Adult Education Programme for Spring 2021

Tales of One City

Edinburgh’s Adult Education Programme has been running for over a 100 years, offering day, evening and weekend courses to over 10,000 students per year. The courses have traditionally run in a variety of venues including community centres, high schools, libraries, outdoor spaces, as well as venues offered by partner organisations, such as museums and historic buildings.

Since Spring 2020, the courses have also been offered online whilst it hasn’t been possible to meet in groups. Adult Education are currently running an online programme and enrolment is underway for Spring term of both outdoor and online courses. 

Courses will start from Monday 10th May 2021 and range from writing, health and wellbeing, walking, local history, art and much more…..

Browse and enrol on the upcoming Adult Education Programme courses online or for more information contact:adult.education@ea.edin.sch.uk

You can also follow the Adult Education Programme on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EdinburghAEP
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edinburghaeprogramme

View original post 2 more words

Street photographers

I’m a sucker for old photos 🙂

Tales of One City

Today we open another scrapbook put together on Edinburgh Collected by the Living Memory Association, this time focusing on Street Photographers.

In the 1930s, street photography was extremely popular and there were many street photographers operating in Scottish cities. These photographers would post themselves on busy streets in towns and cities taking ‘walking pictures’ of passing pedestrians.

Here in Edinburgh, the North Bridge was a popular location, and there would be a kiosk or shop nearby where you could purchase the photographs of yourself. These photographs became a novel keepsake as most people would not have owned a camera.

Pedestrians walking along North Bridge, 1930s

The great thing about these photographs is that they are not posed, it is possible many didn’t even realise they had been photographed until they were confronted by the photographer.

In one image a street photographer even manages to capture a Charlie Chaplin-esque figure…

View original post 50 more words

Bloggers wanted!

image source: https://sheownsit.com

Would you like to blog for ELISA?

If you work in an Edinburgh library and information service, and you’d like to contribute something for publication here on our blog, please contact me – The Webmaster. Or if you’d like to suggest your own service’s site for us to follow and re-blog , that would also be appreciated.  

We’d welcome news, events information, links to job adverts or ‘day in the life’ pieces – anything you’d like to contribute really.

I can either set you up with site access so you can post by yourself or, if that idea is a bit daunting, send me your stuff and I’ll post it for you!

As we start re-opening our services after Lockdown let’s start re-connecting and sharing our stories with library and information service colleagues across Edinburgh. 

I look forward to hearing from you. 

NLS – limited reopening

[NLS] are delighted to announce that we’ll reopen our Edinburgh reading rooms and our premises in Glasgow, for limited service, on Tuesday 27 April.

We still need to take precautions to protect you, other visitors, and our staff, so we ask that all reading room visitors carefully read this page before they arrive.

Wearing a face covering is mandatory when you are inside the Library, unless you are exempt under government guidelines.

source: Reopening | National Library of Scotland (nls.uk)

NLS learning resource – Struggles for Liberty

A new online learning resource from the National Library of Scotland:

We’ve launched a new online learning resource – Struggles for Liberty: African American Revolutionaries in the Atlantic World. This resource explores the lifelong fight for social justice of African American activists, some of whom campaigned in Scotland in the 19th century.

Struggles for Liberty features writings authored by prominent African American reformers, freedom fighters and campaigners including Frederick Douglass, Maria W. Stewart, Nathaniel Turner, Sojourner Truth, David Walker and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Their histories are told through autobiographies, letters, photographs and other original documents held at the National Library, in the Walter O. Evans Collection (now at Yale) and in other US library and archive collections.

The resource is arranged by theme including the Story of the Slave, the History of Black Abolition, and African American activists in Scotland. It also includes interactive maps and downloadable learning activities for teachers, including activities mapped to the Curriculum for Excellence.

Struggles for Liberty was created in collaboration with collector Dr Walter O. Evans and partners in the US and th­e UK.

Temporary closure of Libraries – Update

Tales of One City

We want you to know that we are keen to reopen libraries in line with the Scottish Government route map which allows for this from 26th April 2021, where safe to do so.
However, as you know this is in a context of challenges – including the Scottish Government guidance /roadmap and the continuing pressure on resources to keep our school population safe.

