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Edinburgh University students and staff currently have trial access to Hindi Cinema: Histories of Film-making, until 11th May 2025.
Hindi Cinema: Histories of Film-making:
Sourced from the private collection of renowned author and documentary film-maker Nasreen Munni Kabir, this resource features unedited interviews with leading Indian film personalities who contributed to the shaping of the ‘Golden Age’ of Hindi cinema and beyond.
This material marks the first time that a significant number of Indian film practitioners were filmed for a British broadcaster. Other collection highlights include behind-the-scenes photographs from film sets and popular Indian film posters from the British Film Institute (BFI).
The Bookmarks Prize is awarded to selected graduates for high quality and innovative use of the book form shown at the Edinburgh College of Art Graduate Shows. It is open to all students across the Schools of Art and Design.
Jane Hyslop, Lecturer in Painting & Illustration at ECA, who curated this display says “In 2024 it was a pleasure to select three graduates to receive the award: Daniyyel Ironside (School of Art, Intermedia), Charlotte Brooke Simm (School of Design, Textiles) and Honor Dodd (School of Design, Jewellery).
The prize itself offered the opportunity to showcase work at BOOKMARKS 2025 which was held at Edinburgh College of Art in March 2025.”
Make your way to the ECA Sculpture Court at Lauriston campus Main Building from 1.00pm to 7.00pm to enjoy the annual ECA Bookmarks Bookfair! Your opportunity to buy prints, zines, artists’ books, cards, pin badges, t-shirts and other wonders made by our ECA Art and Design students, and friends from Scottish colleges and arts organisations.
Poster art by Rosie Wang, ECA Illustration student, rosieee_art on Insta…
Want to boost your library research skills? Interested in finding out more about library resources for your research question? Looking for help with managing bibliographic and research data?
Join us for the Library’s week-long programme of events to help you succeed with your dissertation or thesis.
We’re offering a range of online sessions including EndNote for managing references, SAGE Research Methods and Literature reviews: functions, types and methods.
If you prefer to attend in-person events, why not come along to our Dissertation & Thesis Festival Discovery Day on Wednesday 26 February!
We’re celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month with a day of LGBTQ+ themed events in the Main Library, featuring :
Stalls with information, freebies and advice on library resources
Deep dive sessions into our digital primary sources
Hands on session with our unique archival resources
Information and booking for all events is available here
We wish all our students and staff a very productive semester 2, and invite you to come along to ECA Library to enjoy our new display of book works by artist and print maker Susie Wilson.
We are fortunate to have several artists’ books in our collection by Susie, in addition to the major boxed work she created in response to her residency at ECA library in 2016.
The works featured are:
Cabinet on left:
1: Flutter, Edinburgh, 2011
2: Inside Outside, Edinburgh, 2011
3: Hidden Inside, Edinburgh, 2011
4: Tunnel, Edinburgh, 2011
5: Insect Life, Edinburgh, 2011
Cabinet on right:
6: Untitled, Edinburgh, 2016
For more information about Susie’s work click here. [This display has now closed.]
All the staff of ECA and A&A Libraries wish our students and staff a very happy and restorative festive holiday. Please note the following opening and closing dates for our libraries over the festive season:
ECA Library: Closed on 21st and 22nd December; open until 4.50pm on Monday 23rd December; then closed until 9.00am on Friday 3rd January 2025.
A&A Library: Closed on 21st and 22nd December; open until 4.50pm on Monday 23rd December; then closed until 9.00am on Friday 3rd January 2025.
Main Library, George Square: open until 2.45pm on Tuesday 24th December, closed for 25th and 26th December, then open from 9.00am 27th December. Also closed on 1st and 2nd January 2025. For full details click here.
Are you about to embark on a substantial piece of writing and feeling daunted? Or maybe you are stuck in the middle of your dissertation? Perhaps an appointment with one of our Royal Literary Fund Fellows would help! This year our Fellows are Mary Paulson-Ellis, Lucy Ribchester and Lesley Glaister, all experienced and published authors.
You can book a one to one in person appointment with one of our Fellows, at the Main Library George Square, and there are also appointments available at Kings Buildings.
For more information take a look at our RLFF webpage.
Many of our students used this service last year and found it incredibly helpful to have in person one to one support and coaching for their writing.
We are delighted to have a pop up display of books relating to British architect Cedric Price (1934-2003), at the A&A Library, to coincide with the new Thinkbelt exhibition at the Mathew Gallery, Minto House.
The exhibition celebrates the legacy of Cedric Price and prompts reflection on how architecture can be useful, timely, delightful and permeable to respond to current environmental and social challenges.
