Welcom
Over the past year, WHALE Arts has continued to build upon our role as the cultural anchor for Wester Hailes. We are extremely proud of the work of the WHALE Arts team together with artists and partners to deliver an inclusive and inspiring programme shaped by local voices.
Becoming a Creative Scotland Multi-Year Funded Organisation this year also marks an important milestone for WHALE Arts, providing stability to plan confidently for the future. Across all our projects—ranging from arts and wellbeing, to youth programmes and community meals as well as enterprise development—WHALE Arts continues to demonstrate the power of creativity to connect, support, and engage.
On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank our staff, freelance artists, volunteers, and funders for their commitment and support.
Ceri Hughes, Chair, WHALE Arts Board of Trustees
It has been a year of creativity, fun, collaboration, innovation and conversation at WHALE Arts, and I am pleased to share our Annual Report for 2024–25. We continued to welcome high levels of engagement and visitors to our building this year, which is a testament to how relevant, welcoming, inspiring and enjoyable the programmes co-designed with our members, residents, and partners are. Engagement remains at the heart of our work – we believe creativity and culture belong to everyone.
None of this would be possible without the incredible staff team whose dedication keeps WHALE Arts strong, and to thank the many freelance artists who bring imagination, expertise, and inspiration into our building each week. Their combined efforts make WHALE Arts a welcoming and creative space for all who come through our doors.
Following work in 2024-25 developing our business plan, we were pleased to become a Creative Scotland Multi-Year Funded Organisation 2025-2028, an important step that gives us stability, underlines the value of WHALE Arts as a cultural anchor and allows us to plan with confidence for the future.
Looking ahead, our new five-year Strategic Plan, shaped through wide consultation with local people and partners, will guide us to keep tackling inequality, supporting wellbeing, and creating opportunities for creativity to flourish.
Thank you to our funders, supporters and partners for their ongoing support of our work and above all to our community, whose energy and ideas continue to inspire and shape everything we do.
Kate Griffin, CEO
About WHALE Arts
Arts is a community-led arts charity and social enterprise, set up by local in Wester Hailes, Edinburgh in 1992. We connect our community with creative es through the delivery of projects, programmes and events.
m to enhance people’s health, wellbeing and happiness through arts, creativity novation and improve people’s economic prospects through developing creative ise and community wealth building and learning and skills opportunities.
place-based, community charity we work hard with partners to share and te the quality creative and cultural projects that happen in the area. We build hese successes to inspire and empower our community to continue to strate the power of creativity as a driver of social change.
ogramme is a vibrant, community-driven experience that’s always free and o all, regardless of age, background, or accessibility needs. We offer a c mix of activities that include visual arts, crafting, performance, cooking, ing, digital skills, therapeutic workshops, community wealth-building, sensory e play, and much more. From weekly community meals and holiday mmes to exhibitions, shows, and exciting outings, there’s something for ne.
artner with local schools, nurseries, social workers, GPs, youth groups, care theatres, galleries, festivals, libraries, and other charitable organisations to engaging, inclusive creative experiences that bring our community together in d meaningful ways.
Strategic Plan 2019 - 2024
Mission
We create the conditions for our community in Wester Hailes to work alongside artists and cultural practitioners to become agents for change who will proactively co-design, participate in, support or lead quality creative activity at all stages of their lives.
Vision
Wester Hailes is a creative, thriving, resilient, fair community.
Key Themes
Health, Wellbeing & Happiness
Economy, Enterprise, Learning and Skills
Places and Spaces
Development and Improvement
Data, Design and Evaluation, Inovation
Communication, Conversation, Co-production
Values
Equality, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion
Openness
Creativity
Tenacity
Innovation and Continuity
Working Together
758 Regular sessions in which
1,178 People of all ages & abilities participated
16,500 people visited WHALE Arts
4,989 People attended
132 Holiday, Partnership & One-off Events
13,223 People used our website
42 Volunteers contributed
562 Hours of their time to support us
Health, Wellbeing & Happiness
Our Health, Wellbeing, and Happiness initiative offers a diverse range of regular groups, events, workshops, and collaborative projects. At its core, we focus on promoting positive wellbeing through the power of creativity. This means helping to reduce anxiety, depression, and feelings of social isolation, while boosting self-confidence, self-esteem, and fostering stronger social connections.