The health and safety of citizens and staff is our main priority. We work closely with our colleagues in Facilities Management, Health and Safety, Environmental Health and Estates to ensure this.

We intend to reopen library buildings on a similar model to pre-Christmas 2020. However, it is a complex process to identify and allocate resources when there are many competing priorities in the City.

For this reason, it is not yet possible to be specific on exact locations or dates for reopening. Please be assured that much…

View original post 108 more words

The ReDrawing Edinburgh project needs your help!

Send your submission to redrawingedinburgh@gmail.com by Friday 23 April 2021

Tales of One City

Do you live in Cramond, Corstorphine, Colinton, Liberton or Leith? Or, have you lived there in the past?

We’d love to hear from you!

We are looking for pieces about what this area means to you. Is there a word that captures this place to you? Do you have any particular fond memories from growing up or living there?

Your piece can be a poem, a short essay, spoken word, or a song.

The ReDrawing Edinburgh project, in collaboration with Cinescapes, are working on a multimedia installation to mark the centennial commemoration of the 1920 Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act.

This multimedia installation will showcase an anthology of images, words and music that celebrate the identitiesof these areas over the past 100 years since their amalgamation into Edinburgh.

If you’d like to be part of the soundscape for this exhibition, send us your piece:

• you can send a…

View original post 49 more words

Patrick Geddes and Edinburgh

Tales of One City

In another addition to Our Town Stories we feature a noted biologist and botanist who went on to be a pioneer in the field of town planning – Patrick Geddes.

Geddes’ work in Edinburgh brought about the redevelopment of a number of parts of the Old Town which were abandoned as slums in the late 1700s when the New Town was developed. Geddes believed that in order to understand and improve conditions it was necessary to share a community’s experience. With his wife, he chose to live in James Court in the Lawnmarket which at the time was considered housing for the poor.

They started cleaning and painting their new home, encouraging their neighbours to do the same. Working with the residents he transformed spaces he had cleared into community gardens.

Geddes worked with Edinburgh University to produce a series of halls of residence, the most striking of these…

View original post 187 more words

Lost instruments

Tales of One City

Most musical instruments today have predecessors, few come ready formed remaining unchanged by the centuries.

Few instruments have disappeared completely, some have disappeared and been rediscovered to live again. There is one instrument which hasn’t disappeared but deserves to be rediscovered. The Glass (H)armonica, refined by Benjamin Franklin became a fairly popular instrument in the late 1700s and early 1800s then fell out offavour. Written for by Mozart, Beethoven and Hummell with works much later by Donizetti and Strauss.

Glass harmonica
Photo: Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

TheCarnyxwas an Iron Age Celt war trumpet. A long upright length of beaten brass with a mouthpiece at one end and the animal head at the other. Fragments ofCarnyceshave been found in various locations and many images exist in places throughout Britain and the continent. A reconstructed Carnyxis held at the National Museum of Scotland.

Carnyx war-horn at…

View original post 294 more words

Autism Awareness Week – 29 March – 4 April 2021

Tales of One City

Author event with Jane Evans and children’s colouring competition
On Monday 29 March, Newington Library welcomed Edinburgh author, Jane Evans reading an extract from her fantastic children’s book, ‘Vera McLuckie and the Daydream Club’.

Jane Evans lives in Edinburgh with her family, their cat called Pie and new puppy Bonnie. Jane discussed her book Vera McLuckie and the Daydream Club featuring an autistic character and illustrated by the very talented autistic artist, Ruth Mutch. In this recording, we’ll find about the characters and what makes them that bit different, as well as reading one of her favourite chapters.
Watch Jane reading from Vera McLuckie and the Daydream Club on Facebook.

Children’s colouring competition – three lucky winners will receive a signed copy of Vera McLuckie and the Daydream Club, with our first prize winner also getting a book token. To enter, colour in one of our cute penguin pictures. Or…

View original post 243 more words