The New Year Games

The New Year Games / 2012 / for Hide&Seek

The New Year Games ran across Edinburgh’s Old Town on New Year’s Day, 2012, inviting residents and visitors to play.

Participants picked a side - Uppies or Doonies, a giant silver eagle or a giant red stag - and then played games across the city, many of them created in collaboration with Scottish artists. For each game, players received tokens based on their success, which they could return to their team’s statue, in a public square where commentators ran games for the crowd and kept the excitement up. At the end of the afternoon, the coins were weighed, and the winning team was announced.

Games included Resonate the Labyrinth in St Giles’ Cathedral, with composer Pippa Murphy; Throw Things At Found in the Hub, with local band Found; Scotch Hoppers in Dance Base, with choreographer Brian Hartley; and Dreadnought in the National Museum of Scotland, with artist spotov.

The New Year Games involved hundreds of collaborators, from costume designers to helter-skelter attendees to gamerunners to visual designers, and was produced with Unique Events and Edinburgh’s Hogmanay.