A CELEBRATION OF LUVE, HOPE & KINDNESS JANUARY – FEBRUARY 2024

This month St. Giles’ Cathedral will once again become the focus of a new public sculpture created by German artist Michael Pendry, with ‘HEART’ making its UK premiere in the capital in collaboration with the Burns&Beyond and the St. Giles’ 900^th; the anniversary of the founding of the cathedral, which celebrates with a series of events throughout 2024.

This year HEART will light-up the cathedral with the very symbol of life itself, a new three-dimensional work measuring five metres tall, which will transform the space with a ticketed evening illumination and soundscape for visitors.

What better symbol for the festival which takes its inspiration from Rabbie Burns and promotes ’Luv, hope and Kindness’, than a heart?

The artist is already well-known in Edinburgh as he was the creative talent behind Les Colombes an installation sited in the cathedral, when a floating flock of more than 2,000 paper doves were hung in the nave. Each bird brought a message of hope, peace, humanity and new beginnings, appropriate for the end of the pandemic.

Tickets for evening illumination of Heart at St. Giles’ Cathedral available now.

Burns&Beyond with Johnnie Walker celebrates The Bard with an online recreation of Lucky Middlemass’s Tavern.  Filmed on location in The Caves, Edinburgh, the site of the famed 18th century tavern, where the ale and claret flowed along with progressive discussion and music, and where literary greats and Enlightenment figures including Robert Burns, David Hume, Adam Smith, Deacon Brodie, James Watt and Benjamin Franklin were just some of the regulars, an uproarious and thought-provoking assembly of song and poetry has been curated by Lau’s Aidan O’Rourke.

Featuring

NOVA (featuring special guest Empress)
Siobhan Wilson
Nadine Aisha Jassat

Plus

Michael Pedersen & Kevin Williamson

With over a decade of unfurling alternative Burns Nights under their belts, Neu! Reeke! are perhaps the best placed cabal in Scotland to conjure an atypical Burns Night that’ll ruffle feathers and arouse the senses.

One of the most famous love songs written by Robert Burns, ‘A Red, Red Rose’. Part of the song’s appeal is its use of powerful, natural imagery to convey a love that is ever-lasting and capable of surviving both distance and time.