Scottish Storytelling Centre: free audio guide
The story of Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh, as the Votura app tells it on location. Read it here, or hear it on the spot with turn-by-turn walking directions.
Before you go
- Address
- 43-45 High St, Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh, EH1 1SR
- Opening hours
- Mon–Sat: 10:00 AM–6:00 PM
The story
Scottish Storytelling Centre is Edinburgh’s national hub for the spoken word, set on the Royal Mile in the Old Town, where stories have been traded for generations. It opens in 2006 as a cultural venue dedicated to storytelling, performance, and the living tradition of Scots and Scottish Gaelic narrative. The centre occupies a striking modern building beside the historic John Knox House, linking a contemporary arts space with one of the city’s most evocative medieval streets. Its mission is tied to the Scottish Storytelling Forum, which helps nurture the oral traditions that have long shaped Scottish identity. For visitors, it offers a rare chance to see storytelling treated not as nostalgia, but as a thriving art form with stages, workshops, and archives.
The building itself is one of the most distinctive details of the place. It is designed by Malcolm Fraser Architects and completed in 2006, with clean contemporary lines that deliberately contrast with the older stonework around it. The centre includes the performance venue known as the Netherbow Theatre, a flexible intimate space that seats about 90 people, so audiences sit close enough to catch every pause, accent, and glance. That small capacity matters, because the experience depends on the voice rather than on spectacle. The complex also houses the John Knox House, a late-medieval building that stands as one of the best-known surviving historic houses on the Royal Mile. The combination of old and new makes the site feel like a conversation across centuries rather than a single monument.
Inside, the centre is built for live performance, learning, and participation rather than passive display. It hosts storytelling sessions, theatre, music, workshops, and festivals, and it serves as a base for the Edinburgh International Storytelling Festival, which is founded in 1989 and becomes one of the city’s signature autumn events. That festival draws performers and audiences from Scotland and beyond, keeping folk tales, myths, and contemporary spoken-word work in the same orbit. The centre also supports schools and community groups, so the craft is not confined to stagecraft alone but extends into education and heritage. Its programming reflects a broad spectrum of storytelling, from traditional tales to modern performance pieces rooted in local language and memory.
What makes the Scottish Storytelling Centre especially compelling for tourists is the way it anchors intangible heritage in a specific place. Unlike many museums, it does not just preserve objects; it keeps voices alive, and that includes Scots, English, and Scottish Gaelic traditions that have traveled through oral transmission for centuries. The location on the Royal Mile places it amid one of Edinburgh’s densest historic corridors, where St Giles’ Cathedral, the Canongate, and the castle-end of the Old Town all speak to the city’s layered past. Yet the centre itself is unmistakably a 21st-century institution, created to protect a performance culture that could otherwise disappear into books. That contrast gives every visit a sense of continuity, because the building is new while the stories it champions are old.
It is also a practical place to linger, with a café and a bookshop that extend the experience beyond the auditorium. The bookshop is especially appealing for anyone interested in folklore, mythology, Scottish history, or children’s literature, because it reflects the centre’s wide interpretive range. Visitors often come away with a stronger sense that storytelling in Scotland is not a quaint side note but a national form of expression tied to language, memory, and place. In Edinburgh, a city famous for festivals and literature, this centre adds a more intimate, more conversational layer to the cultural map. It is one of the rare attractions where the main exhibit is not a single artifact, but the act of telling itself.
Written for the Votura audio tour and read aloud in the app. Opening hours change, so check with the venue before you go.
Self-guided tours that stop at Scottish Storytelling Centre
- Исторический Путешествие по Фолкленду и Эдинбургу пешком
- Edinburgh Festival Heritage Walk: Music, Makers & Old Town Legends
- Edinburgh Encore: Festival Heritage, Jazz & Folk Walking Tour
- Edinburgh Music Festival Heritage Walk: Jazz, Folk & Composer Stories
More audio tours in Edinburgh →
Hear it on the spot
Votura plays this guide when you reach Scottish Storytelling Centre, then walks you to the next stop. Works offline.