It's the Festival City's 'best festival' - but it's fighting for survival
Organisers in appeal to save award-winning festival "powered by the community"
The park is bustling with visitors enjoying the bursts of the spring sunshine. There is live music and games - and, like at any good festival, a technicolour mixture of foods from around the world.
The launch in West Pilton Park offered a tantalising taste of what is planned for the North Edinburgh Community Festival next month, writes Emma Newlands.
The festival is one of the city’s great grassroots success stories, having been recognised as the city’s best festival at the Creative Edinburgh Awards in 2024. After months of planning, everything is in place for one of its most ambitious programmes to date - apart from one thing.
Organisers are now seriously concerned the annual event, which last year welcomed 13,000 visitors, will not be able to go ahead as they struggle to plug an unexpected funding shortfall of more than £20,000.
The Festival is appealing for donors to come forward to ensure the initiative, billed as being “powered by community”, can actually go ahead as it battles funding headwinds buffeting the third sector.
Festival director Adele Conn has told the The Inquirer there is a “very real possibility” the fifth edition of the annual festival, scheduled to go-ahead on May 16, will need to be cancelled without an urgent cash injection.
She explains that at this time of year she is usually “90 per cent” sure the festival will get the capital injection to proceed. “Whereas at the moment, this is probably the first time we need to make a contingency plan if we don’t get the funding.”
And should it be cancelled, it would still be on the hook for paying deposits for various attractions, she adds, “so it’s a very weird situation to be in… we will be doing absolutely everything possible [to make it happen]”.
‘Everything from jerk chicken to chicken nuggets’
The event costs about £60,000 each year to stage, which covers all programme and infrastructure costs, plus three part‑time staff roles, including Conn’s. She explains of the shortfall: “It’s not the cash to do anything elaborate, it’s literally for the marquees, it’s for the sound equipment, it’s for the stages, it’s for insurance [etc] - everything necessary. It just all adds up.”
The free-to-attend festival originally came about as a tie-up between the police, city council and West Pilton Neighbourhood Centre. Having more than doubled the number of visitors since the first year, it puts a positive spotlight on a deprived area of Edinburgh, far removed from the internationally renowned festivals that bring in millions of visitors and pounds to the city. It has instead been among the areas subject to dispersal zones to prevent groups of youths committing crimes.
“Everybody” loves and looks forward to the North Edinburgh Community Festival, says Conn. She and fellow organisers say it is a “vital community anchor that brings people together, strengthens local pride, and connects thousands with essential services and opportunities”.
This year’s programme promises to be “one of the most ambitious yet”, with attractions including live music now across three stages, including a carnival offering, and a smaller one providing a platform for up-and-coming performers “trying to build their confidence being in front of an audience”, says Conn.
On the agenda again this year is culturally diverse cooks delivering their cooking demonstration in their native language, plus “somebody delivering a recipe in the Scottish tongue… it’s just a really nice mix”.
Conn, who also runs The Tartan Spoon food blog, adds: “I think there’ll be everything from jerk chicken to chicken nuggets.”
And she explains that there will be free food as well as some options to buy, with nothing costing more than £6, as people face the ongoing struggle of high household bills. “We’re not alleviating poverty, but we’re trying to help out, and we’re just trying to give people in the area a really good, fun, free, happy day out, which I think a lot of people need at the moment.” Among the organisations in attendance are those helping people manage bills and “how to get the best out of living in North Edinburgh”.
This year’s food theme is “beans”, with relevant dishes being served on the day, and partner organisation Lauriston Farm planting beans, which will be harvested in the autumn, and then go back out into the community “so that people can make food”.
A first step for youth
This idea of renewal echoes the festival looking to provide year-round benefits to Pilton. That includes the Festival Futures Events Management Programme, run in partnership with the acclaimed youth music project Tinderbox Collective and Granton Youth.
It sees young people, from about 14 to 20, gain hands-on experience in programming, budgeting, logistics, marketing, and event delivery, helping them gain key skills and confidence. Having helped bring the festival to life in previous years, 2026 marks the first time they were responsible for the launch event, with participants including Sage, aged 20.
She says: “We were all involved in doing everything, and it’s been great seeing it all come together. It’s been a great confidence boost - you need to do a lot of communicating with new people. We’ve learned a lot.”
Also in attendance at the launch was the Tinderbox Games Club, which ran a game that its members had created, having been deliberately created as a collaborative, multiplayer game.
Liam Dempsey, project co-ordinator at the club, said the stall was in high demand. “We’ve not had a moment when it’s been quiet.”
His colleague Doska Jackowska added that there were many “lovely interactions” between people who had made the game and those giving it a try.
And she praises the festival for uniting and connecting people, having attended several times as a local.
Its director Conn does however note it will need to squeeze into a much smaller space this year as work gets under way on a controversial £4 million upgrade of West Pilton Park.
That is, however, if the event can go ahead at all, amid a lack of crucial multi-year funding.
The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) recently unveiled research showing the sector is increasingly struggling with funding delays, showing the need for reliable, multi-year backing. It said up to 40 per cent of respondents said cash-flow pressures stemming from such delays led to postponed or cancelled services.
Previous North Edinburgh Community Festival backers, who have been branded the “backbone” of the event, include local housing associations, Edinburgh College, Awards for All, the People’s Postcode Lottery, and corporate names such as Cruden and Centrica.
The city council has been a key supporter, and its culture and communities convener councillor Margaret Graham told The Inquirer she was pleased the local authority had provided funding for the “brilliant” launch event through last year’s Local Events Open Fund grant programme.
Describing the festival as a great way to unite people in the area, she added: “The applications for grants this year have now closed, and will be assessed later this month.”
Eleanor Ryan-Saha, a longtime attendee with her family, said: “It’s such a positive and inclusive event, and it’s one of the few big summertime events that is even accessible for my disabled daughter and many other disabled and neurodivergent members of our community.
“Over 160 third-sector organisations take part each year, including the groups for girls and women that I volunteer with. It’s been brilliant to see it go from strength to strength.”
Ryan-Saha, who is standing in the newly redrawn Edinburgh Northern constituency in next month’s Scottish Parliament elections as the Scottish Labour candidate, added: “Multi-year funding for the festival’s core costs is a huge priority for West Pilton,.”
Festival director Conn also underlines the Festival’s growing importance to the communities of north Edinburgh. “And it definitely has the potential to get bigger.”