We had another gorgeous day in Edinburgh today. We had to be ready and down in the lobby at 9:45 so that we could make our lecture at the French embassy about the Fringe Festival. Fringe is a yearly three-week arts festival that takes place in Edinburgh as well as all over the world.
The thing that really was awesome about it is that we have Fringe Festival in Pittsburgh and we got to see what the business was all about. They are very inclusive when it comes to people with disabilities or handicaps. Oliver Davis is the head of marketing for the festival and is in charge of promoting the festival as a whole. I thought it was really interesting because he mentioned that they have their own ticketing company that they only use once a year so they don’t try to make more profit from other ticketed events throughout the year. They also pride themselves in allowing everyone and anyone to be apart of the Fringe whether they are fans or talent.
After the visit with Fringe, we had a few hours to ourselves for lunch so some of us went to a little cafe on the Royal Mile. I had a chicken panini that wasn’t very good. I then ran back to the hotel because I had to interview Jan Getz for my practicum project. We tried to do the interview in the lobby of the hotel, but it was too loud with people talking so we decided to move to my hotel room.
Later at 1:30 we met down in the lobby with everyone else for our walk to Whitespace, were we met up with Chris Davey, the head creative at Whitespace, and David Anderson, a freelance commercial photographer. They gave us a rundown of their lives and careers and then gave us a view to one of their latest projects for Shackleton Whiskey. The whole story from beginning to end was so interesting because it was an example of unexpected their work can be. I loved hearing from David because I absolutely love photography and there are so many different things you can do with it. At the end of the lecture, Dara, Julia and I walked to Primark and I had to buy some shorts for our hike tomorrow! We will be climbing Arthur’s Seat.
When we got back from shopping, I took a quick shower and then met up with a group of us in the lobby to celebrate Tour Director David’s 30th birthday. We went to a pub that was attached to a beer garden that didn’t have very good food, but we had fun singing along to songs together.
Tomorrow it is up the mountain!
