Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh

Storytelling is literature's performance art, bringing people together in live shared communication on a variety of scales. 

The Scottish Storytelling Centre, the world’s first purpose-built centre for storytelling had its official opening on 1 June.  As the culmination of a project spanning five years and costing £3.5m, including a contribution of £1,300,000 from National Lottery funds, the new building on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is set to put Scotland at the international forefront of storytelling art.

Designed by Malcolm Fraser Architects the light, modern and sensitively designed ‘house of stories’ now replaces the original Netherbow Arts Centre at the site of the city’s Netherbow Port.

Using its strategic and highly accessible Royal Mile site, the new centre is designed to enable people to experience storytelling in a range of settings from the gentle walk-in ambience of the street level Storytelling Court to the more formal yet still intimate auditorium of the Storytelling Theatre.  The new Storytelling Centre joins the 15th century John Knox House with an intimate 99-seat theatre, café, education room and stunning exhibition space.

Education events and resources will be available in the George Mackay Brown Education Suite and storytelling will even take place out doors in the adjoining Scottish Book Trust Garden.

These dynamic people-friendly spaces open up the landscape and townscape of Old Edinburgh with dramatic visual perspectives from and through the centre.

From June 2006 the Scottish Storytelling Centre will launch a major public events programme encompassing storytelling, literature, small-scale theatre and visual arts. Read more about the events in our Literature feature.

Events will celebrate storytelling’s roots in Scottish oral tradition, history and legend whilst bringing the artform up to date with opportunities for adults and children to join in, explore or simply enjoy. 

The Centre will be a focal point for storytelling, contributing a unique, vibrant artform to Edinburgh’s world-class cultural offering.

Gavin Wallace, Head of Literature at the Scottish Arts Council, says, ‘The new building is a truly visionary celebration of the centrality of ‘story’ to human life as a universal, and the centrality of the art to the whole of Scotland’s cultural fabric specifically.

The stunning fusion of the old and new too – from the Reformation to post-devolution – is an exciting expression of how profoundly ‘the word’, spoken or written, underpins national life and identity.

The Storytelling Centre opens a brand new chapter in Scotland’s literary life as new centrepiece of Edinburgh’s ‘Literature Quarter’, in this the first UNESCO City of Literature.