The Scotsman Bulletin Monday August 19 2024 #Festival
Scotsman deputy editor Alan Young speaks to arts correspondent Brian Ferguson as we head into the last week of the Edinburgh Festivals
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin for Monday. I'm Alan Young, I'm Deputy
00:05Editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined today by our Arts Correspondent, Brian Ferrison, to
00:10take a look at some of the headlines. Hi Brian.
00:13Good morning.
00:14Let's have a look at the front page first. We lead today on an exclusive from our Deputy
00:21Political Editor, David Wall, and he has been looking at the ScotWind project and has
00:29found claims that £16 billion worth of investment in Scotland is now at risk and that's at risk
00:38quite simply because the manufacturing facilities just simply do not exist in Scotland. This
00:47work could be lost overseas. We also have an exclusive on the front page in the wing
00:52column there you can see from Brian and it's more concerns over the funding of the culture
00:59and the arts with fears that museums are now at risk of closure. We picture on the
01:05front page the joke of the fringe and we also have our essential festival pullout in today
01:15and it's with the festival I think that I want to start. Brian, just a week to go, you've
01:20survived so far.
01:22Hello you.
01:25What's your general impression of how 2024 has gone?
01:28I think it seems to have gone probably about as well as people were anticipating. The festival,
01:36certainly the fringe, the scale of it this year is slightly bigger than last year. It's
01:40been an upward trajectory of the last three years basically. Well ever since it came back
01:47from Covid, a very small scale in 2021, but there's been a gradual recovery. Some elements
01:55of the fringe have been missing, especially the big Gilded Bloom venue at Teviot has not
01:59been open this year, but I think the fringe, the level of demand to come has certainly
02:06not dipped at all. There was a lot of concern, maybe over the last year there's been a lot
02:11of debate around the accommodation issues, but they don't really seem to have affected
02:17the number of people either trying to put on stuff or coming to the festivals. As far
02:23as I can see anyway, we'll see when especially the fringe society reveals the final day ticket
02:32sales tally, but I expect that to be certainly well over two million and maybe edging towards
02:39three million. It did reach three million only once before in 2019. I'd be surprised
02:44if it got to that level again, but given that there were a number of venues that weren't
02:48open this year, including in the Newtown, the festival as a whole has slightly shifted
02:55once again to around the university, so there's a new site for the book festival. It just
03:05runs for a week these days, but the film festival has launched overnight and is still going
03:10until Wednesday, and again that's been rolled out in a slightly different way this year.
03:16But as far as I can tell, most of the things I've been at have been pretty full. The city
03:21has seemed really busy and there's been a bit of a feel-good factor with the weather.
03:27Touchwood has been certainly the best I can remember. I don't really remember that many
03:31days when it's been raining. The bin strike didn't happen, which was a big concern for
03:37a lot of people because that undoubtedly would have affected ticket sales. I think the one
03:41thing that I think certainly people within the city and a lot of the festival organisers
03:46really like to crack is improving the public transport situation, particularly on the trains.
03:52It's just been completely inadequate for a major event. I think that's something that
03:57in terms of growing the audience for the event, there's clearly demand to come to Edinburgh
04:01if I'm outwith the city. I think that's something that certainly should be looked at for next
04:06year. I would also help make it affordable for people maybe to stay outside the city and come in
04:12a bit more easily. Everything seems to have gone well. There's been a huge effort obviously to get
04:18these events on as ever. I've not really heard many negative reports at all about poor ticket
04:26sales or anything like that. The thing I would say is there's loads of stuff still on over the
04:35next week and there's plenty of availability for loads of different shows. So people should very
04:40much make the most of the festivals while they're still here for the next week or so.
04:44Indeed and like you say, there's certainly a real buzz around the city. It's
04:50been great to see so many people out in the streets and so many shows selling out.
04:58There is an elephant in the room though and that is funding from the Scottish Government and we've
05:04had several stories even in the past week about fears that funding particularly from
05:11Creative Scotland is going to be cut and theatre companies, museums, venues face
05:20going out of business. That seems completely contrary to the success of the world's
05:27largest arts festival happening at the moment. It is bizarre. It is an industry that's literally
05:33every year delivers about 400 million pounds in economic benefit. The actual level of public
05:39investment in the year-round events in Edinburgh, including the winter events, is 11 million pounds.
05:46You get a 400 million pound return and yet Scottish culture in general across the
05:52whole cultural sector, the level of investment is not even above 200 million.