By building positive relationships and a deeper sense of purpose within the community, we're dedicated to supporting individuals on their journey to a healthier, happier life. All of the participants across WHALE Arts came together to celebrate their creativity in a joint exhibition, Our Summer Exhibition. Everyone was welcome to share any work they wanted to. We filled our spaces with work and opened the doors to the public for a weekend. The feedback was incredible from both participants and the public.
We ran a special summer programme designed to give our participants the opportunity to learn new skills, visit new places and to meet participants from our different groups. Sessions included felt making, Indian dance, trips to galleries, Fringe shows, portrait drawing and decoupage. We also had fun and some creative play and engineering, making a cardboard city in our big arts workshop for the children’s summer programme activities.
All of the sessions were very successful and well attended. The participants told us how much they had enjoyed learning new skills and getting to meet different people from across the arts and wellbeing programme.
Our Winter Fayre brought the community together for a day of creativity, connection, and festive cheer. We welcomed everyone with fun, free activities including crafts and wreath making. Alongside this were our fundraising games and stalls. Many of the crafts available for sale on the day were created by participants from our Arts and Wellbeing programme who donated goods for sale. These included beautifully knitted goods, RISO-printed cards and prints, pottery decorations, handmade badges, and bags. Money raised from the sales is managed by our Fundraising Committee and goes to benefit the WHALE Arts Community. The event was a true community celebration, involving volunteers, participants, staff, and visitors. We were especially pleased to welcome many people who had never visited WHALE Arts before, making this a valuable opportunity to introduce new audiences to what we do.
Our Men’s Makers group worked with the Tool Library to learn new wood skills and make a bench for the garden.
We have started to use our café space as a solo show gallery. This gives our participants the chance to show their own portfolio of work. The first exhibition was Norman’s, who comes to two of our Arts and Wellbeing Programmes and had a lifetime of work to pick from! We celebrated his exhibition with a tea and trifle party.
Feedback from participants
‘My wellbeing has improved due to the opportunity to paint, craft and create in a calm, peaceful environment with supportive friendly people.’
‘This is a fantastic service. It is a hidden gem and I am so glad I found it.’
‘I’ve
learnt pottery.... and willingness to try anything’
‘Coming here is like the best therapy you can do.’
‘I wish I could come to Let’s Create everyday as it lifts my mood’
‘I
am so happy to be part of a great class, nice friends, great staff. So glad to have space at the WHALE Arts – art work helps me not worry so much!’
Economy, Enterprise, Learning & Skills
We design and deliver projects aimed at developing skills, fostering creative learning, and supporting the growth of microbusinesses and enterprises. These projects are co-created with community members to build on their existing talents and interests.
Our Adult Digital Skills programme delivered 129 sessions across WHALE Arts, Clovenstone Community Centre, The Health Agency and Prospect Community Housing supporting 49 people across 248 participations.
Topics covered ranged from broken devices, how to send emails, support with college work, online banking and making purchases, staying safe online, and job seeking and Universal Credit. We worked with Prospect Community Housing to provide digital support to tenants facing digital exclusion and isolation, and launched a new partnership with the Health Agency and Wester Hailes Medical Practice offering a digital drop-ins at the Healthy Living Centre exploring how digital inclusion can support health.
Our Digital Inclusion Programme took part in a Community of Learning with organisations across Scotland organised by the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations helping shape Scottish Government Policy on Digital Inclusion.
We supported placements for students from Edinburgh College, Queen Margaret, Napier and Edinburgh University.
