Whose Space?

Invisible Boundaries in Edinburgh’s Public Life

Project Overview

Sites: Waverley Bridge, Princes Street, Royal Mile, Holyrood Park, Leith Walk, and Ocean Terminal, Edinburgh

Project Dates: 10 July 2026 – 12 July 2026

Opening Hours: 10:00am–4:00pm daily

Duration: 3 days

Curator: Hazel Ren

Lead Image

Curatorial Text

Whose Space? Invisible Boundaries in Edinburgh’s Public Life is a three-day public curatorial project distributed across six sites in Edinburgh: Waverley Bridge, Princes Street, Royal Mile, Holyrood Park, Leith Walk, and Ocean Terminal. The project begins with a direct question: in a city that appears open to everyone, who is actually able to stay, who can only pass through, whose presence is naturally accepted, and who remains at the margins?

This project examines public space as a structure that organises speed, duration of stay, visibility, and modes of movement. It therefore does not treat public space as a setting, but as a mechanism that actively structures experience. Commercial streets, transport nodes, heritage tourist areas, parks, and redevelopment zones all fall within the scope of “public life”, yet they offer different modes of entry to different groups. These differences are rarely stated directly. More often, they are embedded within everyday routes, consumer logic, and patterns of spatial use.

Through three site-responsive artistic interventions, one slow-walk performance, two public classification and feedback devices, and a light AR and QR-code interpretive layer, the project turns everyday movement into a way of reading the city. It does not treat “residents” and “tourists” as fixed categories. Instead, it focuses on how these positions are continually produced through route, rhythm, density, the tourist economy, public transport, and habitual uses of space. AR remains in a supporting role here, only enabling layered reading and route recognition at selected sites.

The project adopts a multi-route structure. Viewers may choose the full route, the city-centre route, the Bus 35-linked route, or begin from any single site. In the high-density central areas, movement is on foot, while the more dispersed sites are served by Bus 35 during off-peak hours. Public transport, therefore, becomes a direct expression of changing urban rhythms.

What this project is concerned with is not the number of attractions, but how different spaces are allocated, used, and experienced. It invites viewers to reread Edinburgh. The city is not made up only of a small number of repeatedly viewed landmarks, but of a public network shaped by different speeds, densities, and conditions of entry.

Artists / Participants

Toby Paterson

Toby Paterson is an artist born in Glasgow and long based there, and a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art. His practice has consistently focused on architectural surfaces, urban visual language, and the ways in which modernist space is viewed and remembered. His work often reconfigures perceptions of urban facades and public structures through painting, relief, and installation. In this project, Paterson responds to Princes Street. The collaboration takes the form of site-responsive co-development, focusing on removable floor graphics, directional prompts, and pause markers. The key issue at Princes Street lies in its commercial frontage, high visibility, and heavy pedestrian flow, and so it requires a visual method capable of dealing directly with urban surfaces and pedestrian order. Paterson’s participation will help the project present more clearly the logic of consumption and the structure of viewing within public space in the city centre.

Clara Ursitti

Clara Ursitti is a Canadian-born artist who has long lived and worked in Glasgow. Since the 1990s, she has worked with smell, installation, and intervention-based practice, focusing on the influence of scent on social, psychological, and spatial experience. Her work pays close attention to non-visual perception and often organises bodily experience through a specific site. In this project, Ursitti’s response to Holyrood Park takes the form of low-intensity, site-responsive development, using scent, short textual prompts, and light interventions. Holyrood Park is given the function of rhythmic transition within the project, allowing viewers to move out of the high-pressure flows of the city centre into a slower and more open spatial condition. The value of Ursitti’s method here lies not only in the use of scent as a medium but in the fact that her practice is itself rooted in situation and context, and can therefore genuinely reinforce perceptual slowing-down, allowing bodily experience to become part of the reading of urban structure.

