Interview: Kim McAleese

By Jen McLaren, 09.08.2023

Kim McAleese, credit Stuart Whipps.

Jen McLaren (JM): You came into your post of EAF director in summer 2022, how has it been planning the 2023 festival?

Kim McAleese (KM): Previous to working at Edinburgh Art Festival I was based in Birmingham at a wonderful organisation called Grand Union. We had a gallery programme, artist studios and a collaborative programme across the city so, for me, coming to Edinburgh for the art festival, I could see a lot of synergy in how I wanted to approach working with the fabric of the city. It’s important that the artists are properly supported. For audiences, accessibility is important, and how people are greeted. Those are small, very informal touches that are very much in line with how I want to treat people. A lot of that has come from my learning at Grand Union. There will be a festival hub for people to have some quiet time and learn a bit more about the programme. I really want people to feel welcome.

JM: Describe your vision and direction for EAF?

KM: August is a month with a huge amount of incoming visitors and festivals. I want this festival to have something that feels really rooted in the city, thinking about the people of the city and those intricate histories – but that has an international dialogue and resonance. I want to interrogate the discomfort of being located in a place. Edinburgh, Scotland and the UK arguably have a complex relationship with the history of empire and colonial projects, so I want the festival to question that – what is our relationship to the transatlantic slave trade, why is the city so wealthy and what was it built on? I want it to feel bold, and that it can challenge these ideas, whilst also creating a space where people can learn, congregate and talk in an intimate way. There are a lot of political subjects, but I can’t imagine programming a festival that didn’t at least ask these questions. Art is never really neutral and there’s a real power in what you can platform.

JM: Can you highlight some of the new commissions?

KM: Working with National Galleries of Scotland, we are co-commissioning a brand new performance piece with Alberta Whittle, looking at colonial histories and historic links to slavery which takes place on 13^th August at 7pm. On August 11th we open the festival with ‘History of the Present’ by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon in The Queen’s Hall, a new experimental opera-film forefronting working-class women’s voices to ask: who has the right to speak and in what way?
Another major commission for us is Sean Burns’ ‘Dorothy Towers’ project, looking at overlooked queer histories in Edinburgh. This is something I want to build up over a period of time, it’s the beginning of a relationship that will last for years and the artists’ projects will form around. For this, we are working with Waverley Care – Scotland's HIV and Hepatitis C charity – and Lavender Menace, the city's first LGBT bookshop that formed in 1982. We are also organising a series of salons between the book, film and art festivals, and will have a collective from Beirut popping up called Haven for Artists, who will be leading a keynote provocation with Array Collective on the importance of art and activism in our contemporary world.

The Edinburgh Art Festival runs from Friday 11th August – Sunday 27th August 2023

edinburghartfestival.com