When you’re embedded in the Edinburgh Festival season (as most arts journalists are at this time of year), it’s easy to forget just how vibrant the rest of the central belt remains. But our listings below are testament to the sheer amount there is to enjoy on every coast. Plus, Gary Moore from Dundee band The Mirror Trap has popped onto our cultural Hot Seat for a rundown of some of the snazziest spots in the silvery Tay’s premiere city. Enjoy your weekend, folks. 

AROUND TOWN 

Author: Evie Glen 

I’ll keep my Fringe recommendations brief and on the niche end of the festival’s programme… which is to say, the end not dipped in any dairy-based performance art. 

Darren McGarvey, aka Loki, is hosting an in-conversation event at The Stand this weekend exploring how men perform masculinity in the digital age (until Sunday 16 August). The Glasgow-born rapper, activist and author’s social commentary throughout the 2010s was so prolific it birthed an entire ‘McGarvey School Of Thought’ for young working-class men in the city. His analysis in such a loud conversation, then, is not to be missed. 

If you’re looking to steer clear of Edinburgh, you can still catch the final weekend of Govanhill International Festival And Carnival in Glasgow. On Friday, a new civic artwork by Nathan Coley will be unveiled at Govanhill Baths to commemorate the Battle Of Calder Street, when residents came out to protect community activists from more than 250 police officers brought in to forcibly end the occupation of the baths. 

MUSIC

Author: Danny Munro 

Love it or loathe it, the Edinburgh Festivals season is an inevitability, and I’ve found that August is a far more pleasant month when one leans into the FOMO feeling and embraces the revelries.

With that in mind, we’re kicking off proceedings with an Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) preview show, Dàna With Ellie Beaton (Friday 7 August). ‘Dàna’ translates to ‘bold’ or ‘audacious’ in Gaelic, and is a pretty good indicator of the high-octane folk sound you can expect from the winners of the Up And Coming Artist Of The Year at the 2025 BBC Alba Scots Trad Music Awards. The four-piece will be joined by emerging Aberdeenshire vocalist Ellie Beaton and you can enjoy proceedings from The Hub, EIF's cosy living-room like headquarters.

On Sunday 9 August we return to our friends at the Pianodrome, who are presenting a loaded musical programme throughout the month. This weekend, the innovative space will be taken over by Obia & Amara. Amara are a product of Glasgow’s jazz scene and this gig will mark the first the group have played together for three years. Together with their Afro-Caribbean and Latin inspired peers, Obia, this co-headline slot will be a masterclass in improvisation.

STAGE 

Author: Rachel Morrell

As the corner concerning all things stage, this List writer is expecting to get carried away on a wave of peculiar performances, and it’s the same fate for you theatregoers with some immersive experiences that will make you question reality. First, a foray into true crime with A Trial – After An Enemy Of The People (until Monday 10 August), a courtroom drama in which 11 members of the audience act as the jury, featuring Golden Globe winner Wagner Moura. 

An even more personal moment lies in a new dystopian run of shows that take only 30 trippy minutes to complete: A modern look at AI in 404 Theatre’s Deepfake (until Monday 10 August), while Darkfield bring three self explanatory yet terrifying experiences to Edinburgh: Coma, Flight And Arcade (until Monday 31 August), the latter of which has a choose-your-own 1980s video game narrative. 

And as it's the first week of the Fringe, I might as well envelop you in oblivion with a comedic invite to The Secret Society's (until Sunday 16 August) weekly meeting by Chandelier, where you should choose your words wisely. See you on the other side…

SCREEN 

Author: Kevin Fullerton

Inhabiting a hard-to-define uniqueness, Bouchra follows a queer Moroccan coyote living in NYC as she struggles to write her debut film (that’s right, a coyote; everyone in this is a computer-generated critter). As she fields calls from her mother and hangs out with her friends in a city that’s financially crippling her, Bouchra slowly figures out how to express herself and heal the wounds of the past. The Filmhouse screening on Friday 7 August features an introduction from Huss, a programmer for Scottish Queer International Film Festival.

