Edinburgh Festival ‘may collapse’ due to SNP’s broken funding pledges

The Edinburgh International Festival risks being “dismantled”, its executive director has warned, because of the SNP administration’s failure to honour its funding pledges.
As this year’s Edinburgh season closed, Francesca Hegyi urged the Scottish government to deliver on the nationalists’ 2021 manifesto commitment to “place culture at the heart of our recovery” and to make good on a first ministerial promise of an extra £100 million for the arts, enabling organisers to finalise next year’s programme.
Hegyi said a failure to do so by ministers would be “reputationally damaging” for the International Festival, which regards itself as the world’s leading annual arts event and generates hundreds of millions for the Scottish economy. She was speaking after performers across the festival used their final curtain calls to protest against the Scottish government’s failure to release £6.6 million for the Open Fund for Individuals administered by Creative Scotland, the national arts agency.
A further 2,000 “deeply concerned” artists and arts workers signed an open letter criticising ministers for a decision that put “the future of the arts at risk”, by failing to support the freelancers who form a large part of the workforce.
Signatories included the writers Louise Welsh and Alan Bissett, the theatre directors Vicky Featherstone and Cora Bissett, the comedian Phill Jupitus, the musicians Aidan O’Rourke, Tommy Perman and Horse McDonald and the actor Forbes Masson.
They said: “The damage to the arts caused by the closure of the fund is immediate and long-lasting. Cut it now, and it could take a generation to build back.”
Hegyi picked up the theme, noting that half of the performers over the three weeks of the international festival were Scottish-based, including those employed by the five national companies as well as 200 specialist freelancers and a variety of writers and technicians.
“The festivals are part of an ecosystem and we rely on everything from the individual artists right up to large organisations,” she said. “It’s all interconnected and so I really fear that this is the beginning of the dismantling of the sector. It’s not pretty.”
The SNP went into the most recent Holyrood election with a series of pledges to the cultural sector including three-year funding settlements for “core” organisations such as the festival and a national “percentage for the arts” scheme that suggested an additional £150 million would be raised by requiring a portion of the budget for any significant new public building project to be “spent on community art commissions”.
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A subsequent promise made by Humza Yousaf, and endorsed John Swinney, his successor as first minister, to deliver an additional £100 million for the arts should be honoured, Hegyi insisted.
She said: “I would hope that we could trust the word of two first ministers. All we’re asking is that the Scottish government delivers on its 2021 manifesto promise to roll out multi-year funding for the cultural sector. It’s not necessarily even about more money, although obviously we need that. It’s about having certainty to plan because without having certainty we can’t plan our 2026 or 2027 festivals, let alone next year’s. It destabilises everything and it’s just really reputationally damaging.”
She added: “We’re in trouble, and not in two years’ time. Now. It’s ten weeks until the start of our financial year. I don’t know what our budget is. So it makes it almost impossible to plan properly for a festival in 11 months’ time. And that’s not a great position to be in.”
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Like other large arts organisations in Scotland, the Edinburgh International Festival is funded through Creative Scotland’s Multi-Year Funding Programme, and while confirmation is expected this year, “at the moment it’s really difficult to rely on it, given the prevailing winds”, Hegyi said.
Creative Scotland said the published guidance for multi-year funding applications made clear the assessment process would be completed by the end of October.
These developments came after the chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society warned that the arts are at risk from public funding cuts. Shona McCarthy attacked UK-wide cuts to arts education and accused the Scottish government of “breaking promises of support” and of continuing to “decimate the sector” which would lead to “job losses, exclusion and boring art”.
These warnings of imminent disaster were offset at the close of the festival season by returns from Pleasance and Assembly, two of the biggest commercial venues in Edinburgh, who both enjoyed a successful festival after “issuing” about 500,000 tickets each. Pleasance announced a “triumphant” year, producing work of “exceptional” quality, according to Anthony Alderson, its director.
William Burdett-Coutts, director of Assembly, said the festival was “back on the road to recovery”, but said the Fringe remained “fragile”. He added: “We all need to work together to build resilience and ensure that the future works for all participants.”
The Scottish government blamed Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, for creating “the most challenging financial situation since devolution”, according to a spokesman.
“The Scottish government already provides significant funding to Creative Scotland each year and will continue to do so,” he added. “The culture secretary is in regular contact with the sector to discuss the issues it currently faces and how to address those challenges. We will continue to do everything within our powers and resources to protect our world-class arts and culture sector. We have increased arts culture funding this year, as the first step to achieving our commitment to invest at least £100 million more annually in culture and the arts by 2028-29.”