Summer Programme 2025
RINGING THE CHANGES
The collective title of this year’s arts programme is taken from Edward Bruce’s installation, Ringing the Changes. While diverse in character, all the artworks, installations, performances and workshops take inspiration from the bells of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral.
With a focus on the often-invisible cultural codes, signs, symbols, and patterns that shape our lives, this year’s programme asks us to consider the ever-changing nature of three ecological registers: environmental, social and subjective.
We ask, what does it mean to be a cathedral in the midst of global crises – not one but many? What does it mean to ring out the changes? What does it mean to take responsibility for our lives?
Join us for a month of creative exploration and conversation – including a mid-festival ‘opening’ on the 14th Aug, 7.30-9pm in the Resurrection Chapel.
Everyone is welcome!
EXHIBITIONS
Ringing the Changes
Art installation in the Nave
A dramatic installation of colourful banners depicting bellringing patterns, beneath the cathedrals’ bell tower, incorporating bellringing, weaving and architecture in one magnificent art installation. Banners by Edward Bruce (artist) with installation co-design by Nick O’Neill (architect).
Fri 1 st – Sun 31 st Aug
9am-6pm Mon-Sat / 12-5pm Sun – Free
On Sacred Ground (exhibition)
Exhibition in the All Soul’s Chapel
Artefacts and video documentation showing the material thinking that informs the On Sacred Ground installation.
Fri 1 st – Sun 31 st Aug
9am-6pm Mon-Sat / 12-5pm Sun – Free
On Sacred Ground (installation)
Architectural installation on the South Lawn
Five benches and five waymarkers, recording the names and habitats of species at risk of extinction across Scotland in 2025. A celebration of the country’s biodiversity and a pre-memorial of what could be lost.
Open 24hrs – free
The On Sacred Ground team are Ollie Howell, Jaaziel Kajoba and Joe Simms, students from the Radical Harvest Masters studio, University of Edinburgh School or Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
The Cathedral Body
Art installation in the Resurrection Chapel
Carla Angus has created an intimate conversation space and sculptural map of all the networks in and out of the Cathedral: from the telecom transmitters in the steeple to the mycorrhizal networks in the earth below.
Fri 1 st – Thurs 28 th Aug
9am-6pm Mon-Sat / 12-5pm Sun – Free
Drawings for a Regenerative Cathedral
Exhibition in the Chapter House
Digital prints and wall drawings documenting actions taken by the Cathedral and its art and ecology programme – inspired by the Song School murals. Drawings by Sarah Gittins, concept and co-design by Jonathan Baxter.
2nd, 7th , 9th , 14th , 16th , 21st , 23rd , 28th , 30th Aug
10am-1pm / 2-4.30pm – Free
Song School Tours
Visit Phoebe Anna Traquair’s extraordinary murals, illustrating the Benedicite, omnia opera (or Song of Creation).
17th -25th Aug (except Wednesdays and Sundays)
11am-12 noon – £5 – booking required
PERFORMANCE
Ringing Out the Changes
A new performance piece from award-winning writer and performer Jo Clifford (The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven) all about bells and bellringing: ringing out life’s changes, announcing births and deaths, sounding the alarm, and calling us to worship, think, and reflect.
7th , 14th , 21st , 28th Aug
2.30-3.30pm – £7-10 – booking required
WORKSHOPS and DISCUSSION
MY-corrhizal Network
Located in the Resurrection Chapel
Join Carla Angus for a hand-stitching workshop inspired by traditional maps and underground mycorrhizal root networks. Use threads, fibres and paper to reflect on personal links to people, places and memory, and create a stitched drawing of your own connections to the world. No experience needed, materials provided. (Bring threads if you wish to.)
16th Aug
2.15-4.15pm – £5 (free on request) – booking required
Only Connect
Located in the Resurrection Chapel
Join Carla Angus (artist), Jonathan Baxter (curator of the Cathedral’s art and ecology programme) and John Conway (Provost of the Cathedral) for an in-person discussion exploring the inspiration behind Carla’s artwork, A Cathedral Body, and the concept of a ‘semiotic cathedral’: how the structure and its elements function as signs, conveying meaning and communicating ideas.
17th Aug
12-1pm – Free – Drop-in (no booking required)
Active Travel, Active Hope
Located in the Chapter House
Where are we going and how will we get there? Using appliqué, print and batik processes, participants are invited to contribute to a series of banners celebrating active travel for a sustainable world – inspired by the Song School murals. With Jonathan Baxter and Sarah Gittins. No experience needed. Materials provided.
Supported by Sustrans Scotland ArtRoots Fund.
18th , 19th , 21st , 22nd Aug
10am-1pm / 2-4pm – Free – Drop-in (no booking required)
Ring Out for Climate Justice – for ages 11-16
Meeting in the Chapter House with bellringing in the bell tower
Bellringing followed by a creative art workshop to raise awareness of the climate
and ecological crisis – led by young people aged 12-16 and supported by Jonathan
Baxter.
23rd Aug
11.30am-1.30pm – Free – Drop-in (no booking required)
For more information see http://www.cathedral.net/whats-on/festival
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