Edinburgh Printmakers is a registered charity, established in 1967 as the first open access print studio in Britain. In spring 2019 they moved into new premises at Castle Mills – a renovated industrial heritage building in Fountainbridge, which has won several architectural and social impact awards.
As a fully accessible centre for printmaking and the visual arts, Edinburgh Printmakers offers a range of creative spaces and studios including two galleries, an artist residency flat, printmaking studio, digital studio, learning studio, café, online and in-person retail spaces, courtyard and community garden.
Edinburgh Printmakers provide space, expertise, and support for artists to develop their practice, networks and professional experience, welcoming 46,000 visitors/participants from May to December 2019, and working locally and globally in partnership with institutions across the world.
The Challenge
The pandemic lockdown had a major impact on Edinburgh Printmakers audiences, hindering their ability to build relationships with local people and visitors due to covid-19 restrictions on public spaces.
Edinburgh Printmakers would like to find a way to connect with the community in which they are situated. The Fountainbridge area is currently undergoing major regeneration with hundreds of new homes being built, 10,000sqm of office space including a technology hub, shops, and Boroughmuir High School.
Edinburgh Printmakers’ challenge is to develop an interactive data artwork that will connect them with people living, working and visiting Castle Mills and the surrounding neighbourhood.
The team’s aim is to forge new relationships with people through harvesting a data response that drives an innovative, highly visible ‘data artwork’, expressing Fountainbridge’s rapidly evolving transformation as a new go-to place in Edinburgh.
Placemaking is central to the purpose of this challenge which will create a new modality of ‘print’ experience, ‘imprinting’ people’s local perspectives into a data artwork at Castle Mills and online. Finding a solution to this challenge will enable Edinburgh Printmakers to bring people together to define what they want to get out of their neighbourhood, influencing planners, developers, programmers and community organisations to work together to cater appropriately for peoples’ needs.
The artwork could take the form of a data sculpture in Edinburgh Printmakers courtyard, or a data visualisation on the walls of the building, indoors or outside. The team would like to work with a Challenge Respondent to develop a prototype with the potential for further development or scaling up in the future, creating an interactive creative pulse that captures people’s perspectives as the neighbourhood evolves.
Applications for this Challenge Project are now closed. If you have any questions about this challenge, contact us at creativeinformatics@ed.ac.uk.