Chris Johanson

Chris Johanson is an artist born in San Jose and now living and working in Los Angeles and Portland. He is often associated with street culture, DIY ethos, painting, text, sculpture, and installation. His work has long engaged with social relations, the environment, and value judgements within everyday life. In this project, Johanson responds to Leith Walk. The collaboration takes the form of text-based, light public intervention developed through co-creation, focusing on the organisation of language, image, and graphic elements. Leith Walk represents a form of urban space shaped by everyday circulation and ongoing movement. What is needed here is not a strong spectacle, but a mode of intervention that makes “passing through”, “staying, “watching, and “ignoring” more legible. Johanson’s participation will help the project establish a clearer reading structure within the rhythms of everyday urban life.

Slow-walk Performer

The slow-walk performance on the Royal Mile will be carried out by one external performer. This role is the project’s only repeated bodily intervention, taking place three times a day as a low-intensity, non-amplified, non-gathering slow-walk performance. The performer will move at a very slow pace along a short, defined route, without blocking the main thoroughfare or generating a large crowd. The collaboration takes the form of performance execution, with emphasis on speed control, route discipline, and site rhythm rather than characterisation. The Royal Mile is the most tourist-dense and strongly directed site within the whole project, making it the most suitable place to turn “slowness”, “waiting”, and an “out-of-time rhythm” into immediate lived experience through bodily speed difference. This role pushes the project’s thinking about speed, duration of stay, and conditions of viewing from text and route structure into a directly perceivable action.

Spaces and Locations

This project unfolds across six different sites in Edinburgh, each corresponding to a different kind of public-space boundary: entry boundary, commercial visibility boundary, heritage tourism boundary, urban/nature boundary, everyday circulation boundary, and redevelopment boundary. Each site performs a different function, and together they form the spatial structure of the project.

1. Waverley Bridge

Boundary type: Entry and Transportation Boundary
Spatial role: Project entry / first public data point

Waverley Bridge is the starting point of the project and functions as both an entry threshold and a transport threshold. Located at the intersection of the city centre, tourist flows, and public transport, it is the most suitable site for addressing the question of how people enter the project.

Elements: project information board, six-site map, QR-code entry point, identity classification button device.

2. Princes Street

Boundary type: Commercial Visibility Boundary
Spatial role: High-density commercial site

Princes Street represents a form of central public space organised through commercial frontage, display logic, and heavy pedestrian flow. It is where the relationship between consumption, passing through, and visibility is most concentrated.

Elements: removable floor graphics, boundary lines, pause prompts, and directional markers.

3. Royal Mile

Boundary type: Heritage Tourism Boundary
Spatial role: High-density heritage tourism site/performance intervention site

Royal Mile addresses the historical landscape that is continuously consumed within the tourist city. Through the slow-walk performance, it creates a bodily difference in speed, allowing “slowness, “waiting, and an “out-of-time rhythm” to be experienced directly.

Elements: three daily low-intensity, non-amplified, non-gathering slow-walk performances.

4. Holyrood Park

Boundary type: Urban / Nature Boundary
Spatial role: Rhythmic transition point

Holyrood Park allows viewers to move from the high-pressure flows of the city centre into a slower and more open spatial condition. Within the project, it functions as a point of rhythmic slowing down and perceptual transition.

Elements: low-intensity sensory intervention, short textual prompts, AR-supported interpretation.

5. Leith Walk

Boundary type: Everyday Circulation Boundary
Spatial role: Comparative site of everyday urban circulation

Leith Walk represents a form of urban space shaped not by tourist spectacle, but by everyday movement and circulation. In contrast to the city centre, it highlights the relationship between circulation, duration of stay, and being overlooked.

Elements: text-based public intervention / light graphic installation.

6. Ocean Terminal

Boundary type: Redevelopment Boundary
Spatial role: Project endpoint / second public data point/feedback site

Ocean Terminal is the final site of the project and the point at which viewers are invited to reassess the whole route. It also represents the spatial logic of redevelopment, waterfront retail, and lower-density movement outside the city centre.

