Nothing but three young women and an idea
Nothing but three young women and an idea
Celebrating 30 years of Out of the Blue helping artists survive in Edinburgh outside the fickle Festivals
Special report by Sarah McArthur
We all know that Edinburgh is a cultural city. Ranked 6th in the world for culture in Timeout’s 2023 global survey, the Scottish capital has been home to philosophers, architects, musicians, writers and artists for centuries.
Edinburgh College of Art has been training world class creators since 1760 including John Maxwell, Anne Redpath and Dame Elizabeth Blackadder. And it’s only ten weeks until the city will be overrun with performers of every kind of art you can imagine; from stand-up to circus to opera, as the International Festival and the Fringe vie for our attention throughout August.
But despite Edinburgh’s reputation as a cultural city, it is remarkably difficult to maintain an arts career in Edinburgh in the lulls between the furore of each fickle festival.
Studio spaces are vastly expensive and constantly at risk of being sold for development, often forcing creators who train in Edinburgh to establish themselves elsewhere. For 30 years, arts and education organisation Out of the Blue (OOTB) has been working to keep creators in Edinburgh - growing a collection of grassroots, affordable creative spaces in the city.
“It is quite hard to pigeon-hole us,” said Rob Hoon, CEO of OOTB, as he told me of the blend of studios, rehearsal spaces, and education and employment programmes run by the social enterprise. “We want to support culture in its wider sense: to make opportunities and space where people can be creative in whatever way they choose… and to be connected to the community surrounding the building.”
Growing from grassroots
Out of the Blue, as the name suggests, sprang out of nothing but three young women and an idea. But what began in 1994 as a gallery in a shop space in Blackfriars Street, and within two years became a handful of studios in an old bus garage and offices on New Street, has grown to inhabit five public spaces and four enterprises.
Now managing four listed buildings, OOTB marries Edinburgh’s history of art and architecture with the cutting edge of new artists and performers. An old army Drill Hall in Leith contains a cafe, a printing business, studios for over 100 artists, and rehearsal rooms for everything from professional groups to children's classes. Hosting everything from art exhibitions to flea markets, film club nights to craft workshops, it attracts 100,000 visitors a year.
Abbeymount Studios hosts over 30 makers, using anything from watercolours to textiles to mosaics. A few years ago OOTB started using some empty council offices in Craigmillar, which now host another thirty artists. The legendary Bongo Club on Cowgate is, believe it or not, one of the oldest facets of the OOTB repertoire, providing performance space for music, spoken word.
One of the homes of Edinburgh’s alternative club culture, it moved to its current subterranean base, in the four-storey building beneath Edinburgh Central Library, in 2013. That was only after being threatened with closure when its former home was swallowed up by regeneration, sparking a successful Save the Bongo campaign with backers as diverse as comedian, activist and regular club performer Mark Thomas, journalist and then University of Edinburgh rector Iain Macwhirter and a host of leading clubnight DJs.
Beyond that, there’s a small music studio, a handful of shipping containers, and the newest project: Powderhall Stables. OOTB will be renovating and using the Powderhall Stables to provide a creative space to the community that will move into new housing developments there.
In total, Out of the Blue’s venues have welcomed more than two million people through their doors over the last 30 years, to, in the Trust’s own words, “work, create, exhibit, perform, eat, drink, dance, teach and learn”.
A creative launch pad
Over the years, OOTB has provided the space for businesses which might never have flourished otherwise. Take Strange Town theatre company; now a successful agency and theatre school, Hoon remembers the first event it hosted, in Out of the Blue Drill Hall, fifteen years ago.
Being embedded in the community is also a core part of OOTB’s principles. In its first location, the studios, cafe and Bongo Club were connected to a neighbouring homelessness charity. Now in Leith, the Drill Hall Cafe and Out of the Blueprint enterprises offer education and training opportunities for local residents.
Art projects in the local area often help to identify young people who might benefit from training in the cafe or printing business. One project in the early 2000s produced a magazine with a group of teenage girls about their local park; years later, four of those women still work for Out of the Blue, and the park has been renovated based on the girls’ suggestions.
OOTB will be hosting a range of events to celebrate their thirty years of growth; starting with an open studios weekend in Abbeymount today and tomorrow. “Our approach has been about having something sustainable that grows over a generation,” says Hoon.
Looking to the future, Hoon is hopeful that OOTB can replicate its approach in other parts of the city; “We’re always looking to the longer term future - I think we want to work in the same way, take the way we work and keep doing it.”
OOTB are seeking a 75-year lease of Abbeymount Studios to be able to develop the space further, and are hoping that the Powderhall space will be a central community resource in the same way that the Drill Hall has become.
Thirty years in Edinburgh arts: has anything changed?
OOTB has never struggled to find demand for its studio and rehearsal spaces. According to Hoon, there are over a thousand creators on their waiting list for studio space. OOTB is often in meetings with groups or businesses about how to get (or keep) creative spaces up and running. And with Summerhall the latest creative venue to come under the hammer, it’s clear that finding affordable space for the arts in Edinburgh, outside of popup festival spaces, remains as challenging as it was in 1994.
There are some positive shifts, however; “I think the demand [for creative space] has grown and with the growth in demand there are more organisations doing it with different approaches.”
Indeed, as well as Out of the Blue there’s everything from the large scale North Edinburgh Arts and Outer Spaces, to the pocket-sized Sketchy Beats Cafe.
While OOTB’s model is based on partnership with the city council and use of council-owned assets, the reduced demand for office space after Covid-19 has opened up opportunities for Outer Spaces, who have used empty commercial buildings in Edinburgh Park, West Side Plaza and in Edinburgh’s New Town.
Outer Spaces, like OOTB, have a long waiting list. And in some ways that’s a great thing; it means that under the shiny festival surface, Edinburgh truly is full to the brim with creators of all kinds of art. But it also brings home the impact of Edinburgh’s property market on the very thing that makes Edinburgh so popular. As our festivals grow year on year, is Edinburgh’s culture going to become a victim of its own success?