Meeting of the Parliament 06 January 2015
Presiding Officer, I wish you and the other members in the chamber a happy new year.
I am delighted to have been called to speak in this debate heralding the success of Scotland’s winter festivals. As an Edinburgh MSP, I make no apology for using Edinburgh as a great example of a winter festival. For more than 21 years, the city has welcomed the world to celebrate the new year in spectacular style at the now internationally famous Edinburgh’s hogmanay, with three days of free and ticketed events featuring headline concerts, theatre, music, dance and street party extravaganzas. It is for that reason, as Claire Baker pointed out, that Edinburgh’s hogmanay is the only festival that was recently listed in the Discovery Channel’s top 25 world travel experiences.
Initial analysis suggests that Edinburgh’s hogmanay welcomed visitors from more than 70 countries, which contrasts with visitors from 55 countries in 2013-14. The highlight of the festival was of course the hogmanay street party, which was a sell-out, with more than 75,000 revellers. It included two ticketed events: the concert in the gardens with Lily Allen, which attracted 9,500 revellers, and the ceilidh on the Mound, which attracted another 3,000 people.
Of course, it is not just in the city centre that revellers have fun as part of this great winter festival. We can add to that an additional estimated 100,000-plus people watching the midnight fireworks across the city and beyond and, on new year’s day, another sell-out event, with 1,000 participants braving the freezing waters of the Firth of Forth at Queensferry, in my constituency, to take part in the loony dook—viewed by an estimated 3,000 observers.
Edinburgh can rightly claim to have had a highly successful winter festival. I also agree with some of Stewart Stevenson’s comments. Local traditions merging with modern ideas have shown that Scotland can produce events that the world wants to come and see.
Anyone watching any news programme on new year’s day would have seen the way that other countries and cities across the globe celebrate the beginning of the new year. Sydney, New York, Berlin and London all produce spectacular events but do not necessarily produce festivals as we know them; that is the advantage that we have here in Scotland.
When we had a similar debate a few months ago, there was reference to the City of Edinburgh Council’s “Thundering Hooves” reports. Those reports refer to how Edinburgh maintains its position as the leading arts festival in the world. I believe that Edinburgh has a world-leading winter festival but we cannot be complacent. There is no doubt that there are pressures on public finances, thanks to austerity and various other problems, and I welcome the Scottish Government funding.
In my opinion, local authorities, local residents and the private sector all have to come together when organising local festivals, whether in Edinburgh or elsewhere, in order to work on sustainable models of planning and financing the national assets that are the winter festivals. Rather like life in general, the world does not owe Scotland a living. We are in competition with some huge players for the revenue that is generated by tourism.
At a time of year that can be less than pleasant, we need to take every advantage that we can muster. That includes our artistic talent and flair for planning festivals—I congratulate Faith Liddell of Festivals Edinburgh on her award in the new year’s honours list—and our ability to make local festivals relevant to local residents, who enjoy the festivities as much as our visitors do.