Just Festival

What is a Just Festival? 

Since the turn of the millennium Just Festival has provided a platform during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for engagement with local, national and international questions of social justice, equality and identity, from both the religious and non-religious perspectives, through the arts and in open discussions. Our aim is to widen horizons and generate dialogue, thereby helping to reduce social, religious and political intolerance. In a typical year, Just Festival directly engages myriad organisations, co-developing and co-delivering quality performing arts and conversation events which tell important stories and help drive social change. Every year we reach out to the thousands who make up the local and international audiences and provide them with quality experiences.

Just Festival began its life in the year 2000, firstly known as the Festival of Spirituality and later Festival of Spirituality and Peace, before becoming an independent charity under the name Just Festival in 2012. Since the Festival’s beginnings the landscape of Edinburgh’s cultural offerings has changed dramatically, and we are delighted to see socially conscious programming forming a key part of all Edinburgh’s main August festivals. As well as this, Just Festival itself has seen lots of changes in terms of our board, staff, audiences and funding structures. In an increasingly cacophonous Festival ecosystem, we now seek to ask ourselves and our communities how we can best use our space and presence both within the context of the Fringe and within the city to engage locals and visitors with key social issues in our ever-changing world. As we approach our twenty-fifth anniversary we seek to ask the question ‘what is a Just Festival?’.

For this reason, we’ve decided to press pause for 2024 to take time to ask these key questions. We’ve a low-key programme of free events taking place between 15 and 18 August, and are conducting a survey to gain insights from our communities and local and international audiences. We’d be delighted if you’d take the time to fill it in here.

Of course, funding is always a challenge too. With cuts to government funding for the arts and far more demand than there is money available, small arts organisations around the country are being forced to scale back and in some cases shut down. We’re proud of what we’ve managed to achieve in the past few years with limited financial resources, but we must be realistic about what is possible for our longer term future. We’re hugely grateful for any generosity we receive; if you’d like to make a one off donation you can do so here, or if you’d like to discuss how you or your organisation could support the festival, whether that’s in monetary or in-kind support, please email our Festival Director Miranda Heggie at miranda@just-festival.org.uk.

We do have exciting plans for 2025, when we’ll be celebrating not only our own silver anniversary, but our city’s 900th! These will form part of the official Edinburgh900 celebrations and we can’t wait to share them with you.

In the meantime, we hope you can join us in 2024, and that you’ll stay with us on our journey.

Miranda Heggie, Festival Director