Hansard

I thank the committee for having the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society here this morning—it is great to be here. I promised myself that I would approach this year with joy and positivity, so I come at this from a positive angle. So many of my colleagues have already covered many of the things that I had noted down to say, so I will not repeat that; I will jump quite quickly to the specifics of the fringe. Like everybody else, we welcome and celebrate the efforts that have gone in. Everybody is aware of just how acutely challenging it is, in the current environment, to create a budget that is fair to all the different needs. We therefore welcome the budget announcement and the cabinet secretary’s hard work to secure the investment, and we welcome in particular the pledges from the First Minister to increase the funding. There are real positives in there for Creative Scotland, for the national portfolio organisations and for our colleagues at V&A Dundee—I was absolutely delighted to hear that news. In truth, however, we have absolutely no idea how the budget is going to impact the Edinburgh fringe. We need a specific and bespoke response. The fringe is a global brand for Scotland, but we fall between the cracks of all the existing funding mechanisms; I still find it quite astounding to say that out loud. We get support through the expo and place-based investment funds, but those are restricted—funding from the first is to support the Made in Scotland Showcase at the fringe and the onward touring of shows from Scotland, and funding from the second is to support our extensive community engagement and our access and learning programmes. We do not receive core support. We suffer from not being a regularly funded organisation, and not fitting within the major events portfolio as we are not a mobile or one-off event. We are not a start-up, so we do not fit with the enterprise route. We are not right for Creative Scotland, EventScotland or Scottish Enterprise, although occasionally we have secured one-off small pots of funding. However, we are the biggest performing arts festival in the world, which happens every single year in the Scottish capital, including some 900 shows from across Scotland: from the isles and from every single other part of Scotland. There is also the reputational impact and reach; the benefit for the performing arts across the UK; and the 63 countries around the world that participate on the stages of the fringe. To put starkly our current position, we go into 2024 with no reserves, carrying a huge deficit and carrying a loan from the Scottish Government to survive Covid. We are the only cultural organisation in receipt of a loan as opposed to a grant, and we continue to suffer from the historic wrong of having been removed as an RFO by Creative Scotland back in 2016, which is why we had to get a loan. In 2020, we said that it would take us five to six years to recover from the wreckage of the pandemic. 2024 is the fourth year of that, and it is crucial that we at the very least break even this year. We very much hope that much of the funding announced will go to supporting those Scottish artists, companies and venues that are at the heart of the fringe, but the fringe society and those producing venues outwith the RFO portfolio need a bespoke understanding and approach, because we have no idea how the budget announcements will impact us. On the bigger picture, I think that Scotland needs to decide whether it wants to retain Edinburgh’s status as a festival city. Edinburgh’s festivals are not like festivals in other cities. Edinburgh has been an inspirational festival city to Europe and the world. I know this because I was on the outside of it looking in with massive envy until I got on the inside of it and realised just how jeopardised it is. If we value and want to retain the global reputation that that status brings, there needs to be a new approach. The festivals know that, and we are working more collaboratively and more creatively than ever, but we need a new approach and a new response from the Scottish Government and the City of Edinburgh Council. We are very effective at attracting commercial partnerships, but we have to invest in people to be able to do that. We need core investment to support the people, and we need to look like we are an attractive sector to work in. Everybody would agree that the attractiveness of our sector as a place of employment and a place for people to want to work has been severely damaged over the past few years. We have some philanthropic support and could attract more, but only if we can show that we also have Government investment, because we look less attractive to philanthropic giving if we do not have the support of our own Government. As Leonie Bell said, we want to be ambitious, world leading, competitive and excellent in all that we do. We have made major public commitments and targets around fair employment, sustainability, access, inclusion and Scotland’s international reputation, but it is hard to be ambitious and to achieve all the things that we want to as creative, entrepreneurial people when we cannot even get out of the deficit that we have been carrying since 2020. I will make a final couple of points that I do not think anybody has addressed yet. We appreciate how hard times are for everyone, but when there is money available, it is important that the right choices are made. I welcomed the shifting of the events budget into the portfolio of the Deputy First Minister, because it pained us last year to see such a level of investment in the UCI cycling world championships. I have nothing against cycling—cycling is great—but it was hard to see tens of millions of pounds going into a one-off event when there is a locally rooted, 76-year-old, long-term, high-value and low-cost event that has a sustained cultural, social and economic impact in every possible way. Making the right choices about locally rooted events over high-cost, low-value events is important. I am also greatly concerned by the tourism levy, because, when it comes into play, there seems to be a shopping list against it that will dilute its impact on everything. If there are no other routes for us to get support, we need, at the very least, to be written strongly into the approach. The fringe society wants to work collaboratively with the Scottish Government. We see ourselves as a major player in the nation’s cultural ecology, and we want to look forward and be positive. We support the Culture Counts ambition for Scotland as a nation to spend 1 per cent of Government expenditure on culture. That would still be below the European average, but it is a worthy ambition. 09:30