Creative culture
Gorgie Street Art Sculpture Trail is an Edinburgh first
GORGIE COLLECTIVE is a community arts and cultural heritage organisation led by a volunteer committee and members are artists and art lovers from Gorgie and beyond.
The body delivers public artworks and free creative workshops for adults in Gorgie.
Chair, Katriona Gillespie, said: “We are also passionate about creative placemaking, improving public spaces and protecting the cultural heritage of our community.
“Our artists have created Edinburgh’s first ever Street Art Sculpture Trail, bringing sculptural artworks by local artists to public spaces in our area. “
Gorgie Collective (GC) is a community-led and community-embedded organisation.
Their leading artists have socially engaged practices and are committed to bringing high quality art and free creative opportunities to the local community.
Katriona continued: “Gorgie-Dalry is one of the most culturally disengaged areas in the whole city, and we have been historically overlooked and under-resourced by The City of Edinburgh Council. Gorgie Collective advocates for equality of access to the arts for everyone in our city, and we also support our local creative community through important policies such as ensuring that artists are paid at the correct rates as recommended by the Scottish Artist’s Union for their work.
“We promote the benefits of creative activity for health and wellbeing. There is a growing evidence base demonstrating the benefits of public artworks for individual mental health and wellbeing, as well as creating a sense of place. Through our work, we seek to create more welcoming and stimulating public spaces that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.
“Making art more engaging and accessible is an important priority for our artists. Because all our sculptures are located in public spaces, they are completely accessible and can be visited at any time, so we encourage people to get down to Gorgie to appreciate them first hand.”
GC is one of the grant recipients of the Creative Communities programme, a national programme funded by The Scottish Government. The organisation considers improving accessibility to the arts as very important and their volunteers work hard to raise funds for their activities. All of their events are free for local residents and the public artworks are viewable any time.
The artworks are located at several locations around Gorgie. You can find sculptures in different medias such as concrete, stone, ceramic, brass and resin by seven different artists on the Street Art Sculpture Trail.
A map is available on the website www. gorgiecollective.com to help everyone find the works, or just have a wander around Gorgie and see what you can discover.
Katriona concluded: “Gorgie Collective is continually expanding the trail to bring fresh artworks to new audiences. We ran a sculpture competition last year and our competition winner, Mike Spring, who lives in Gorgie, has just installed several beautifully observed cast concrete portraits on the trail. These sculptures were inspired by and in tribute to the people
of Gorgie and the series is entitled ‘Pieces of Gorgie’.
“We’re excited to be transforming our public spaces in Gorgie one public artwork at a time! Watch out for our first sculptural benches hopefully to be installed this autumn.”