Elements: button feedback device, QR-code questionnaire, project end-point information board.

Route Options

The project adopts a non-linear route structure. Viewers may choose different modes of entry according to time, stamina, and interest. The three route options and the fragmented-entry model all begin from the same core principle: to re-experience Edinburgh’s public space as something allocated, used, and viewed through the connection of different types of boundaries.

1. Full Route

Route: Waverley Bridge → Princes Street → Royal Mile → Holyrood Park → Leith Walk → Ocean Terminal
Mode of movement: walking + Bus 35
Suggested duration: approximately 4.5–5.5 hours

The full route presents the project’s most complete comparative structure. Viewers begin from the city-centre entry and transport threshold, move through the commercial visibility boundary and the heritage tourism boundary, then reach the urban/nature boundary and the everyday circulation boundary, before finally arriving at the redevelopment boundary and the project end-point feedback site. In this way, they experience in sequence how different spaces organise speed, duration of stay, and modes of entry.

2. City-Centre Route

Route: Waverley Bridge → Princes Street → Royal Mile
Mode of movement: walking
Suggested duration: approximately 60–90 minutes

This route concentrates on the project’s strongest high-density spatial conditions. Within a shorter timeframe, viewers experience the relationship between entry boundary, commercial visibility boundary, and heritage tourism boundary, and observe how public space in the city centre is consumed, organised, and accelerated.

3. Bus 35 Linked Route

Route: Royal Mile → Holyrood Park → Leith Walk → Ocean Terminal
Mode of movement: walking + Bus 35
Suggested duration: approximately 90–120 minutes

This route begins from a high-density heritage tourism site and uses Bus 35 during off-peak hours to connect the more dispersed sites, moving in turn through the urban/nature boundary, the everyday circulation boundary, and the redevelopment boundary. Public transport here is not only a means of connection, but also part of how viewers perceive changing urban rhythm.

4. Fragmented Entry

Mode of entry: entry from any single site
Mode of movement: self-directed combination through map, QR-code system, and on-site guidance
Suggested duration: 30 minutes–2 hours

The project does not assume that all viewers enter public space in the same order, at the same pace, or with the same degree of attention. It therefore treats difference in entry conditions as an inseparable part of public-space experience itself. Viewers may begin from any site, and determine the duration of their stay and their onward route according to their own time, mobility, and interests. In this way, the project responds to the uneven ways in which urban space is actually used, crossed, and perceived.

Public Programme

All parts of the public programme are designed as self-guided participation. Viewers may therefore choose their own point of entry, route sequence, and duration of stay during the daily opening hours of 10:00–16:00, using the project map, QR-code system, light AR interpretive layer, and on-site guidance. On-site staff is responsible only for supervising artworks and public devices, maintaining basic order, and carrying out safety observation where necessary. They do not provide guided interpretation.

1. Waverley Bridge Entry and Public Classification Device

Time: daily, 10:00–16:00
Format: project information board, six-site map, QR-code entry point, identity classification buttons

Waverley Bridge is the entry point of the project. It provides access to the project introduction, route map, and guide page. Viewers may also use the button device to select an identity category that feels closest to their own, or define one themselves. This device functions both as an entry explanation and as a first layer of public data collection.

2. Royal Mile Slow-walk Performance

Time: daily at 11:30, 13:30, and 15:30
Duration: 30 minutes per performance
Performer: 1 external performer
Format: low-intensity, non-amplified, non-gathering slow-walk intervention

The slow-walk performance at Royal Mile is the project’s only repeated bodily intervention. The performer will move very slowly along a short, defined route without blocking the main passage or generating a large crowd. The three daily performances make it possible for viewers entering the project at different times to encounter this intervention. Through a minimal difference in speed, it turns “slowness”, “waiting”, and an “out-of-time bodily rhythm” into an immediate site experience.

