About Sketchy Beats Cafe
A cafe celebrating art in all its forms. Open late, bring your own bevvy. Opening hours depend on what events are on. To book the space, message the page!
Sketchy Beats Cafe Description
Sketchy Beats Cafe is a not-for-profit arts cafe and event space on Great Junction Street, Leith. The space is an open platform for creatives of any kind to use and share their ideas with the public.
The concept started off as an experimental life drawing event, incorporating a live musician, a dancer, a nude model and a live DJ set. This took place once a month in the basement of Yellow Bench, a Polish Bistro on Leith Walk. As this event gained popularity, we raised the money through crowdfunding to create a community space where creative events like this could happen every night.
Since the cafe opened in October 2015, members of the local community have organized all kind of events in the cafe: live hip-hop nights, art exhibitions, poetry slams, live music jams, climate change discussions, life drawing sessions, craft fairs and charity fundraiser gigs, to name a few.
The space is designed to be affordable and accessible to everyone - people who have never organized events before, musicians who have never played outside their own bedroom, artists who have never exhibited before. The cafe aims to be a space where creativity brings the community together, without money being an obstacle.
The space is available for anyone in the community to organize their own events, parties and workshops, from the early evening into the small hours. If you are interested in using the space, just message the Sketchy Beats Cafe page with your idea and a suggested date and time.
Reviews
The sun is shining and festival season is almost upon us! Sketchy Beats has been invited to run stages / workshops / takeovers at Knockengorroch (23-26 May), Eden Festival (6-9 June), Kelburn Garden Party (5-7 July), Doune The Rabbit Hole (19-21 July) and Lindisfarne Festival (29-31 August). If you'll be at any of them, come say hi!
Come in for a Sketchy jam this evening!
Some photos from 'Sketchy Speaks', our spoken word session on Sunday. We also want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has donated through Paypal over the past few weeks - all together you've raised almost enough to cover the cost of pressure testing our coffee machine! <3
Martin Stephen, Jacqueline A Campbell, Ash Davies, Allan Jones, Gareth Jones, Evie Harper, ANDREW Devine, Julie Black, Mark Benzies, Deborah Zawinski, Rosie Buist-Morrison, Deborah Shaw, Bruce Kilp...atrick, Mary McMahon, Maria Vazquez, Tom Lyons, Kirsten Cleary, Patti Mroz, Teri Welsh, Sam Mckechnie, Andrew Green
Thank you so much!
Hope to see some of you for our open jam session this evening x
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If you know an engineer who could pressure test our coffee machine and provide a certificate, please get in touch! Current quote is £160 + VAT so looking for cheaper options...
Feel free to rummage through this playlist. There's a wide range of music ranging from jazz to dub to doom metal... You might find something you like!
Just sharing the PayPal donation button again to see if any of you can help us out. We had a Health and Safety inspection last week, which went well, but there are a few things we need to fix before they come back again next month:
- Provide an Electrical Installation Condition Report / Ensure all portable appliances are safe to use (estimated cost ??)
- Pressure test coffee machine (quoted £160 + VAT)
... - Get someone in to confirm cracked glass in front door is safe / replace glass panel (quoted £210.50 + 20% VAT)
These are all additional costs to our monthly budget, so it would be a great help if you could spare a few pounds to help Sketchy Beats pass the inspection next month. Or if you can help us get one of these jobs done for cheap / in exchange for something the space can provide, please get in touch!
Thank you ❤
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We're all set up for the spoken word session! Come and speak your mind :)
6-10pm, suggested donation £3
We're open from 4pm until midnight, come in for a sketch or a jam! Here's Cory Jefferson's live recording of the lovely Ailsa and the Seahorses playing at Sketchys last year :)
A better quality video of the Smoking Jeffreys at the Sketchy Leith Depot Takeover last Monday - thanks to Ozzy for filming!
Erb & Ting doing their thing at the Sketchy Beats Takeover at Leith Depot!
Thanks to everyone who came along to the Depot Takeover on Monday - we filled the venue to capacity and all of the acts were incredible! Here's a live clip of the Smoking Jeffreys, who in spite of their name, weren't the act who accidentally set off the fire alarms at the end of the night ;)
Just three more sleeps until Independent Venue Week at Leith Depot! Here's the lineup for the Sketchy Beats Takeover on Monday -
19:30 Jake Finn (spoken word) 20:00 Lindsay Walker 20:30 Daniel Brown... 21:00 Smoking Jeffreys 21:30 Erb & Ting 22:00 MEGA Band Official 22:30 Sketchy Beats Jam
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