Video: Shedding new light on Edinburgh’s literary past

If you’ve been out and about in Scotland’s capital after dark this month, you may have noticed an eye-catching display of words dancing across some of Edinburgh’s landmark buildings.

It’s actually all part of a project aimed at celebrating the city’s rich literary heritage.

From the beginning of March several buildings in the centre of the city have been lit up with quotations by some of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.

The enLIGHTen project is a UNESCO City of Literature initiative which also encompasses new commisions from six writers and audio guides which provide background information on the people and places involved.

Find out more info at the links above, or just take a wander for yourself around these locations...

175 Rose Street:

‘There is nothing so pleasant and wholesome to the human heart as to love and be loved.’

- Alison Rutherford, Lady Cockburn

Charlotte Square:

‘A succession of worlds… no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.’

- James Hutton

81 George Street:

‘… we aften find

The brawest drest want peace of mind,

While he that gangs wi ragged coat

Is weel contentit wi his lot’.

- Robert Fergusson, from ‘Ode to the Gowdspink’

St Andrew Square:

‘Truth springs from argument amongst friends’

- David Hume

1 Rose Street:

‘Schools polite shall lib’ral Arts display,

And make auld barb’rous Darkness fly away’

- Allan Ramsay

22 George Street

‘Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition’.

- Adam Smith

• Video produced by NL Productions and Pufferfish Displays