3. AR / QR Interpretive Layer

Time: daily, 10:00–16:00
Format: light digital interpretive layer

The AR and QR-code system provides layered reading, route recognition, and short interpretive information at selected sites. Its function is to support self-directed entry and comparative viewing. It does not operate as an independent display, nor does it replace the direct spatial experience of the site.

4. Ocean Terminal End-Point Feedback and Project Archive Device

Time: daily, 10:00–16:00
Format: button feedback + QR-code questionnaire

Ocean Terminal is the project’s endpoint and also the site at which a second layer of public data is generated. Viewers may select options such as “the site where I most wanted to stay”, “the site where I least wanted to stay”, “the site that felt most like viewing”, or “the site that felt most like passing through”, and may also submit short written feedback through a QR-code form. This device records viewers’ judgements on different spatial rhythms, modes of entry, and conditions of movement, forming a basic public archive for the project.

Curatorial Rationale

The central concern of this project is how inequality in Edinburgh’s public space is concretely experienced through speed, transport pressure, the tourist economy, commercial frontage, and transport nodes. The project understands public space as a structure that allocates modes of entry, durations of stay, and visibility. The task of curating here is to make these existing but often overlooked spatial orders legible again.

The project’s method is built on prior route testing, site judgement, and research into public-space management: co-created, site-responsive, low-intensity, graded interventions. According to the current guidance of the City of Edinburgh Council on public activity, interventions in public space are treated differently depending on scale, impact on circulation, and pressure placed on site management. The project therefore adopts a graded approach according to site conditions. Sites with lower management pressure use lighter, temporary interventions that sit close to the edges of everyday use; high-density, highly visible, and more tightly managed sites use walk-through entry and removable interventions, with time reserved for formal applications where necessary. The form and intensity of intervention must remain aligned with on-site conditions.

Opening hours are set at 10:00–16:00. This is a curatorial judgement made in order to avoid peak commuting hours and minimise the project’s actual load on city-centre circulation and the public transport system. The city centre is experienced primarily on foot, while Bus 35 takes on the linking function between the six sites during off-peak hours. Public transport itself becomes a medium through which viewers perceive shifting urban rhythm. The AR interpretive layer remains in a supporting role, providing layered reading and route recognition only at selected sites.

The project adopts a non-linear, self-guided participation structure. The full route, the city-centre route, and the dispersed Bus 35 route together create the project’s comparative mechanism. All routes are designed according to accessibility principles, allowing viewers to enter the project according to their own time, stamina, and mobility conditions of mobility. Waverley Bridge and Ocean Terminal also function as entry and exit data points. Button-based statistics, questionnaire feedback, and on-site documentation will form a basic public archive to support future iterations.

Artist Development

The artistic interventions in this project take the form of co-created, site-responsive development, rather than full, high-cost commissions. The three participating artists may work with the curator to adjust scale, medium, and mode of public presentation according to specific site conditions, allowing the works to respond directly to real issues of speed, duration of stay, visibility, and everyday use in Edinburgh’s public space.

The development process is divided into five stages: initial site visits, route testing, site evaluation, adjustment of intervention intensity, and negotiation of installation method. The works themselves are developed gradually during the project in relation to each site’s spatial conditions, management pressure, and modes of public entry. This both helps control production and delivery costs, and ensures that the generation of the works remains aligned with the project’s method. For the curatorial side, artist development also functions as a mechanism of revision: through collaboration with the artists, questions of site fit, medium choice, and implementation are made more specific, increasing the project’s practical feasibility and responsiveness to the site.

Publication

The project proposes to produce a small English-language publication as an interpretive booklet. It will include the curatorial text, a map of the six sites, artist introductions, route guidance, QR-code entry points, and a short explanation of public feedback. It is intended both as an on-site guide and as a way for viewers to revisit the comparison between spaces after leaving the project. In this sense, it provides this distributed, temporary public project with a further point of entry for rereading.

