Our Glass House

Was delighted to attend the launch of Our Glass House this afternoon. A play produced by Common Wealth Theatre Ltd as part of the Fringe deals with the issue of domestic abuse and is staged in an empty house in Westburn, Wester Hailes. Different strands of the performance telling separate stories are played out in different rooms and coincide and collide and combine to produce a very powerful experience. The audience watches on but does not intervene. The invited guests then adjourned to the Whale Arts centre for some formalities and a cuppa. Today's attendance was by professionals from various agencies ; the Council, Police, NHS, Scottish Government, Prospect Housing and the Edinburgh Violence Against Women Partnership, but I was delighted to hear that the twice daily shows are now sold out and that a  number of tickets were reserved for the local community and they too have been snapped up. Also delighted that the launch event was attended by new Police Scotland Chief Constable Steve House who has a well known commitment to tackling domestic abuse and carried out some significant work on this in his previous role in Strathclyde. A successful event and information was also provided of some good partnership working being developed. We need to build on this though and make sure that the messages of help and support for victims and confronting and changing the behaviour of perpetrators gets through to all our communities.