AROUND TOWN

Celebrating a decade of delicious street food and beverages, the Edinburgh Food Festival (Friday 19 – Sunday 28 July) returns to George Square Gardens with its free-to-enter foodie paradise, live chef demos and more.

Scottish slam pioneer Anita Govan will be hosting Brand New Prose Slam (Sunday 21 July), the first in a monthly series from Edinburgh’s Lost In Leith, which features up-and-coming poets battling it out, with a chance to vote for the winner. Also featuring music from Eve Simpson.

It's back and bigger and better than ever! Glasgow Pride (Saturday 20 July) will see tens of thousands take to the streets for an empowering march, while Pride Hub hosts Whigfield, Jedward and more. There’s also a market featuring retailers, food vendors and activities for the whole family.

MUSIC

Merchant City Festival (Friday 19 – Sunday 21 July) is a three-day event taking place in the eponymous Glasgow district. Its music programme includes a free nightly ceilidh, Hip Replacement’s popular Old Fruitmarket disco, queer pop and DJs to celebrate Pride, and Rock n Roll Sunday with Shiverin’ Sheikhs and Awkward Family Portraits.

Part of the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, UK jazz legend and Mercury Prize nominee Soweto Kinch (Saturday 20 July) will be swinging by the George Square Spiegeltent with his exhilarating jazz, freestyle lyrics and hip-hop stylings.

If you’re looking for a nostalgia fix then Rewind Festival (Friday 19 – Sunday 21 July) has got you covered, with a line-up that includes Billy Ocean, Boyzlife, The Boomtown Rats, Kim Wilde, Tiffany, Gabrielle, Heather Small and many more. Perth’s Scone Palace plays host.

STAGE

Featuring dancers and a soundtrack of 80s and 90s anthems alongside original tunes, Small Town Boys (until Sunday 21 July) attempts to capture the joy and chaos of the LGBTQ+ club scene, as it tells the story of a young man who trades his small hometown for the bright lights of the big city. Catch it at Church Dundee.

Gentle giant Tom Davis (Saturday 20 July) continues his comedy tour, bringing his latest show, Underdog, to Glasgow’s Òran Mór this weekend for a pair of no-doubt hilarious performances, exploring his life as the longshot.

Combining hair-raising extreme stunts with classic clowning around, touring show Circus Extreme (until Sunday 28 July) is currently astonishing audiences at Glasgow’s Silverburn Shopping Centre.

SCREEN

In the riotously funny and equivalently heartwarming Thelma, June Squibb plays a pensioner who sets off to find the scammer who stole from her, with a reluctant Richard Roundtree (aka Shaft) in tow. It’s the remarkably accomplished debut of Josh Margolin.

The director of the Oscar-winning Minari, Lee Isaac Chung, adds a touch of class to the mega-budget disaster flick in the nail-biting Twisters, which brings together Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos for some close encounters with tornadoes.

Natalie Portman is the latest big screen star to switch over to streaming in Apple TV+’s 1960s-set Lady In The Lake, a mystery series based on the novel by Laura Lippman.

PODCASTS

With Pep Guardiola and Kylian Mbappe previous subjects, Sporting Giants reveals the stories behind some of the biggest names in the sporting world. Following his recent farewell to Wimbledon, Sporting Giants: Andy Murray looks back over the much-loved Scot’s career.

Fascinating new podcast Hysterical takes a look at one of the most famous cases of mass hysteria that took hold of a group of high school girls in Le Roy, upstate New York, more than a decade ago.

Still going strong is Here Comes The Guillotine which brings together Scottish comedians Frankie Boyle, Susie McCabe and Christopher MacArthur-Boyd in conversations that take them from Japanese toilets to the new political landscape.

VISUAL ART

Taking place at Bowhouse in St Monans, Space To Breathe will be hosting an exhibition from the late, groundbreaking British painter in The Art And Life Of Sheila Girling (Saturday 20 July to Monday 5 August). It features more than 90 of her large-scale paintings and collages from the 1970s to the 2010s.

Bleeding Gold (Friday 19 to Sunday 21 July) is an exhibition of paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints by the Edinburgh-based artist Mira Knoche, which offers a woman’s perspective on a world facing challenges like rising populism and climate change. It kicks off with a live cello and DJ set on Friday. Edinburgh’s Whitespace Gallery is where it’s at.

And finally, Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama gets his first-ever solo exhibition in Scotland in Songs About Roses (until Sunday 6 October), which showcases his large-scale, site-specific installations exploring the cultural and social effects of post-colonialism and global migration.

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