05:59A lot of elements of Scottish culture, it's hard to think of any elements of Scottish culture that
06:05are not at risk in some way. Certainly at the grassroots level, in terms of
06:13theatre and music are the two most obvious ones where there's a lot of concerns about
06:19theatre companies who don't have venues basically not being able to put on productions
06:23and not losing their funding. Venues themselves, their funding is very precarious.
06:30There's no guarantee. No venues are basically funded at all from the government
06:36after March of next year. Despite long campaigns to try and get multi-year funding in place
06:43well in advance, there's a big big funding decision coming down the line. A series of
06:50decisions coming down the line. In October it's meant to be from Creative Scotland. They've got
06:56something like 87 million pounds worth of applications from theatres, festivals,
07:02events, arts organisations. Certainly well over 200 applications and they're a rough budget.
07:08If they base it on standstill funding, the maximum they say they've got available is 40 million.
07:14That's the kind of backdrop. There was a bit of positivity last autumn when
07:21the SNP gave a big commitment to more than double arts funding in Scotland, including for that
07:28period. It was a bit of a long-term commitment but it does crucially cover this three-year period
07:34that people have been trying to get a funding commitment for. So that commitment was given.
07:40Unfortunately since then the government has not really explained how and when that 100 million
07:46will be allocated. So there's a commitment but it's not really been kind of bottomed out.
07:53Certainly Creative Scotland by now would have hoped that they would have at least
07:58been given an indication of how much of that 100 million they could allocate for this three-year
08:04funding programme. So that's one element of it but there are other sectors as well that are
08:11not funded by Creative Scotland. Museums and galleries are a big one now. Obviously there's
08:15some really big attractions, mainly in Edinburgh, that have got direct funding. The National Museums
08:22and the National Galleries. I mean these places are some of the busiest visit attractions in the
08:26country. They have been complaining for years about the impact of standstill funding.
08:33Basically having to scale back the programming at a time when they're experiencing
08:38record demand. The Scottish National Gallery had a big new transformation last year.
08:44The National Museum had one over the last decade. There's record numbers of people
08:50coming into these places but they still need a level of public support to allow them to deliver
08:57what they do. But there are obviously countless, I mean you know, I think there's some like 200,
09:05at least 200 museums and galleries across Scotland are basically reliant on Scottish
09:13government funding and or council funding to an extent. And again the picture there is either of
09:20standstill funding or basically cuts. And even if there has been standstill
09:29funding, that really does amount to real-term cuts. Because as everyone knows, and every arts
09:34organisation is dealing with this, is that the cost of doing anything has simply gone up
09:40dramatically, coming out of Covid basically. So that has never really been addressed by the
09:45Scottish government. There is obviously a big focus for the government that has been
09:50addressing pay demands, which are really all about helping people meet the
09:58cost of living crisis. But that has not really been addressed for the arts sector.
10:06Both in terms of paying people properly and retaining staff, but also
10:12allowing them to deliver. I mean anything from the Edinburgh International Festival putting on
10:17their biggest production to basically keeping the tiniest venues, maybe in some of the
10:24remotest corners of Scotland, up and running. It's the same issues, basically the cost of doing
10:29anything has gone through the roof. But that has never been addressed by the Scottish government
10:34and it will need to be addressed. And if it's not, then it will, it seems inevitable that some
10:40things will just either not happen, or some places will have to close down. And as we know,
10:46when these places close, with few exceptions, that's it. You never get this back.
10:54Yeah, I think that's the main thing. I've been trying to say that to the government any
10:59opportunity I get, is that it seems to me, you know, it's very difficult, there's a very
11:04different difficult public funding landscape out there. But there's a lot of people have pointed
11:10out that the level of government spending on the arts is something like less than 0.1. I think
11:18it's 0.5%, something like that. The average across Europe is something like 1.5%. So we are really at
11:25the near the bottom of the league table for this kind of stuff across Europe. And you know, it just
11:32really needs to be sorted out. There's not much optimism that that is going to happen
11:38in the next few months. So there is quite a lot of kind of fear and anxiety out there. But
11:45on the other hand, you can't go through the whole Edinburgh festivals and not come out with it with
11:49a bit of optimism that the benefits are there for everyone to see. There can't be any doubt at all,
11:57that there's huge benefits. And it just needs really, you know, the whole industry really
12:02needs a lot more stability than it's had, certainly coming out of COVID.
12:07Indeed. Thanks very much for all that. Brian, please keep an eye on Scotsman.com throughout
12:12the day where we'll have all the very latest news and analysis. And of course, you can find all our
12:18festival content there as well. If you can do subscribe, then you can read and watch everything
12:25that we do. And if you're out and about today as ever, please do pick up
12:28a copy of the paper from me and from Brian. It's bye for now.