Granton Hub Throws Open Its Walls for a Big Nature Drawathon This Weekend

Madelvic House in Granton is turning every available surface into a canvas this weekend, as families descend on the community arts hub for a collective celebration of the natural world. The Big Nature Drawathon, run in partnership with Nature in Granton, is exactly the kind of rooted, unpretentious community event that makes Edinburgh's neighbourhood culture worth protecting.

The premise is simple and completely brilliant: show up, pick up a pencil, and cover the walls with drawings of nature. The Big Nature Drawathon at Granton Hub's Madelvic House this weekend is free, open to families, and built around the idea that creativity belongs to everyone, not just people who went to art school.

Organised in partnership with Nature in Granton, the event sits inside a broader movement to reconnect urban communities with the natural environment on their doorstep. Granton's waterfront and surrounding greenspace are genuinely underappreciated assets, and events like this do the quiet work of reminding people they exist.

Madelvic House itself is worth a mention. One of Edinburgh's more interesting community anchors, it has steadily become a hub for grassroots arts, local organisations, and the kind of community activity that doesn't show up in tourism brochures but holds a neighbourhood together. The building has history, and the people running it know how to use it.

According to Creative Scotland, community arts participation has a measurable impact on wellbeing, social cohesion, and local identity, three things every neighbourhood in every city could use more of right now. Events that ask nothing more of participants than turning up and making a mark are rare, and valuable.

If you're in Edinburgh this weekend and have children in tow, or frankly even if you don't, Granton Hub is worth the trip. North Edinburgh has been changing fast, and seeing what's growing in the community space there is quietly encouraging.

What this means for you: If you run a business in North Edinburgh or the wider city, events like the Drawathon are a low-cost, high-goodwill way to show up for your community. Sponsoring materials, offering a prize, or simply sharing the event on your channels costs almost nothing and puts your name next to something genuinely good. Community arts partnerships are one of the most underused tools in the local SME marketing toolkit.