the Build of the Fair

The West End Fair is a large Art, Craft and Design Fair held on a custom built series of platforms, walkways and stairs over six levels, on a site at St John’s Church on the corner of Princes St and Lothian Road. During the Event, around 120 stallholders sell their work to the Public, face to face. On busy days thousands of people come through the site, so we have to ensure it is built to the highest standards.

Building the fair is done to well established system, which will be shown to you in detail as we commence the build.  The build involves large amounts of scaffolding as a substructure, with a decked surface to finish.  The entire site is closed to the public during the build, and there is no vehicular access to any part. The build process usually takes around 6 weeks.

Scaffolding. All structures are signed off by our structural engineer. You will be shown how to lay out and construct the cuplock scaffold in a safe manner. Appropriate PPE must be worn when handling scaffolding. When accessing the scaffolding stores, hard hats, gloves, ear defence must be worn at all times. Scaffolding is heavy, so care needs to be taken at all times when handling and working with it. 

Timbers and decking. After the scaffolds are built, we lay joists down on top, at 600mm centres. A layer of 32mm decking completes the platforms. Again, you will be shown the correct way to build this. Care must be taken to avoid “traps” where the end of the timber/decking protrudes beyond the scaffold or joist, leaving an area where if you stood on it, the board would flip, allowing you to fall. 

Stalls. We have a large range of stalls that are constructed on top of the decked and paved platforms. These are of a couple of types, and we’ll show you how they go together. Once these are built we are ready for the Exhibitors to move in.

The Fair then runs for 4 weeks, during which we need some help on site, but not lots. At the end of the Fair we start the process of taking it all down again and repacking it into the Arches under Lothian Road. This usually takes around 2 weeks.

We also run a couple of other events in the summer, and may ask for help with these. Full info given as and when required.