The Byrne-aissance continues with American Utopia, a 4K rerelease of David Byrne’s concert extravaganza from 2020. Directed by Spike Lee, it’s a bold trek through Byrne’s newer solo material, and a testament to his stagecraft. This’ll be heresy to some, but it’s also a punchier, more enjoyable work than Stop Making Sense (I await your hate mail with bated breath).

Delving into the classics, Dundee Contemporary Arts is embarking on the first of its Andrei Tarkovsky season with Ivan’s Childhood (Friday 7 August), arguably one of the greatest debut features of all time. An unflinching portrait of the Second World War told from a Russian perspective, every frame is a work of desolate poetry. 

EAT & DRINK 

Author: Suzy Pope

Edinburgh Foodies Festival returns to Inverleith Park from Friday 7 to Sunday 9 August. There’ll be cooking demonstrations, pop-up bars, 90s throwbacks headlining the music and plenty of street food to sample. But it’s not all about fringes and festivals this weekend. 

In Glasgow, BLOC+ is celebrating its kitchen’s 25th anniversary with 50% off all main meals and burgers every Sunday throughout August, including the award-winning Korean Seitan Burger. 

And, in Edinburgh, the 1820 Rooftop Bar At The Johnnie Walker Experience has completely re-thought their menu in collaboration with chef Scott Smith. Seasonal sharing plates will be paired with complementary cocktails designed by Mr Lyan Studio from Thursday 6 August.  

VISUAL ART 

Author: Greg Thomas

Art bookshops! We all love them. And Glasgow officially boasts one of the best in the world according to recent rankings from design magazine Cultured. I'm talking about Govanhill’s Burning House Books which focuses on experimental writing, in-between forms and queer culture. Interviewed about the accolade in Time Out at the tail-end of last year, shop owner Aimee Bea Ballinger recalled that she started Burning House in 2015 after being turned down for endless opportunities in literature: ‘If I really wanted [books] to be my job I was going to have to do it all myself’. Inspo-gram fodder or what?

Burning House is not the only art-bookstore gem that the Dear Green Place can boast. 5b is a gallery and art publisher run by Ben Seeley and Kirstie Sequitin, which has put out beautifully-designed titles for Scottish artists like Carole Gibbons and Andrew Cranston. Their summer sale ends on Sunday 9 August, with big discounts in person at their Merchant City venue and online. The shop’s open from 10am–3pm Wednesday to Friday, and 12–5pm on weekends. Hie thee to a bookshop…

THE HOT SEAT 

He’s the charismatic frontman for Dundee's goth darlings The Mirror Trap, and a doyen of the City Of Discovery’s cultural scene. So, what’s Gary Moore up to this weekend? 

The mood of my weekend is often set by the Friday’s new music releases and what records I’ve got on order. The debut Man/Woman/Chainsaw LP, Cannonball, is lined up to kick the weekend off on the back of one song, the 10/10 joy-soaked stunner ‘Nosedive’. I’ve made a point of not listening to any of the other singles or finding out anything about the band so I can go into the album without judgement. 

Mana on Whitehall Street in Dundee probably makes the best coffee in Scotland (and that’s a hill I will happily die on). They’ve also got a snazzy new seating area with old-fashioned lockers giving it the feel of a train station waiting room in some romantic European city of old. I’ll bunker down in there for a few hours on Saturday and finish the Murakami book I’ve had on the go this last few weeks. The City And Its Uncertain Walls ticks all the Murakami boxes. There’s the lonely lead character, the left turn into some whimsical fantasy land, a mysterious missing girl and a sprinkling of existential dread. I feel like I’ve read it all before but that doesn’t dampen the pleasure of getting lost in its world. 

Dundee’s 71 Brewing opened a new event space above its HQ last year. They’ve called it Canvas and it has so far hosted all manner of live music, art installations, movie nights and clubs. It has the benefit of running beer up directly from the brewery below, so you’re treated to something a little more exotic than the usual warm Red Stripe and budget White Russians. They’ve got an eclectic mix of local talent at their open-jam event on Saturday afternoon, so I’ll be down there sampling that and no doubt getting a little silly on the most ludicrously-named imperial stout I can find on tap. 

The Mirror Trap’s new EP, All That Remains Is A Ghost, is out on Friday 14 August.