Police box and pavement pennies signal LeithLate 16

Festival billboards on Leith Walk. Picture: contributed

More than 50 artists are taking part in LeithLate – which features visual arts, performance, talks and parties in a variety of unlikely places.

The Out of the Blue Drill Hall will act as this year’s festival hub with a host of activities taking place in and around the building between today and Sunday.

Highlights include contemporary works by Edinburgh poets Rachel McCrum, Michael Pedersen and Harry Giles displayed on advertising sites, as well a gigs and walking tours over the next four days.

Leith artist Rabiya Choudhry has designed a LeithLate banknote which will be mass produced and given away throughout the festival.

She is also working with local young people from Out Of The Blue’s #artcore group to design their own forms of currency

Meanwhile, members of the group will take over McDonald Road Library for a night of live art music.

Digital artist Ian Gouldstone has created a new work called Nearest Neighbours: Leith for LeithLate16, which coincides with a partnership/twinning between LeithLate and Deptford X, London’s longest-running contemporary arts festival

And the LeithLate16 Afterparty, with a headline set from Carbs kicks off, at Hibs Supporters Club.

Festival director Morvern Cunningham said: I’m really excited about all the upcoming events as part of LeithLate16.

“We’ve been running the Public Poetry Project since the start of June, which sees poetry by contemporary Scottish poets being displayed around advertising sites in Leith.

“We kick things off with our opening night, with over 100 artists and musicians participating across 25 venues on and around Leith Walk, and everything’s free. Highlights include our specially commissioned LeithLate currency which will be given out for free during the festival, artist Juliana Capes inserting £250 worth of pennies into cracks in the Leith Walk pavement to ‘annul’ the good and bad luck incurred, plus site-specific installations in a back garden, an old police box and in the window of a Chinese supermarket.”

For full details of all the events taking place over the next four days, see www.leithlate.co.uk