Four More Reasons to Leave The House if You Live in Edinburgh

My previous post, 4 Good Reasons to Leave the House This Week if You Live in Edinburgh got a great response on social media – thanks very much to everyone who shared it.

One Out of Four Ain’t Great

I only managed to make it to one of the four recommended events, offering my services up as a volunteer “surgeon” at the Edinburgh Social Media Surgeries. You can read about how I and other volunteers helped our “patients” at the EDSMS blog, and you can also sign up for the next event on Monday 8th July.

However I’m still planning to try out TechCube’s new hotdesking space, which I’m told has already attracted a good number of freelancers through its doors since opening. Because leaving the house a couple of times a week is good for the soul. And it’s summer. There might even be some sun now and again.

If you made it to any of the other events let me know how it went in the comments!

Expect Late Things

I’d definitely like to make this into a regular update but as I was in Ireland last week it didn’t quite happen. The result was that I failed to mention two very interesting events.

Firstly, Amb:IT:ion Scotland’s Culturing Our Creativity on Monday looks like it would have been right up my street so I’m kicking myself for missing it. Thankfully you can watch the talks online and find out more here.

There was also the Edinburgh Publisher’s Conference on “the Evolution, Disruption and Future” of publishing-  if you’re interested you can also watch all of the sessions from the event online here.

And so, after that rambling introduction, onto what’s happening this week.

Four Reasons to Leave The House This Week

Edinburgh International Film Festival, 19-30 June, various venues

The Edinburgh Film Fest used to be at the same time as the Fringe and all the other major festivals in August but now it always seems to sneak up on me earlier than expected, Golum style.

That’s a bit of a cruel comparison though. The Fest is not quite as glamorous as it used to be but if you live and breathe cinema and have some spare cash burning a hole in your pocket, this is where you’ll want to be during June.

As well as a great selection of arty indie films from around the world they’ve got Sundance hit Breathe In with Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones, Not Another Happy Ending, a romantic comedy about writer’s block starring Karen Gillan (her from Doctor Who), and Monsters Inc. prequel Monsters University.

Edinburgh Hacklab Craft Open Night, Summerhall, Tonight (Wednesday 19th June)

This is the first craft open night for those residents of Auld Reekie who are good with their hands. The organisers say: “if you have a project that is craft focused such as using fabric, yarn, paper or card or you have some skills in those sort of areas come along. If you don’t have either yet and are just curious then you’re very welcome too”.

Glug Edinburgh – Heroes:  6pm-9pm, Thursday 20th June, TechCube

Another great Creative Edinburgh affiliated event. Glug is “a regular after-work creative drinks and Notworking event for designers, creatives, clients and friends”. This week’s event has an excellent line up of speakers talking about their heroes and beer and pizza is provided. For more information see Creative Edinburgh’s site or book a place via EventBrite. This is the one event I’m definitely attending this week.

Song, By Toad’s Bad Fun

I don’t intend to list gigs here regularly because Matthew at Song, By Toad does a great weekly round-up already (so please don’t email me about your gig). I’ll make an exception this week however because he’s putting on not one but two of his Bad Fun gigs with the excellent David Thomas Broughton headlining on Thursday and the Phantom Band’s Rick Redbeard on Saturday.

If there’s anything else you’d recommend let me know in the comments.