First Footin’ is a FREE unticketed live music trail, which invites audiences to explore landmark building and venues in the city, discovering a feast of live music and performance by artists from across Scotland and beyond.
Please note, unless listed with a specific time, performances take place on-the-hour at 2pm / 3pm / 4pm & 5pm, and last approx. 30 – 40mins.
Please note spaces for each venue are available on a first-come-first-served basis, should a venue be full, you are welcome to wait until the next performance, or are only ever a short walk to enjoy music at another venue.
KARINE POLWART - Come Away In
with special guests Stephen Deazley, Lori Watson & Corrina Hewat
Free Event
‘Welcome into the house where there’s an open door and the fire is burning
Welcome into the house where we can rest a while from the world and its turning
Welcome into the house’
Join acclaimed folk singer and songwriter, Karine Polwart, Choir Director, Stephen Deazley, and 200 community singers for Come Away In - an atmospheric First Footin’ event at St. Giles’ Cathedral on New Year’s Day.
Part performance, part turning-of-the-year ceremony, Come Away In takes the Scottish tradition of First Footin’ as its inspiration. The opening of the door to friends and strangers alike is a nationwide gesture of hospitality, and an invocation of refuge, neighbourliness and shared resources. Celebrate crossing the threshold of the New Year in the embrace of massed voices and song, in the resonant, historic space of the city’s 900-year-old cathedral.
'Singing in the New Year is such a massive communal tradition here in Scotland that opening the doors of St Giles Cathedral to 200 community voices just seemed obvious. It’s a glorious space designed for song. I hope our invitation to 'Come Away In’ captures a spirit of hospitality, sanctuary, and togetherness - things that need looking after in these times.’ Karine Polwart
KARINE POLWART is a multi-award-winning Scottish songwriter, folk singer, and storyteller. Her songs evoke a richness of place, hidden histories, scientific curiosity and folklore. Trees and rocks speak. Birds flit in and out of vision. And the stars know everything. She conjures the beauty and magic, the sorrow and complexity of the world out of the corner of her eye, with lyricism and tenderness
Karine’s many collaborative projects include - Still As Your Sleeping, a duo with pianist Dave Milligan; a longstanding trio with brother Steven Polwart and multi-instrumentalist Inge Thomson; her Scottish Songbook re-imaginings of classic Scottish pop; Spell Songs, a multi-artist response to environmental loss; and Wind Resistance, her peatbog-inspired theatre show for The Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh.
Her commissions over the past two years include new work for both the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and 2023 saw her host and write Seek the Light, a poetic three-part BBC Radio 4 series combining science, music and folklore.
Long established as a glorious singer, enquiring songwriter and enlightened mind MOJO ★★★★
There are few songwriters sharper
Financial Times ★★★★
One of the finest singer-songwriters in Britain
The Guardian ★★★★★
First Footin’ is supported by
Scottish Government’s Expo Fund
Essential Edinburgh
Cold Town Beer