Leith For Ever Vision
A Leith where:
Everyone who lives, works and socialises here is aware of and values the historical significance and current creative and cultural potential.
Anyone who wants to has the opportunity to get involved in celebrating our heritage and participate in the creative activities of their choice.
Creative and cultural professionals are well supported and embedded in the wider Leith community.
Leith for Ever Mission
To make it easy for anyone living, working, socialising, or visiting Leith to find out about our past heritage and get involved in current creative and cultural activities.
To support professional and community led heritage and creative activity across Leith.
We plan to do this by:
Creating a platform for sharing and accessing heritage, creative, cultural and community activity.
Providing opportunities for collaborative partnerships between creative professionals, and community led organisations and groups.
Running our own projects to celebrate Leith's creative culture and heritage - utilising locally based creative practitioners and businesses wherever possible.
History
The Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920 was passed in August 1920. On 5th November 1920 the first meeting of all eight areas amalgamated into the enlarged Edinburgh Town Council took place . To commemorate this event the City of Edinburgh Council Archive’s created the ReDrawing Edinburgh project in 2020.
The amalgamation was highly contentious and opposed by Leith Town Council who ran a lightning ‘plebiscite’ (a public referendum) with the Leith Observer newspaper returning a clear ‘No’ vote to the proposal. The people’s vote was not enough to prevent the Act coming into force and Leith was duly amalgamated, generating strong feelings of resentment amongst Leithers which are detectable to this day!
Leith Heritage, Cultural and Creative organisations and individuals wanted to mark the 100 years since the Burgh of Leith was amalgamated with the City of Edinburgh in our own way. Complementing the central project, but recognising the independent spirit that still exists in Leith today. Because of the Covid 19 pandemic it was not possible for individual organisations to hold their own in person activities, so a digital solution was suggested. This became 100 Days of Leith - an online exhibition exploring the people, places, objects and memories that have shaped Leith not just over the last 100 years, but throughout history and looking forward to the future.
Initially a platform for launching the 100 Days of Leith project, the value of Leith for Ever as a collaborative space for bringing together community activity with professional creative and cultural producers soon became clear. The group of representatives unanimously decided to continue to support Leith for Ever beyond the 100 Days project.
The 100 Days of Leith project was supported by the National Lottery Community Fund Scotland
Help to shape future projects by telling us what makes Leith special to you – this can be anything – a memory, a place, an object, person, thing, organisation or interesting fact.
Do you have an idea for a project you want to share?
Or maybe you have your own project and need of a bit of extra support, or are looking for someone to collaborate with?