The publication is both a tool of communication and a light archive. Because the project takes place in public space, many of its key experiences are brief, dispersed, and heavily shaped by environmental conditions. It therefore requires a medium capable of retaining the project’s structure. The publication, the QR-code system, and the later organisation of public feedback are designed to work together, so that after the project ends, there remains a coherent record that can be circulated and revisited. For this project, it functions both as a guide and as an extension of the archive.

References

Artists Union Scotland. “Recommended Rates of Pay (RRoP) 2026–2027.” Accessed April 22, 2026. https://www.artistsunion.scot/recommended-rates-pay-rrop-2026-2027.

Baraitser, Lisa. Enduring Time. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

Bissell, David. “Animating Suspension: Waiting for Mobilities.” Mobilities 2, no. 2 (2007): 277–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450100701381581.

Brauner, Maren, and Irene Grillo. “Walking as a Form of Critical Curating.” OnCurating 8 (2011). https://www.on-curating.org/issue-8-reader/walking-as-a-form-of-critical-curating-1132.html.

City of Edinburgh Council. “Event Planning for Public Spaces.” Accessed April 22, 2026. https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/download/16258/event-planning-for-public-spaces.

City of Edinburgh Council. Local Events Open Fund Overview 2026/27. Accessed April 22, 2026. https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/local-events-open-fund-2026-27/supporting_documents/local-events-open-fund-overviewpdf.

City of Edinburgh Council. Public Spaces Fees and Charges 2026/27. Accessed April 22, 2026. https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/39419/public-spaces-fees-and-charges-2026-2027.

Johanson, Chris. “Chris Johanson.” Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Accessed April 22, 2026. https://www.miandn.com/artists/chris-johanson.

Lothian Buses. Service 35 Timetable. 2025. https://www.lothianbuses.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/35_25C04v06.pdf.

National Galleries of Scotland. “Toby Paterson.” Accessed April 22, 2026. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/toby-paterson.

O’Neill, Paul. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

University of Edinburgh. SICP Toolkit. Course document, 2026.

University of Edinburgh. Week 10: Publics & Public Programmes. Lecture slides, 2026.

Ursitti, Clara. “Clara Ursitti.” Glasgow Sculpture Studios. Accessed April 22, 2026. https://www.glasgowsculpturestudios.org/clara-ursitti.

Below is the English translation of your peer review text. I have kept the content unchanged and only rendered it in clear, natural academic English with consistent terminology.

The most obvious strength of the blog is that the project does not move forward mechanically along a fixed path, but instead adjusts its methods actively as it develops. From Week 6 onwards in particular, the author begins to examine pacing, duration, suspension, display, and viewer experience in a more systematic way, and also starts to understand the exhibition as a structure that generates meaning through space, sequence, and viewing conditions. In addition, the actual influence of collective work on the individual project can be clearly traced: the spatial experiment at Summerhall, the practical experience of Our Shell, and observations of moving image display all feed directly back into the SICP, and in turn lead to revisions in structure and display.

One issue that still needs to be clarified across the SICP as a whole is how waiting can actually be experienced by viewers within the exhibition. In Week 4 and the Curatorial Pitch, waiting is divided into three levels: everyday, social/institutional, and existential. This structure helps the project establish a clear conceptual framework. By Week 6, however, the author realises that the layered structure works more as a mode of explanation than as the exhibition process itself. This is where the methodological shift in Week 6 could be developed further. Movement, pause, delay, spacing, and route all need to be written as mechanisms that generate waiting, rather than as supporting forms. In that way, the later Week 7 decisions about work sequence, title, moving image, site, and access could all be brought together around one central question: how does the exhibition bring viewers into a state of time that is prolonged, organised, and endured? Lisa Baraitser’s Enduring Time discusses waiting as a temporal state that is endured, stretched out, and unable to end quickly. This perspective would support the author’s decision to place waiting within pacing and duration. David Bissell’s “Animating Suspension: Waiting for Mobilities” would also be useful for helping the author address the bodily dimension of the exhibition. His account of suspension describes a state organised through pause, rhythmic change, enforced delay, and uncertainty. Bringing this text into the structural adjustments after Week 6 would give stronger grounding to the treatment of route, pause, and bodily experience.

