How the SCO’s Craigmillar residency made it ‘part of the fabric of the community’

Jay Capperauld, violinist Gordon Bragg and flautist André Cebrián (all standing) with participants at a Seen and Heard session at Craigmillar Now PIC: SCO

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s ambitious five-year residency in Edinburgh’s Craigmillar area is all about all about tapping into music’s power to connect and inspire, writes David Kettle

A group of adults are sitting in a semicircle, tapping and clapping out rhythms using hands, woodblocks, shakers, scrapers. It’s harder than it looks – especially when beats are missed out, subdivided, stressed. Group leader Jay Capperauld (the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s associate composer) is keen to set up a strong, secure rhythm, though, to form a solid foundation for future work, aided by liquid improvisations from saxophonist Lewis Banks.

This is Seen and Heard, free of charge and open to all, taking place weekly at Craigmillar Now, a former church converted into a new arts centre slap bang in the middle of Edinburgh’s Fort Kinnaird retail park. The project has a committed following from the local area – a group that will later go on to work with bassist and artist Kirsty Matheson on a rainbow-coloured collective painting as part of Seen and Heard’s dual focus on sonic and visual arts.

It’s just one part of the SCO’s residency in the capital’s Craigmillar area, a mammoth five-year project that’s now reached roughly its midpoint. “It’s very unusual for an arts organisation to commit to one community for that length of time,” explains Laura Baxter, the SCO’s creative learning director. “We did a similar project in Wester Hailes for two years, but it just wasn’t enough – you’re barely getting started.” As well as expanding on the orchestra’s own previous work, however, the residency also taps into Craigmillar’s own rich artistic history – not least the Craigmillar Festival, established in 1962 and revived in 2021.

Indeed, the residency has been all about working with the Craigmillar community, rather than simply parachuting in pre-formed arts projects. “We spent a good year establishing contacts in the community,” Baxter continues, “and thinking very carefully about how we can integrate into it, being responsive to what they might like from us – and of course that’s evolved and grown as we’ve got to know each other.”

“The founding of Craigmillar Now actually coincided with the start of the SCO residency,” remembers the arts centre’s director, Rachael Cloughton, “so it was a mutually beneficial situation, to be sharing our very different expertise.” There were sensitive power relationships to be navigated, both Baxter and Cloughton remember, but trust was quickly formed on both sides. “It was about making sure local people were custodians of the relationship,” Cloughton continues, “and a project like Seen and Heard came about from responding to what local people wanted.”

Beyond this weekly immersion in music and art, however, the result of those collaborations has been an enormous spread of projects right across the Craigmillar community, and across ages and stages of life. “We’ve set up some really valuable partnerships with local nurseries and primaries, as well as with Castlebrae Community High School,” Baxter continues. “What we’ve discovered is that what they actually want is exposure to musicians, so we’ve been going into a lot of schools, offering programmes supporting wellbeing in the aftermath of the pandemic, for example, and even helping out with Christmas concerts. We also took the whole orchestra to perform at Castlebrae as part of our 50th anniversary tour in September.”

As well as being involved in earlier Seen and Heard sessions, SCO principal flautist André Cebrián is one of the musicians who’s been working with some of the younger schoolkids. “We’ve been creating a common musical language through dots and points and lines, so that they can express some quite complex musical concepts using that kind of notation,” he explains. “Once they have those tools, they can compose their own pieces. And they learn so quickly.” Reactions from the four and five-year-olds, Cebrián chuckles, can be rather more direct than feedback from adult listeners. “After I played for one group, a little girl told me I was like the Mona Lisa! But then others have told me they just don’t like what I’m playing.”

Craigmillar schools workshop

But it’s not just for kids. Alongside Seen and Heard, Baxter explains, adult activities include a Voices project for local community singers, and a music-making series for people living with dementia. “We’re working with the charity Caring in Craigmillar on this Reconnect programme, which is a project we’ve done for many years,” she says.

And crucially, for a residency so deeply embedded in Craigmillar’s own history and hopes, community reactions have been very positive. “As soon as the first Seen and Heard session was over,” Cloughton remembers, “people were asking when the next one was. We’ve now got a really strong community that comes regularly. It’s an opportunity, I think, to step outside your day-to-day life and any issues you’ve got going on, which is important for a lot of people who come along.” Several among the group clapping and tapping along to Capperauld’s rhythms mentioned improved wellbeing, a feeling of connection with others, even a respite from loneliness – alongside an outlet for their artistic expression.

And though it’s hardly the primary motivation for a huge residency such as this, there are also positive impacts for the SCO musicians themselves. “For me, music is about connection, about giving something,” explains Cebrián, “and to be able to connect with a four or five-year-old and talk about really complex musical ideas – well, it’s not something you can often do in a concert hall!”

“It pushes all of us out of our comfort zones,” says Baxter. “But sitting on a classroom floor with a small child, or even working closely with someone who has advanced dementia, it’s about exploring aspects of their musicianship and their personalities that they don’t often access. Making those sorts of connections can have a huge impact on everyone.”

SCO ReConnect in Craigmillar PIC: Stuart Armitt

For anyone who imagines that an orchestra’s role is simply about giving evening performances in concert halls, picturing players embedded in a local community might be a bit of a head-scratcher. But it’s all about tapping into music’s power to connect and inspire, and bringing that power to listeners and participants who might not see a concert hall as their natural environment (though increasing numbers, Baxter explains, now do). “And we’re very mindful about what happens when our five-year residency is up,” she continues. “I hope we’ve become part of the fabric of the community – the people we’re working with are friends and collaborators, and they’ll remain part of who we are.”