For two weeks in March, Craigmillar Community Arts will be hosting an event in the John Maxwell Gallery, where the public will be asked to help trace the history of Craigmillar through photographs.

The event, entitled "A Fortnight of Forensic Photography" will be held from Monday 1st to Friday 12th March, tables will be laid out with thousands of photographs, negatives and slides from decades of picture-taking in the Greater Craigmillar area.

We need your help in identifying many of the pictures, since a lot of old records seem to have disappeared. The organiser, Johnni Stanton, said, "Craigmillar has always pushed the boundaries of self-discovery and community development and this is an obvious extension of our founding principles, as laid own by our predecessor, the Craigmillar Festival Society.

During its remarkable existence, the CFS sent people out with cameras, who'd never taken a picture before, and the result is 1000s of photos from not just our area, but from all over Scotland.  However, when it was folded by Edinburgh City Council, much of the written documentation vanished.

This event is being held so that people can come along and help us identify who's in the pictures, where they were taken, what was taking place, and their origins. Basically, we're asking people to become detectives. And if they get something out of it on a personal level, that's just great!  Forensic Photography is a career that will never go out of fashion and you can even even get qualifications in it. Maybe we'll help to create a budding Quincy or Bones of photographs through the project!"  

Paper, pens, coffee, tea and biscuits will be supplied to the hunters who gather at the Exhibition gallery for the event. There will be a computer in the Gallery throughout the Fortnight, with a moving presentation of ALL the photos that we have in our Archive collection. And of course, we are always looking for more pictures of the area and of the people who made up our community from the 1930s onwards.

For further information, please phone Craigmillar ArtSpace on 0131 459 6759 or visit www.craigmillarcommunityarts.org.uk