The second issue appears in Week 7. By this point, the relationship between the works and the path has begun to take shape, but the writing still proceeds more through conceptual correspondence than through exhibition function. The problem is not that the works have been selected badly, but that the relationship between them still depends mainly on which type of waiting each one represents. The most effective revision here would be to define more clearly the specific role of each work within the full route: how the opening work changes bodily rhythm and attention as the viewer enters the space; how the works in the middle section organise waiting into a stretched condition through rules, distance, or route; and how the later works leave behind a lingering temporality. In this way, the relationships between the works would move beyond thematic relation and more clearly become experiential relation. Paul O’Neill’s The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) would be helpful here, because it supports writing sequence, viewing rhythm, and the organisation of relations between works as curatorial logic rather than simple thematic juxtaposition.

The third issue concerns the entry conditions and display decisions that gradually emerge between Week 8 and Week 12. In Week 8, the author begins to address the title, booklet, and printed matter. In Week 9, threshold, dark-space notice, and access-centred entry are linked to viewing rhythm. By Weeks 10 to 12, the project develops further into site choice, moving image display, floor plan, circulation, and access planning. What now needs strengthening is the compression of these separate decisions into one clearer question: through what kind of entry is the viewer brought into waiting? What kind of entry is already implied by the title Right Here: While Waiting? Within the project, does the booklet function as explanation, guidance, or a delayed interpretive tool? Why are short moving-image works suited to monitor encounters, while longer works require darkened space and seating? What kinds of temporal experience do these two modes of display organise? Once these decisions are written more specifically, title, threshold, display, and access will become more clearly identifiable as parts of the exhibition structure. Beverly Serrell’s Exhibit Labels and Erika Balsom’s Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art would both be useful references here.

References

Baraitser, Lisa. Enduring Time. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350008151.

Bissell, David. “Animating Suspension: Waiting for Mobilities.” Mobilities 2, no. 2 (2007): 277–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450100701381581.

Balsom, Erika. Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art. London: Routledge, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003695134.

O’Neill, Paul. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

This week I began to look back at the whole project as a complete structure, rather than simply continuing to add new elements. After constant adjustments to routes, sites, artists, permissions, promotion, and maintenance over the previous weeks, I became more aware that the focus of the project is not how much can be included in the exhibition, but whether these parts can form a curatorial proposal that is internally coherent, accessible, and sustainable.

Looking back at the collective exhibition, I could see many traces of having existed. A short exhibition does not disappear entirely after deinstallation. However, those traces do not automatically become meaningful archives. Only when such records are consciously selected, arranged, and organised can people continue, after the event, to understand the exhibition’s structure, display logic, and public experience. From the curatorial point of view, I therefore came to realise that the afterlife of an exhibition also has to be curated.

This also changed how I understood my own project. I want people to continue to understand how invisible boundaries shape everyday life in Edinburgh even after the exhibition has ended. Because the project takes place in public space and is temporary, it has a strong sense of ephemerality. I therefore treat publication and archive as clearly defined parts of the project’s structure. Their purpose is to ensure that, even after the distributed project has ended, it still retains a form that can be revisited, re-entered, and reinterpreted. I am inclined to design a lighter form of legacy: a small digital archive containing visual records of the six sites, together with electronic content and AR-based visual material, so that viewers can still encounter the route and the sites as visual tools even without the physical works being present.

For me, one very inspiring precedent is Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s Night Walk for Edinburgh. What matters is not only that the work takes place in the city, but that this temporary, time-based viewing experience can continue to be read after the event through its guide and archival materials in the app. This helped me think more clearly about my own project: if my exhibition is temporary and distributed, then its continued existence cannot depend only on memory. It has to depend on those materials that allow the project to be re-entered and reread.

