What's On

> All are welcome to the Preview session on Sunday Oct 11.

Local artists Lorna Balmer and Hazel Brady finish off our season of exhibitions in Thomson’s Tower on a high note with their new exhibition of inspirational and wonderfully evocative paintings.

Previously professionally employed, Lorna Balmer now paints full time having studied Drawing, Painting and Printing at Leith School of Art followed by a Masters in Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. Her paintings are a variety of mixed media including the use of acrylic and oil paints, collage and the drawn mark. She works within the negative, random spaces this process creates enjoying the sense of evolving serendipity. She also recycles old paintings utilising already prepared surfaces, breathing new life into old pieces of art whilst also allowing new and exciting images to emerge. She has exhibited in and around Edinburgh, the North East of Scotland, Dundee and the North of England and accepts commissions in any medium or subject area.

Hazel Brady’s artistic influences have been down to two factors: the first is the beauty of Mother Nature and its underlying power to heal the human condition and the second is light and how it can create so many different perspectives of her immediate world. These combined influences enable her to find the joy in all her artistic endeavours.

A workshop with Alan Mitchell, Head Gardener at Dr Neils' Garden.

Learn to carve a spoon from a freshly felled birch log using professional quality carving tool axes, wood carving knives and spoon knives.

Meet at the Garden gate. Bring food for lunch and snacks. Tea & coffee provided. Children over 12 years welcome, accompanied by an adult.

> Cost: £90 (Early bird booking £80 before end September). All proceeds to Dr Neils’ Garden. To book a place email info@drneilsgarden.co.uk

This talk will cover the fascinating life story of the medieval Trinity Collegiate church and include the heated 19th century debates regarding its demolition in the name of progress by the North British Railway in 1848. It will touch on Jill's current project to find the lost Trinity stones, now dispersed all over Edinburgh.

Jill Harrison is a social art historian with a particular interest in 15th century cultural exchange between Scotland and Burgundy. She is a Research Associate at the Open University and recently gave up her lecturing post to spend more time on writing and research. She leads the Trinity Network and the Adornes Network. She is an FSA Scot and is funded by the Old Edinburgh Club for the Reviving the Trinity Stones project and is curating a forthcoming exhibition on this at the Museum of Edinburgh next year. She very much enjoys spreading the word about the importance of preserving Edinburgh's medieval past.

Brigid Collins is an artist, educator and author whose practice is deeply rooted in close and loving observation of the natural world. She makes paintings and drawings inspired by poetry as well as working in three dimensions and with the form of the book. She is most often drawn to the tactility and sensuousness of materials such as pastels, watercolour, porcelain, tissue, gauze, wire and wax, encapsulating fragility and strength in equal measure.

Brigid has collaborated and published books with poets and authors Seamus Heaney, Kathleen Jamie, Kirsty Gunn and Christine De Luca. Her collaboration with Christine evolved over a year which she spent as Artist in Residence at Dr. Neil’s Garden, where paintings, drawings, poems and a short film resulting from their collaboration went on to be exhibited in Playfair’s beautiful Thomson’s Tower, set deep in the gardens, on the shores of Duddingston Loch.

This talk focuses on some of the interesting places in Scotland that are considered secret for one reason or another. Bruce Gittings has been undertaking extensive research to produce a new Gazetteer for Scotland. This is a vast geographical encyclopaedia featuring towns, villages, bens and glens from the Scottish Borders to the Northern Isles. It includes tourist attractions, industries and historical sites, together with histories of family names, clans, biographies of famous Scots and descriptions of historical events associated with Scotland.

The talk will be illustrated with maps and aerial photos.

Bruce is a senior lecturer in Geographical Information at Edinburgh Earth Observatory, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh.

Cavalry Park is fifty-plus acres of grass, trees and playing fields in the south of Edinburgh. These days it's a pleasant recreation area, but there's rather more to the story of this place. It had brief but important roles to play during both World Wars. But for over 10 years after WW2 it was the site of some of the most desperately needed but most deplorable housing in the city. This talk looks at the community of "tin huts" that briefly occupied the park, an address so undesirable that residents were reduced to denying they even lived there.

Andy Arthur is a local historian and founder of Threadinburgh, a project dedicated to exploring the more obscure, unusual, and irreverent historical stories of Edinburgh and Leith. Fragments of such tales are all around us: lurking in memories, hiding in old newspapers or the sheets of maps, commemorated in street names and any other number of unexpected places. From forgotten transport schemes and eccentric characters to architectural quirks and more sober social history, Threadinburgh re-assembles the pieces and brings these stories back to life.