EDINBURGH.- Collective announced its Autumn 2025 programme, featuring the return of the Collective Gala on Sunday 7 September, and a major new exhibition by artist Shen Xin, opening on Friday 3 October.

Shen Xin’s exhibition is presented as part of a joint Scottish initiative with DCA, Dundee and Lux Scotland called We Contain Multitudes - a partnership that seeks to question and explore institutional ableism in the Scottish visual arts sector and imagine a future with increased access.

Collective Gala

Following the success of our inaugural event in 2023, Collective is delighted to announce the return of the Collective Gala – a vibrant celebration of art, place and people on Sunday 7 September 2025.

Now in its second edition, the Collective Gala invites audiences of all ages to experience Collective’s unique site on Calton Hill and engage with our wide-ranging programmes. This year’s event offers the opportunity to explore newly commissioned artworks by Scottish artists, join behind-the-scenes tours, shop with local makers, sample Edinburgh’s new Cafe Calton, and enjoy creative play sessions for children. The day will culminate in a celebratory procession inspired by Gala traditions – led by artists Seamus Killick and Quinie.

Following the procession, there will be a live music performance by Scottish artist and performer Quinie, also known as Josie Vallely, that folk traditions, walking, song, storytelling and visual art to explore Scots language, memory, land and belonging.

For Collective Gala, Quinie explores how we celebrate our local communities through our remembered and imagined traditions. She will unveil an artwork inspired by the panoramic view from Calton Hill; collaging together the Gala traditions of the towns and communities seen from the top of the hill.

Since reopening the restored City Observatory complex in 2018, Collective has welcomed more than 1.5 million visitors to Calton Hill. In that time, it has established itself as a dynamic home for contemporary art, connecting audiences with the Observatory’s rich scientific and architectural heritage while offering a platform for bold new artistic voices.

Sorcha Carey, Director of Collective, commented: “Our second Gala is a moment to reflect on all we’ve achieved and share the spirit of Collective with friends old and new. Through art, play, food and conversation, we’re inviting everyone to discover new perspectives on Calton Hill, the city and beyond.”

The Collective Gala will include a full day of bookable activities designed to celebrate everything that makes Collective.

All day activities will include the opportunity to see and buy work from local makers; enjoy food from Cafe Calton; view a new artwork by artist Quinie inspired by her research walk and the view from Calton Hill; explore the architecture of the site; and check out our summer exhibitions, including the final weekend of Mercedes Azpilicueta’s Fire on the Mountain, Light on the Hill, and Panorama: New Views of a City.

Scheduled activities include creative play sessions for families, running in the morning and afternoon, led by artist Seamus Killick; Edinburgh Astronomical Society tours of the historic Cooke Telescope; a historical tour of Collective and Calton Hill by author, poet and founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association Lisa Williams; and talks from Collective’s team about our summer exhibitions and our site.

The day will culminate in a celebratory procession on Collective’s site and a live music performance by local artist Quinie accompanied by her band. The procession, featuring two specially invited ponies, is inspired by the Scottish traditions of gala days and Common Ridings.

Shen Xin: Highland Embassy

Collective is delighted to present a solo exhibition of work by artist and filmmaker Shen Xin, as part of We Contain Multitudes - a landmark three-year project in partnership with Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) and LUX Scotland, and funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Taking place in the City Dome Gallery from Friday 3 October – Sunday 21 December, the exhibition, titled Highland Embassy, brings together three projects by Shen Xin which are all rooted in place and use storytelling to explore themes of migration, belonging, indigenous frameworks for languages and communities.

Bearing fruit of fondness (2025), is a film set on the Isle of Skye where Shen Xin lives and uses the leaves of a type of cotoneaster plant, which is an invasive species impacting local habitats, as a device to ground the films narrative and themes. The film is also being presented at TINA, London, marking a joint premiere of this new work.

The second film, Solar Wheels (2024), draws on the Uyghur variation of the Wooden Horse story, using this narrative as a shared place to engage in relationship building with kindred communities.

Completing the exhibition is a new series of paintings used to illustrate a short children's story, The child of the mountain (“རིའི་བུ་མོ” in Tibetan), written by Shen Xin. The story reflects on the overharvesting of caterpillar fungus in Tibet as a tale of caution and as a contemporary myth.

Working across moving image, installation, performance, sound and text, Shen Xin creates immersive environments that challenge dominant narratives and propose alternative modes of understanding, rooted in relation, place and political agency.

The major new commission marks a significant moment in We Contain Multitudes – a collaborative project that seeks to create systemic change in the Scottish visual arts sector for disabled artists, arts professionals and audiences.

We Contain Multitudes is dedicated to helping arts organisations embed anti-ableist practices and build programmes that more accurately reflect the diversity of the Scottish population. It is a process of learning – one that acknowledges the ongoing challenges and recognises that access measures alone are not enough to dismantle ableism.

Running until February 2026, each partner will generate a new, alongside published research to support long-term change in the sector. DCA will present a group exhibition featuring new and existing works by Andrew Gannon, Daisy Lafarge, Jo Longhurst and Nnena Kalu, while LUX Scotland will support a new commission to be presented online. The first of these commissions launches with Shen Xin’s exhibition at Collective.

Artist Shen Xin said: “Living with patterns of dissonance from finding home within oneself, to practice our capacities grounded in relations is a practice of liberation, and so is to create and share work from a spaciousness for love and belonging that is at once innate and manifesting.”