After celebrating its 10th birthday in November of 2021, Summerhall is looking towards the future. In its second decade, Edinburgh’s most vibrant arts and cultural hub aims to provide more opportunities, support and space to both local and international artists, in the artistic heart of the city.

The ambitious development programme will see Summerhall extend its commissions, mentoring schemes, and year-round support to innovative creative professionals and early career artists working in Scotland.

As part of this evolution, Summerhall has appointed former General Manager, Sam Gough who will return to Summerhall at the start of 2023 in a new Chief Executive role to lead the organisation on its journey.

Sam has spent over four years in Glasgow as Joint Chief Executive of Tron Theatre, where amongst his achievements, he successfully led the organisation through the Covid 19 pandemic, ensuring that the theatre emerged stronger and was able to provide essential support to the freelance creative community across Scotland.

Speaking about his new role Sam said: “I am excited to come back to Summerhall and get started on driving the venue forward. We are in a position to start to meaningfully nurture and support creative practitioners to ensure that significantly important home-grown work is given the opportunity to flourish. The venue has grown up with the current class of world leading Scottish artists (including the wonderful Richard Demarco) and has the opportunity and experience to be able to support and advise the next generation of creative practitioners and organisations, so that together the sector can thrive, despite the very real current challenges we are all facing”

Robert McDowell, owner of Summerhall said: “I am delighted to be working with Sam again, who I am confident will lead us through this next phase of Summerhall’s evolution.”