‘Everyone is so nice here, I’ve learned a lot. I got this laptop from a friend but it was just gathering dust. I never thought I would use it and now I’m on it every night.’
Our SmARTies gro them build skills, through a variety the National Gall Jupiter Artland. Street Arts ran all up with Westside the winter month sessions including and land art.
Our Accessible A programmes, prov holiday sessions, and their families,
We ran an extens which included t Community Day outdoor classes, w number of session with Napier Unive
We piloted a Co Wester Hailes Hig a winter show and developing a yo participate in the E
As part of the British Council's "90 Youth Voices for the Future" programme, WHALE Arts supported a visit from 20 international young leaders from Iran, Nepal, Brazil, Cyprus, Estonia, the Philippines, Czechia, Ireland, Albania and Ghana. The focus of their visit was on cultural connection and the arts as powerful tools for community engagement and social change. The group were offered two workshops, the first delivered by WHALE Art’s Create Community Wealth team and project participants, where the young leaders were invited to design protest posters, and then using basic screen-printing techniques, they printed their designs on tote bags. The second workshop was a guided discussion on skill sharing, wellbeing and community building led by the Community Wellbeing Collective.
Amanda Costa from Brazil shared her thoughts on the experience: "I was really impacted by the dynamics of WHALE Arts. I realized that we are all artists, we just need to allow ourselves to exercise this muscle more frequently and intensely. In my opinion, the arts are a powerful tool for strengthening local communities, as they create safe and courageous spaces to discuss complex issues, such as social inequalities, privileges and climate change."
Creative Scotland’s Culture Collective awarded WHALE Arts some legacy funding to embed the legacy of the Create Community Wealth project. Key elements of the legacy project included public film screenings of the Create Community Wealth Documentary Film, which was created as part of the original Create Community Wealth Project and was launched at the Cameo Cinema in March 2025. A series of monthly workshops led by experts, designed to upskill participants and included topics such as Product Photography, Creating Marketing Content with Canva, Building a Community of Support and Creating Unique Products or Packaging using a Cricut Machine was offered at WHALE Arts for participants and partners. Additionally the funding provided support for WHALE Arts and CCW partner organisations to develop an evaluation strategy –further embedding good evaluation practice into our organisation.
We use the Pod Press equipment to develop the work of our participants into products to exhibit and sell. We worked with Smartcraft to create cards and paper bunting. These have been on sale within our building and in the city centre. Pod Press is giving people the chance to learn skills in design and Risograph printing, as well as develop a new creative practice.
The products we make help to support the wellbeing of our participants as they get to see their work being appreciated by people. It also gives us the opportunity to show the public what we do at WHALE Arts.
The Pod Community Café is a space for people to come together and enjoy a barista coffee and cake or a tasty, great value lunch, opening once a week and on event days. We have brought in extra income to support the café with our catering for events and partner activities.
Community, Places & Spaces
We held an event to celebrate our successful Community Asset Transfer and thank everyone involved in the process, including our funders the Scottish Land Fund. Councillor Stephen Jenkinson, Kevin Sturgeon, our brilliant solicitor, architect Akiko Kobayashi, and Board, Members, partners and staff joined in the ribbon cutting.
We continued to grow our membership and developed and further enhanced our members’ events and activities programme. This included coffee mornings, featuring local artist talks, outings to the Fringe and the National Robotarium at Heriot-Watt University as well as continuing with our regular monthly Members meetings and meals.
We held our regular annual Wester Hailes OPEN exhibition, and this year worked with a community curator in residence, Sara-Angel Guerrero-Mostafa to deliver a series of well- attended community curation workshops.
“Taking part in these workshops has really helped me understand what curators and artists do so much more ” . Community Curation Workshop participant.
The links between our Community Meal and Community Garden have grown from strength to strength. With support from our volunteers we celebrated Scottish Apple Day, hosted a winter solstace lantern making session, bulb day and wreath making at the Winter Fayre.