Curated by Prof. María José Martínez Sánchez, Dr. Ana Bonet Miró, Martin Brown, the exhibition runs from 11-22 November 2024.
The exhibition’s centrepiece features two original market stall prototypes from the Drawing Matter Collection, designed by Price and never exhibited before. Alongside these prototypes, a range of archival materials – including prints of original drawings, texts, ephemera, film extracts and audio recordings – offers a glimpse into the diversity of Price’s practice and the interdisciplinary conversations that animated it.
In the spirit of Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt project, this initiative aims to stimulate discussions about some of the key principles of his architecture – such as the provision of user-centred designs that increase choice, encourage change, do more with less, facilitate easy assembly and disassembly, and create responsive designs that delight the communities they serve – in relation to a selection of pedagogies and practices at each school. It prompts some of Price’s key design questions: Who do we design for? How little need be done? For how long is it useful? How to make time visible in our designs? What might design for pleasure and delight mean today?
Our new display explores journeys to islands both real and imaginary, centering on Voyage Boxed: sea journeys, island hopping & trans-oceanic concepts, by Imi Maufe and others, (2014), and including in addition, an Atlas of Remote Islands, by Judith Schalansky (2010), The Fascinating secrets of oceans and islands, (Reader’s Digest Association, 1972) Archipelago: an atlas of imagined islands, by Huw Lewis-Jones (2019) and Dreaming the Gokstadt: northern lands and islands, Thomas Joshua Cooper, (1988).
At ECA Library we are surrounded by many original artworks. Each piece conveys the College of Art’s close links to prominent artists and benefactors.
As you enter the library, Janet Boulton’s piece Little Fields Long Horizons flanks the doorway. Only if you stand in just the right place can you make out the words in relief without the reflection obscuring them. Donated by the artist in September 2009, it is a standout example of her method for paper pulp relief work. Boulton passed away in January of this year, and this piece represents her lasting legacy as an artist-in-residence at ECA in 2006.
Janet Boulton
Boulton’s focus on garden design and history brought her into collaboration with Ian Hamilton Finlay, an internationally renowned poet, writer, visual artist and avant-gardener. Finlay’s ‘philosophers garden’, Little Sparta, in the Pentland Hills served as an immense source of inspiration for Boulton, and the subject of her residency at ECA. This piece draws on Finlay’s poem, engraved on three pairs of stones at Little Sparta. We can recommend Boulton’s book, which describes in exquisite detail Boulton’s works on Little Sparta, and there are two copies available to loan at ECA Library. Janet Boulton : remembering Little Sparta : watercolours, reliefs, garden works, 1993-2009. For all books by Janet Boulton, including original Artists’ books featuring her paper relief works, click here.
Fittingly, a piece by Finlay joins Boulton’s on the same wall at ECA, Evening / Sail. Known for his contribution to the genre of concrete poetry, Finlay has long been a focus of study at the University, including a symposium in 2017 which explored his art and poetics. Books about Finlay’s diverse artworks, including Artists’ Books, can be explored here.
Ian Hamilton Finlay
Moving to the windows by the current journal wall, we pass the immutable gaze of Andrew Grant, Edinburgh College of Art’s most prominent benefactor of the 19th century. This piece is by Kenny Hunter in 2015, a leading Scottish artist and then Programme Director of Sculpture at the College. With Andrew Grant’s generous support, the ECA Main Building on Lauriston Place was built in 1907, and the Andrew Grant Bequest was established, which since 1930 has provided scholarships for ECA students. The sculpture is painted bronze, including the base, which succeeds in disguising itself as wood.
Kenny Hunter
Moving downstairs, we can see ‘Eight photographs of Blinky Palermo’ by concrete photographer Monika Baumgartl, documenting the momentous ‘Strategy: Get Arts’, 1970. This Edinburgh Festival exhibition of Düsseldorf-based artists took over the College of Art. These photographs depict Palermo perched atop a very tall ladder on the ECA Main building staircase creating his Blue, Yellow, White, Red, a mural of horizontal band of primary colours near the ceiling in ECA’s Main Building. For more about this work, and the ‘Strategy: Get Arts’ exhibition, I recommend this book Strategy: get arts : 35 artists who broke the rules, which is available for loan at ECA Library.
Monika Baumgartl
Finally, perhaps the favourite piece of art for ECA students looking for a cozy place to study, is the grey upholstered arm-chair, a final project made by Laura Virtanen, BA Design & Applied Arts (Product Design) ECA, in 2009.
Laura Virtanen
Come and see these artworks and explore our collections the next time you are passing by West Port and Lady Lawson Street!
Guest post by Elise Ramsay, Edhelp Supervisor, ECA Library
