups and organisations inspired by the work of our participating artists.