Working with Edinburgh University partners through the GroundsWell project we began a consultation process to start the co-design of our community garden. Members of our Smarties group had images of their designs exhibited at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool.
Partnerships & Networks
Partnership working is a key part of our approach to delivering joined-up working in our area and acting as a cultural bridge, bringing experiences and creative opportunities to Wester Hailes, as well as supporting access to city wide programmes.
Our ongoing partnership with Manipulate Arts ‘Animate’ Project brought performances, workshops and activities across the year. We hosted sessions with All or Nothing linked to the show ‘FORESTS’ that allowed young people to try aerial dance. We were pleased to be able to offer Tortoise in A Nutshell’s festive show ‘Winter’ to local children and families as well as associated drama and puppetmaking sessions. Throughout the year we worked with partners Starcatchers and Sistema Big Noise to offer performances and activities for children and families.
We continue to Co-Chair the Living Well Wester Hailes Forum, are part of the Wester Hailes Together group and are partners in Go Beyond, sharing resources, information and developing local partnerships. We became members of Future Arts Centres Network and attended events sharing best practice in the sector.
Our Creative Community Hubs project is a network of citywide organisations who work with their local communities to deliver creative and cultural activity led by the interests and needs of local people. We were pleased to become a Strategic Partner of City of Edinburgh Council who are funding this work and our CCH team. The hubs are Out of the Blueprint, Granton Hub, Duncan Place Resource Centre, North Edinburgh Arts, The Old Town Community Trust, Craigmillar Now, and Lyra.
The focus for the Network this year has been developing future research proposals for practice-based projects on local cultural value. We worked in partnership with Queen Margaret University and Dr Anthony Schrag to explore ideas around collective and grassroots research, as a means of celebrating the amazing cultural work happening across the Network, and what that can inform.
At the end of the year, we developed ‘The Hubs Charter’, a codeveloped call to action with and for members of the Creative Community Hubs Network. The Charter is an open invitation to external partners to align with our values before beginning any collaboration and to support better partnership working.
We were delighted for the Creative Community Hubs to be shortlisted as finalists in the Creative Edinburgh Awards 2024 in the Community Award category.
We launched the MAKE SPACE Initiative, in partnership with the CEC, in September 2024 across eight creative community hubs in Edinburgh, has quickly become an essential resource for the city’s artists and creative groups. Through this project, the Hubs Network has been able to offer 340 free hours of space for artists and community members to meet, rehearse, create, and support each other.
Through the Hubs Network, we also lead on the Local Community Cinema Network Project; helping launch and support film screenings cocurated with and for local communities across a range of community spaces in the city. This year Local Cinema had its biggest programme yet, supporting 50 community cinema screenings around the city with over 1750 people attending, including the third edition of the North Edinburgh Film Festival – run by North Edinburgh Arts and taking place in the West Pilton Neighbourhood Centre. As well as supporting up to six screenings in each of our Local Cinema Network venues, we were also able to support a number of new screening initiatives in their first year including: the BSL Film Club, Queer Film Night, and screenings by Empowering Multicultural Communities Alliance taking place at our neighbours - the Community Wellbeing Space by the Westside Plaza. We were also pleased to welcome on board Space @ Broomhouse Hub as our latest partner in the Local Cinema Network.
Financial Summary Statement of Financial Activities for the Period
Thank You!
