This is an unticketed event and is free for all to attend.

Gather around the Scottish Parliament for the Opening Celebration of Healing Arts Scotland (HAS). Featuring over 250 performers and participants from across Scotland, this is an energetic celebration of music and dance.

We’ve teamed up with Scottish Ballet to create a chain of connections between the crowd and the performers. Witness a bespoke mass dance piece that has been specially choreographed with Scottish Ballet’s Dance for Parkinson’s Scotland participants, NHS workers and Scottish Ballet's Youth Exchange. They dance to a Scottish-Celtic fusion tune, Mackay’s Memoirs, by the late Martyn Bennett.

Alongside a Scottish Ballet community cast, we have assembled 200 musicians from across Scotland for a joyful showcase of mass music-making.

Listen to premiers of new music by Oi Musica, TRYST, Samba Ya Bamba and the National Youth Pipe Band while you rub shoulders with strangers and feel the healing power of the performing arts. It’s an event that captures the spirit and healing power of coming together through the performing arts.

This August, we’re playing our part in HAS – the first ever countrywide Healing Arts Week, taking place between 19 and 23 August.

This is a week-long celebration of arts and health events, highlighting the joy they bring to those who take part, and their importance to the nation’s physical, mental and social health.

HAS is a collaboration between Scottish Ballet and the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, in partnership with the World Health Organisation.

Supported by donors who choose to remain anonymous.