Which of these Porty Art Walk highlights will tempt you down to Edinburgh's seaside?

With this year's event commencing on Saturday 5 September, August would normally be a month in which organisers of the Art Walk Porty festival would be preparing for the annual celebration of all that is cultural in Potobello.

This year, they have been forced to adapt their programme to create three small weekends of socially distanced activity, working with a number of invited artists.

All At Sea, which takes place over the weekends of 5-6 and 26-27 September and 17-18 October, and draws upon the 'collective working together atmosphere that post lockdown, has come to evoke - out of the bewilderment, and confusion, a growing sense of resolve can emerge, and no more so than within the arts.'

The project sees 12 artists, working in a range of media to create works for each weekend, including beach installations, live art performance, pop-up exhibitions, film and video projections, together with an online Zoom dinner.

With much of the work inspired by or generated through the global pandemic works centre on subjects central to these times - borders crossed, food value, personal protection, a sense of ownership about public space, times for change and the pairing of place and shared neighbourhoods

Rosy Naylor, director and founder Art Walk Porty says, “It gives me enormous pleasure to be able to bring together this collection of works for the autumn, offering a reformatted festival. It has presented an exciting opportunity to be able to reformat our usual busy festival into these planned three distanced weekends.

"We are really excited to see the public response, and to be able to offer opportunities for these artists to create new work during such turbulent times. Portobello Beach provides the perfect setting to host such transient, yet we hope thought provoking, potent works, suitable for the new times in which we find ourselves.”

All events will be conducted with strict Covid-19 social distancing measures in place with Iranian artist Iman Tajik's Where The Body Meets the Land set to be a programme highlight - Tajik will create an undented space as he paces hundreds of thousands of steps from his installed flag pole, hoisting up a shimmering gold emergency blanket, to the seashore and back. This act of line making refers to the thousands of refugees and migrants that have disembarked, including those that did not survive, onto UK shores. (26-27 September 2020) -

Other participating artists include Felicity Bristow, Christopher Kaczmarek, Annie Lord, Geri Loup Nolan, Deirdre Macleod, Jenny Martin, Jenny Pope, Rhona Taylor, David Williams, Susie Wilson and Two Places By the Sea.

Artist duo Bristow and Wilson, who have been working together since 2019 on a project working an edible growing plot of land at the local Telferton Allotments, have over the last five months had to find a way to continue to work together, whilst apart. Growing in Isolation addresses how our relationship to food has changed in lockdown. for many. (9 September 2020) -

Edinburgh artist Rhona Taylor will create an installation that looks at the role of the Firth of Forth as a shelter for the ships that have gathered there during the global pandemic. During the lockdown, four cruise ships and two English Channel ferries were given refuge in the Forth, becoming a visual reminder that the world had come to a standstill.

Gatherings invites visitors to the space of Joppa bandstand to view the work, to consider some of the language that has changed or been given new significance during 2020, as gatherings first became illegal, and then subject to new rules and laws. (26-27 September).

Jenny Pope's beach installation Sea Masks, meanwhile, draws attention to protective clothing, not only to how mask wearing has taken over our recent lives, but also the industrial working conditions once in Portobello, and at what precaution measures workers took to protect themselves from the heat as they unloaded ceramics from the once vibrant kilns. (5-6 September).

All At Sea will also feature four projection evenings on Porty Prom, include a large-scale video projection from David Williams The Promenader project sharing a glance to the local goings-on on Porty prom and beach, from photographs taken over the last few years. (26 September).

Finally, Two Places By the Sea pairs Portobello with Akureyri in Iceland and sees two groups of photographers one from each location, responding to a range of themes inspired by the two similar though very different landscapes. The photographs will be displayed on Portobello Prom at the side of the boat club. (5 Sept -31 October).

The full programme is now available at www.artwalkporty.co.uk/2020/all-at-sea.html

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