Our Partners
About Youth
Art in Healthcare
Big Hearts
Business Fives
Calders Residents Association
Canal View Primary School
Clovenstone Community Centre
Clovenstone Primary School
Community Land Scotland
Community Wellbeing Collective
Craigmillar Now
Duncan Place Community Hub
Edinburgh Community Food
Edinburgh Art Festival
Edinburgh Book Festival
Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society
Edinburgh International Science Festival
Edinburgh Napier University
Edinburgh Tool Library
Edinburgh University:
GroundsWell Team
Creative Informatics
Edinburgh College
EVOC
Fruitmarket Gallery
Granton Hub
Grass Roots Remedies
Heriot–Watt University
Lyra
National Galleries of Scotland
North Edinburgh Arts
Open Book
Out of The Blueprint
Open University
Passion4Fusion
Prospect Community Housing
Manipulate Arts
Room for Art
Royal Lyceum Theatre
SCOREscotland
Scottish Poetry Library
Sighthill Primary School
Space and Broomhouse Hub
Starcatchers
Stories Untold Productions
The Crannie (EOTDT)
The Health Agency
The Youth Agency
Theiya Arts
Tortoise in a Nutshell
Wester Hailes Community Trust
Wester Hailes Growing Communities
Wester Hailes Library
With Kids
Our Funders
Scottish Government
Lothian Buses
City of Edinburgh Council
William Grant Foundation
Creative Informatics
William Syson Foundation
Youthlink Scotland
Bauer Media (Radio Forth)
Edinburgh Airport
Bentley Trust
Mickel Fund
Creative Scotland
R S Macdonald
People's Postcode Trust
SCVO
Kiran's Trust
Robertson Trust
One City Trust
Cruden Foundation
Foyle Foundation
Walker Shoolbraid Charitable Trust
Culra Charitable Trust
Scott Davidson Charitable Trust
The Gladys Wightwick Charitable Trust
Binks Trust
Nimar Charitable Trust
Mbili Charitable Trust
Team
Volunteers
Alex Edwards
Allan McNaughton
Andrew McNiven
Barbara Markiewicz
Beata Makan
Billy McWhinnie
Ceri Hughes
Elma McLean
Emily Stevenson
Emma McDowall
Eunice Main
Eva Mckenzie
Evelyn Dunlop
Fabien Merville
Holly Young
Jan Davies
Julia Davies
Keisha Lancaster
Kirsty Frankland
Min Leng
Morag Kasmi
Nasra Masoud
Neil Finlayson
Nicky Laing
Nila Joshi
Paul Barnwell
Phoenix ( Corporate Volunteers)
Robbie White
Sade Adams
Sarah Pryde
Shona Cook
Sibongile Nkala
Susan Gibson
Tonatiuh Sot
Staff (2024-present)
Anna Nicolson
Craig Tyrie
Chantal Auguste
Eleanor Mumford
Emma McDowall
Em Thompson
Eva McKenzie
Fabien Merville
Fin Ross Russell
Helen Leigh
Kat Prior
Kate Griffin
Kirsty Frankland
Laura Tyrrell
Laurie Barbour
Michael Bowdidge
Michael Collin
Michelle Robson
Nora Mumford
Piotr Kolasinski
Susan Gibson
Tiki Muir
Zoë Squair
‘WHALE Arts is helping communities improve lives’ Enterprise programme participant
Board of Trustees (2024-present)
Allan McNaughton
Andrew McNiven
Barbara Markiewicz
Ceri Hughes
Emily Stevenson
Eunice Main
Evelyn Dunlop
Kenneth Fowler
Min Leng
Neil Finlayson
Sarah Pryde
Freelance artists, advisors, support workers and youth workers
Angela Austin Banks
Anna Maxwell
Asia Jaworska-Dorozynska
Bob Winton
Beata Makan
Conor O'Donnell
Cori Lamond
Chloe McHardy
Debbie Wright
Gemma Smith
Juulia Kalavainen
Julia Davies
Julie Przyborski
Katy Wilson
Katie Quinn
Kat Prior
Kirstin Cunningham-Abrahams
Lillian Shipton
Liz Waterston
Louize Gibson
Lou Rowland
Marie Williamson
Mark Carr
Matthew Keys
Max Alexander
Michael Bowdidge
Morvern Cunningham
Oliver Benton
Pandora Vaughan
Rosalind Sanderson
Charlotte Williamson
Roz McAndrew
Sara Guerrero-Mostafa
Tonya McMullen
Yvonne Bostock
Annual report images:
WHALE staff
Ollie Benton
Kat Gollock