The Edinburgh Gaelic Festival (Seachdain na Gàidhlig) is a city-wide festival, taking place 8-16 November 2019 and celebrating Edinburgh’s Gaelic community, past and present. Image The festival was first conceived as part of the University of Edinburgh’s first Gaelic Language Plan in 2014 but, since 2015, has been organised by a committee of volunteers from across the Edinburgh Gaelic community and chaired by the University of Edinburgh’s Gaelic Officer. This year’s festival sees 30 events taking place, hosted by groups across the city. This provides larger organisations with a chance to highlight their Gaelic work or to give access to their collections through the medium of Gaelic. For instance, the City of Edinburgh Council will be offering a Gaelic-medium tour of their Museums Collections Centre, and Historic Environment Scotland will be offering a tree-themed storytelling event for children in Gaelic. The festival also gives a higher profile to regular Gaelic events taking place in the city, like Saturday’s Cànan is Cèic Gaelic conversation group and the pre-festival Cèilidh event organised by Comann Tìr nam Beann, a group that holds regular traditional cèilidhs with Gaelic song and piping. The annual event is also a chance to highlight the rich but often overlooked history of Gaelic in Edinburgh. Ainmean-àite na h-Alba and the University will be offering a talk on Gaelic placenames in Edinburgh. The full event listing is available at www.edinburghgaelicfestival.com. If you have any further questions, or would like to be involved in the organisation of next year’s Festival, please contact Bria.Mason@ed.ac.uk This article was published on 2024-07-22
