Festival 2024

We are pleased to be hosting two Festival events in addition to our Fringe venue shows. Both are at St. Columba’s by the Castle on 14 Johnston Terrace, EH1 2PW

Getting to Iona

2nd-11th August, 2.30-3.30pm

A show about leaving home for the unknown. What we seek, what we find, and what we leave behind. Colm is trying to get to lona. John is trying to follow Colm. Tom is just trying to follow the plot. Together they will embark on an epic voyage of discovery into the imagination, and across oceans of time.

During the Fringe, Tom Barry, the grandson of the crew who took part in the 1963 re-enactment of Columba’s crossing, 1400 years earlier, from Ireland to Iona, will be performing a “one-man” show about the 20th century crossing. Tom will, very kindly, be donating all the proceeds from the show to St Columba’s.

Tickets are pay-what-you-can, available online at the link below: www.ticketsource.co.uk/toms-barry/e-plqlej (Also available to buy on the door, with card or cash accepted.)

Re-imagining the Ruthwell Cross

Monday 12th – Friday 16th August , 2.30-5pm

The Ruthwell Cross is a stone Anglo-Saxon cross dating from the time when the Dumfriesshire village of Ruthwell was part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria. It is the most famous and elaborate surviving Anglo-Saxon monumental sculpture on which some lines from the poem the Dream of the Rood have been inscribed. Smashed by Presbyterian iconoclasts in 1642, the pieces were restored in 1823. In 1887 it was moved inside Ruthwell church, where an apse was specially built to hold it.

The Cross’s carved images illustrate scriptural stories. Some are now badly damaged or missing, but many can still be identified by Latin text carved in the frame of each image.

In 2022, as a means of spiritual journey, Timothy Ray, writer-in-residence at St Columba’s, commissioned the Edinburgh artist and printmaker Cat Outram to re-imagine these images while also trying to remain true to Anglo-Saxon iconography. Her re-imaginings are on display in this exhibition for contemplation and reflection.

Exhibition Opening 3pm Monday 12th August with Dr Marylin Dunn, “The Cross: Origins and Audience” with music by the Sacred Arts Festival Singers.

Dr Dunn is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow University and the author of The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons (2010), a groundbreaking work about the challenges confronting the Anglo-Saxon church, especially in the late 9th century, a crucial period for the survival of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England.