Summer Programme 2026
image pending
1st-31st Aug 2026
Where are we going and how will we get there?
EXHIBITIONS
Active Travel, Active Hope
– High Altar
Concept and co-design by Jonathan Baxter
Banners by Sarah Gittins
Video by Lillygol Sedaghat and Cory Howell
Pennants by community participants
In May 2026 A+E organised a 24-hour relay around the perimeter of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral. This exhibition shows some of the banners and pennants made for the relay alongside video documentation of the event.
Both the event and the banners take inspiration from the Cathedral’s Song School murals, painted by Phoebe Anna Traquair between 1888-1892. They place figures from the murals alongside contemporary figures and quotations. More information about each banner can be found in the exhibition space.
The event brought together a wide range of community groups and individuals to reflect on the climate and ecological crisis. Both the event and this exhibition ask us to consider how we – as individuals and communities – can respond to the climate and ecological crisis in the context of active hope: a practical and joyful approach to engaging with difficult world situations by moving from overwhelm to empowered action.
Rather than commissioning a conventional documentary, the video highlights a poetics of time. It responds to Bayo Akomolafe’s provocation: ‘what if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?’, and the African saying that informs Akomolafe’s provocation: ‘the times are urgent; let us slow down.’
With thanks to all the participants and with hope for a more just and flourishing world.
Supported by the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust.
9am-6pm Mon-Sat / 12-5pm Sun – Free
Avian Ark + Alchemical Aviary
– Resurrection Chapel
Installation, drawings and bookwork by David Faithfull
Avian Ark is a floor based sculptural installation comprising 60 hand-turned and debossed wooden ‘flask’ pieces, each representing a different bird, arranged in the form of an outlined ark vessel and corresponding map of the Scottish coastline.
Each wooden flask depicts a particular bird, currently on the UK Red List of endangered bird species and correlates to a particular Scottish coastline feature or location.
These sites include towns, rivers, firths, isles and hills, typographically embossed onto the contoured wooden surfaces, carved from locally sourced Scottish wood, including oak, pine, ash, sycamore, sequoia and cedar.
The Birds on the endangered red list include the Capercaillie, the Dotterel, the Puffin, the Skylark and Leach’s Storm Petrel. The rare Golden Oriole previously on the list is now neither breeding in nor a visitor to the British Isles. Globally the Narrow-beaked Curlew was formally declared extinct in November 2024.
As well as representing an individual bird, the Avian Ark flask form represents the archetypal fizzy drinks bottle, universally disposed of across the globe, a symbol of our collective waste and destructiveness.
These forms also reflect the effects of plastics and micro-plastics on the landscape ecology, particularly detrimental to bird populations through plastic snagging, ingestion and entrapment.
The number on the top of each flask, corresponds positionally to the matching number on the accompanying map of Scotland.
>
Alchemical Aviary is an investigation into Climate Change using Alchemical Birds as a metaphor for ecological Transmutation.
The Artist’s Book and series of large drawings representing both real and mythical birds, detail the original five phases of alchemical transformation and their accompanying associations with both the Christian Church and the history of Science.
The Crow represents the blackening or crude combustion, the Swan the whitening or purification of process, the Peacock the iridescence or false illusion of the ego, the Pelican the distillation and ultimate sacrifice, the Phoenix the sublimation and resurrection.
The additional sixth phase includes the Dotterel, one of the birds on the UK endangered Red List. Each year these intrepid travellers fly from the Atlas Mountains in North Africa to breed on Ben MacDui in the Cairngorms, stopping off on the nearby Pentland Hills on route.
Whether through increased human activity in its montane habitats or the massive reduction in its insect diet, but certainly pursued by the inevitability of climatic change, the Dotterel retreats further up its bleak mountain peak.
Forced into a tourniquet of ecological misfortune, it will inevitably launch itself finally from the mountain top, transcending the physical realms of the Earth and cross that Liminal or Tipping Point into the Ether of metamorphosis.
>
Both Avian Ark and Alchemical Aviary pose two questions. What can the archaic art of Alchemy offer to contemporary culture and what significance does the Bird offer as a symbol within present society?
A Thousand Cranes
– Resurrection Chapel
A kinetic sculpture – designed, facilitated and assembled by Jane Dickinson and Kate Hajducka, and friends.
To fold 1000 cranes is symbolic of peace, and the hope that is much needed given the reality of the climate crisis and other challenges facing our world today.
These cranes were folded as a collaborative project with artists of Coburg House Studios in Leith, in celebration of their creative community.
They also recall the story of Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl who was two years old when she was exposed to radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. By the time Sadako died at the age of 12, she had folded over 1000 cranes.
The artists are delighted that this colourful installation is now migrating to support the concerns of the broader community, and has found a temporary home at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral.
“This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.”
Please contact A+E if you would like to invite the Cranes to alight at other locations.
On Sacred Ground
– South Lawn
Pre-memorial benches by Ollie Howell, Jaaziel Kajoba and Joe Simms, graduates from the Radical Harvest Masters studio, University of Edinburgh School or Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
Installed on the Cathedral’s South lawn in 2025, these architectural interventions comprise five benches and five waymarkers, recording the names and habitats of species at risk of extinction across Scotland.
At once a celebration of Scottish biodiversity and a pre-memorialof what could be lost, the installation invites passersby to rest a while and deepen; to consider the fragility of our shared ecology and our responsibility for its care.
On the five benches you’ll find some of the names of species at risk across Scotland: Capercaillie, Snow Bunting, Atlantic Salmon, Whorl Snail, Sand Deceiver and many others, each remembered through the act of casting their name in earth.
Sitting at each bench you’ll face a waymark towards the habitats these beings call home: Woodland, Marine, Fresh Water, Moorland and Mountain.
Together the benches and waymarks form a dial for relating oneself to the more-than-human world. A space to sit, to gather, to contemplate, to remember, to care.
Outdoor location – always open – free
Song School Tours
Visit Phoebe Anna Traquair’s extraordinary murals, illustrating the Benedicite, omnia opera (or Song of Creation).
10th -29th Aug (except Wednesdays and Sundays)
10:45am and 12 noon – £5 – booking required
For more information see http://www.cathedral.net/whats-on/festival
A+E 