A FEW years back, when even the word “experience” came with an Outlander, Whisky or Ghost Walk prefix and each festival seemed to endlessly merge one into the other, the mere thought of the “Edinburgh cultural experience” could feel akin to being stuck on the Star Flyer in Princes Street Gardens – blast, closely followed by nausea and an ever-revolving blur of stone, lights and screaming from below.

But in Covid times that ride has slowed down along with the easy narrative distillations of Scottish identity that sold it.

In its wake is a lingering air of abandonment in a city centre that’s no longer a market-fueled metropolis of easy cultural tropes ... nor yet the living, breathing city of locals it once was.

It’s a dilemma that’s not lost on the self-proclaimed powers that be. But what are tools to use in engaging with deeply riven cultural disenfranchisement?

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There is a possible alternative that may be found in the form of Edinburgh’s working-class stories – that is if there’s a willingness to face the hard truths and work that a genuine engagement could reveal.

For unlike Glasgow, a city where the working classes are, in all their complexity, visible and arguably an intrinsic and essential ingredient of a permaculture that’s sprung from the roots up, Edinburgh’s working classes by comparison have always had to exist somewhat under the radar. Their community centres under threat, their land under threat, their venues under constant threat, their pubs and clubs and open mic nights a constant source of annoyance rather than pride in a city that as Edwin Muir once pointed out “must keep up appearances” at any cost. It’s an observation that

still holds water 100 years later. For when working-class stories in all their complexity do break through the invisible boundaries of taste, class and respectability ingrained within Edinburgh’s cultural landscape, the inclusion is seldom timely and tends to take the form of a commemoration or a mapping exercise of some kind.

This is not a bad thing in itself, but commemorations are limited in comparison to the impact of a living celebration of living people, alongside people of the past, as a way that allows everyone to learn from the political and cultural context of these people and the working-class communities from which they came.

There are, however, signs of life, a flickering awareness that’s continuing to grow; perhaps influenced by the pressure to re-generate in the face of a hard reality that demands connection to the grassroots working-class stories buried deep within the psyche of the unknown Edinburgh experience.

Ruined: Re-inventing Scottish History, an outreach programme by Edinburgh’s National Portrait Gallery, explored these stories during a long-term programme designed to support young folk from within Edinburgh’s council estates. The approach was, according to senior outreach officer Robin Baillie in an interview with Adam Benmakhlouf in The Skinny, a delicate one: “You’ve got to be sensitive about the stories that they tell, these are real things. The feedback we’ve got from [the young people] is that they want to use the creative experience to cope with serious issues they’re all facing.”

A similarly empathetic and genuinely sensitive approach is embodied in existing platforms such as Edinburgh’s Audacious Women’s Festival, now in operation since 2016. The community encourages women from all walks of life to explore and challenge the barriers of their lived experience through creativity, workshops, conversations and song. These explorations – a useful chart that reflects a multitude of creative and social stories – examine the ramifications and reality of class for women in Scotland and include shows such as Transported Beyond The Seas and Inspiring Ancestors as unique and thoughtful responses to a different perspective, time and experience of working-class life.

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In this, VisitScotland’s Year Of Stories, events include the Refugee Festival Scotland, which will centre its activities on sharing stories of life and the refugee experience in Scotland. Meanwhile, Community Campfires will showcase people’s tales from their own lives from throughout Scotland.

However, in a city in desperate need of rediscovering itself it might be worthwhile reminding MSPs and tourist bodies that the people who’ve traditionally voiced and created Scotland’s vast history of stories, ballads and mythology now heralded as the key to economic recovery and a more mutually engaged creative sector, weren’t arts professionals or politicians desperate to cultivate a homegrown culture that they’ve long forgotten to serve.

They were for the most part working folk. A working-class who, like the environment of which their communities were part, were always the most vulnerable to the excess of market exploitation and cultural clearance – an ongoing story in Edinburgh.

So before they’re asked to listen to any more tales of capital woes, perhaps it’s time for everyone to listen, and I mean really listen, to Edinburgh’s working-class stories for a truly diverse culture to take root.