Open Letter - Demolition of Summerhall

I was having a conversation least week with a friend about how I need to stop treating Instagram like the social media from 10 years ago I still use it as. I’m not on Tik Tok because I know it would be bad for my brain, but the algorithm on Instagram is still as effective. I am sick of being stuck in a cycle of opening Instagram first thing, like I used to with Facebook when it still told me about my friends. Instagram then showing me something that would make me apoplectic with rage and then exhausted.

Well luckily today rage has been transmuted into some use.

I’m not coming off Instagram because its where I see so much work in the arts, but I need to open it like I am choosing to put on the news. Bracing for horrors, with a set of radiation gloves on, and not before I have eaten breakfast.

Open Letter to my MPs SMPs & Edinburgh Councillors

I am lucky to live in Edinburgh, so I can write to my representatives. If you want to take chunks of this letter and send it yourself go ahead.

Dear, (Google their names)

I hope you are well.

I am writing to you about the proposed demolition of Summerhall.

If you wish Edinburgh to remain a city of culture you need to defend its cultural landmarks from demolition.

Summerhall is a world class art, music and performance venue, it is not just one the most important venues in Edinburgh, but in the world. When the artistic world descends on the city for the world largest arts festival each year, Summerhall is our jewel in the crown of the festival city. There are 100+ art, film/TV, animation, craft, music, tech, charity, photography practitioners based in Summerhall, we need some stability for those people.

Also, Summerhall is of huge historical interest as its original Victorian building that has been adapted over the years, and modernised, to demolish any of it is an affront to people who apricate history, but also as a shining example of how to combine the needs of a modern arts venue with respect for the past.

Frankly, it put me in a spiralling depression every time news breaks of a new attack on Summerhall. I have no idea what I would do without Summerhall. We need stability as an industry, that has been sorely lacking for the past two decades. It is such an essential bone in the Edinburch creative scene that if it was demolished, the industry would go with it.

It has been a terrible year to be an artist or theatre maker like me in Scotland, with the closures of the CCA in January, Granite House,ongoing threat to 103 Trongate, the threatened closure of the Cooper gallery in Dundee.

Last week here in Edinburgh, St Margaret’s House was being rented to Scot-Art since 2008, so many of the creatives in the building are considering leaving the arts entirely. Because there is nowhere affordable in the city for them to go. There was a huge waiting list for space in the building because three is huge demand in the city for spaces like this. There is a need that is totally not being met by the city.

If you’re the kind of person who thinks the arts are a waste of time there are also a bunch of charities that are having to relocate. Because often charities and artists are looking for the same sort of thing. Don’t get me started on these being the first people out the door are comity groups for disabled people and the LGBTQ community.

It is only because of the furious public outcry that we were able to stop another Scottish arts induction from collapsing under our eyes in the form of The Skinny.

Our industry is in crisis. Everywhere I look our culture is being eroded.

At The Edinburgh Collage of Arts, in a city that used to be called the Athens of the North, you can no longer study Performance Costume. The annual ECA Performance Costume Show was a highlight of the cities artistic calendar, as the world class performance costume was showcased locally. Don’t get me started on the subjects that are considered ‘women’s work’ are first out the door.

I’ll keep my fury to the arts that I know, but I hope you should also be receiving fury about The University of Edinburgh cutting all its Celtic & Scottish Studies, Literature this is devastating. As the premier university in the capital city of a nation, it’s barbaric to have cut the courses that represent that nation, and local people. It’s always the local people and minority language speakers who suffer first in these cuts.

The University is quite rightly being racked with strikes. It’s a PR disaster.

On the one hand, the university is using claims of ‘low student numbers’ to close 90 courses. On the other hand, every single possible bit of land needs to be turned into student housing yesterday. Make it make sense. A friend of mine, who is studying at the University of Edinburgh, has said the University has been manufacturing the low student numbers, by simply not marketing the existence of some courses to the public, and then tsking advantage of those low numbers to then close the programmes. If you do not know you can apply for specialist education programmes, then those are the courses that get cut.

Don’t get me started on these being subjects predominantly being studied by women and queer folk.

With the cost of living crisis hitting us all there are so many more local commuting students at universities who still with to access higher education, but they can’t afford to live away from home. This means that when universes cut courses, its devastating to this pool of local students, you can live in a higher educational desert for the subjects you want to study. And you know what these local commuting students also don’t use, student housing.

There will be no vibrant artistic city for tourists to visit, or students to study in, if all the spaces where we can make and see art all close to get demolished. We have plenty of student accommodation already we have plenty of hotels already.

There will be no vibrant artistic city for tourists to visit if all the locals get priced out of the city, they have spent their entire lives in. We have plenty of need for actual social housing, actual affordable housing for locals and artists and this is not it.

Particularly, as the nationalist fascist fear mongers have been doing their best to scare people about the UK has being a fallen place to come study and live. Working alongside the way the Home Office treats international students with the maximum levels of hostility. So, when these blocks of flats are bult and then stand empty, because the UK’s international reputation has been repentantly shooting itself in the foot. What happens then? Are they being bult to be quickly be remodelled into social housing when the student do not arrive? I somehow doubt it.

There are so few community spaces left after decades of austerity. We need to defend the few we have remaining fiercely – but it is also exhausting to have to continually justify your existence to governments and landlords.

Also, I am hugely disappointed in local and national journalism, due to the fact that this story was broken by Edinburgh Minute an – admittedly stelar - weekly newsletter working with the southsidecommunitycouncil Instagram account. Where is the press coverage of a this threat to a national and internation landmark site in a key industry? The silence on the arts as a industry is appalling.

I am one of those maniacs who believes art is a public good and should be available for free.

Beyond that though to borrow some numbers from the Musician’s Union.

The creative industries as a whole add £145 billion pounds to the UK economy. Arts funding has been at a standstill for almost two decades, my entire creative career. We need to be treated better by our governments.

Artists should not be making decisions about how many years of food poverty they can withstand, in order to stay in the industry they have trained to be in in. I have friends who have ‘dream jobs’ in the industry who still have to have a full time job because the pay is completely inadequate.

Edinburgh is known as the Athens of the North. That is not a reputation that remains if you run out every artist, close very community space and demolish there art venues, where there is nowhere in the city you can exist for free.

Best Wishes

Marina Johsnon

(If you have not written to your representatives include your address and post code, so that they actually respond to the letter)