Celebrate the start of the summer at The Beltane Fire Festival: a unique and wild procession of fire, drumming and revelry on Calton Hill. Witness this spectacular revival of the ancient Celtic fertility festival in the heart of the Scottish capital.
The Beltane Fire Festival will take place on Calton Hill during the night of Saturday 30th April 2011.
Justifiably famous for its intensity and colour, the event has become a much-loved feature of the Edinburgh calendar since it was first organised in the mid-1980′s.
The current Beltane was started in 1988 by a small group of enthusiasts including Angus Farquhar of the musical collective Test Dept., choreographer Lindsay John, and dancers from Laban, as well as academics from the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. The event was intended as a celebration and also a protest against the then Thatcher government’s restrictions on rights to gather. Originally intended to take place on Arthur’s Seat, the home of earlier Edinburgh Beltane celebrations, for practical reasons the location was moved to Calton Hill. Choreography, iconography and performance were moulded by the originators’ research into historical accounts of Beltane and their own influences (e.g. Test Department’s drumming, Trinidadian carnival, and ritual dance and performance).
The Beltane Fire Society, a registered charity which runs the festival, is managed by a democratically elected voluntary committee, and all the performers are volunteers who either join by word of mouth or by attending one of the advertised open meetings held early in the year. Senior performers and artists in the society help others through workshops with aspects of event production, prop construction, character performance techniques, team building, percussion skills and the health and safety considerations involved. The society has also held fundraising art and music events and has held a ‘mini-Beltane’ at a local AIDS Hospice, Milestone House.
For more information, please check out the Beltane information page.
