Bringing together artworks created by Ukrainians and Edinburgh locals together in five art-making workshops in music, photography, pottery-making, loom-weaving, and cooking, Just Festival 2023's central exhibition PATHWAYS TO PEACE FROM DISPARATE POINTS explores the potential of art objects in building compassionate and constructive relationships between people from disparate points of geography, culture, and life. In times of uncertainty, dislocation, and assimilation, personal and cultural objects take on a peculiar solidity, becoming remnants of experience, identity, and memory. The art objects on display here are remnants of shared experiences and interactions in these workshops, but they are also a possible means of visibly and communication among those attending the exhibition as part of the Fringe.

The exhibition includes a photography series, hand-built pottery vessels, a loom sculpture, musical recordings, and the ‘Peacemaker’s Loom’, an interactive French knitting loom which served as inspiration for the workshops. Food from the cooking workshop will be available for purchase at Pulse, a plant-based home cooking kitchen and eatery below the sanctuary of St Johns’ Church. 

We want to close our festival with a choral concert titled 'Piece by Peace' on Saturday 26 August. This musical performance will be given by the group of Ukrainian and Scottish singers who came together to make the recordings. It will let these newly composed songs have a chance to be heard live, and give an international platform, in Edinburgh, to those singers. The songs have been written in workshops led by community composer Sally Jaquet, and are evocative intertwinings of Scottish and Ukrainian folk music and stories. However, we can't programme this performance without significant extra funding, so we need YOUR HELP to make this happen!