References

Art Fund. “Night Walk for Edinburgh.” 2019.

Fruitmarket. “Night Walk for Edinburgh: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.” 2019.

The Museum of Modern Art Archives. “Archives Exhibitions.”

The Museum of Modern Art Archives. “The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records, 1960–1969.”

This week, the most important issue for me was communication. Looking back at our collective exhibition, OurShell, I realized that one of its weaker parts was publicity. We put a great deal of energy into selecting works, installation, and display, but our communication with the public was very limited. The exhibition had only a small impact. Apart from people who already knew about the project or who were already inside Summerhall, we did not attract many other viewers. This made me realize that publicity is an important part of how a project truly becomes public.

This strengthened my thinking about communication in my own curatorial project. I can no longer assume that simply placing works in the city will naturally create meaningful public engagement. Although the project takes place in public space and may appear open by nature, visibility does not automatically mean accessibility. Claire Bishop’s discussion of participatory art was especially helpful for me here. She reminds us that the key issue is not only whether people are physically present, but how they are addressed, invited, and drawn into the project. For this reason, I can no longer assume that a public location alone is enough.

In curatorial practice, publicity needs to be deliberately designed. This is especially true for a project that takes place in an outdoor public space, because an exhibition does not automatically become understandable or noticeable simply because it is placed in the city.

First, as an outdoor project, I need to create more than one “entry point” that can trigger attention and understanding. Rather than relying only on accidental encounter, I want to build a clearer set of communication routes, such as a project map, short introductory texts, and clear on-site prompts. These should allow viewers to quickly recognize what kind of “invisible boundary” each location is exploring. In this way, even if audiences do not enter the project from a single starting point, they can still gain a basic framework for understanding it.

Second, the form of publicity must match the non-linear structure of the project. Since many viewers may only encounter one or two sites rather than the whole exhibition, each communication element must be able to function independently, instead of relying on the complete route to make sense. Different sites, therefore, need different forms of communication and prompting. In highly mobile areas such as Princes Street and Waverley Bridge, viewers are likely to stop only briefly, so concise and direct short texts are more suitable. These can quickly signal what kind of boundary is being discussed. Royal Mile is shaped more strongly by tourist attention, so clearer on-site prompts can help viewers recognize that this street is not only a cultural image, but also a public space constantly reshaped by consumption, performance, and the tourist economy. Holyrood Park has a slower rhythm, and audiences may stay longer, so it can support a more reflective form of interpretation. Slightly longer texts or prompts that emphasize the relationship between landscape and public use would be more appropriate there. Leith Walk and Ocean Terminal are closer to everyday community life, so the communication there needs to connect more directly with residents and regular passers-by, and to highlight differences in the way space is used.

Third, I need to think more carefully about who the project is actually for. Nina Simon argues that the relevance of a cultural project depends on how it connects with the lived experience and real concerns of its intended publics. For me, this means I can no longer treat “the public” as one vague category. I need to distinguish more clearly between residents, passers-by, commuters, and visitors. Residents are more likely to feel how tourism, commercial use, and spatial control gradually affect their sense of belonging, so the project needs to create stronger forms of recognition and emotional connection for them. Passers-by may only stop for a short moment, so the sites need immediate and clear visual or textual points of entry. Commuters are often under time pressure, which means the project must also allow for fragmented and brief engagement. Visitors, meanwhile, may be more willing to explore, but they often experience Edinburgh through familiar routes and accepted city images, so the project also needs to interrupt and reorganize those ways of seeing. Seen in this way, publicity is not simply about helping more people “see” the exhibition, but about allowing different publics to enter the project in different ways.

References

Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso, 2012.

Cardoso, Kristen. Review of Book Review: The Art of Relevance, Written by Nina Simon. Weave (Ann Arbor, Mich.) 1, no. 6 (April 2017). https://doi.org/10.3998/weave.12535642.0001.605.