Director of Edinburgh international festival warns cuts put its status at risk

<span>Last year’s opening event of the festival transformed George Heriot’s school. This year’s opening event has been cancelled amid funding concerns.</span><span>Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian</span>
Last year’s opening event of the festival transformed George Heriot’s school. This year’s opening event has been cancelled amid funding concerns.Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The director of the Edinburgh international festival has warned it could lose its status as one of the world’s greatest arts events without significant increases in public and philanthropic support.

Nicola Benedetti, a Grammy-winning classical violinist who became the festival’s director in 2022, said in an interview with the Guardian she feared the creative arts that underpinned it were at risk of stagnating because of repeated funding cuts.

She said an increase in Scottish government arts spending announced four weeks ago, while “a very welcome step in the right direction”, had come too late to prevent this year’s international festival being smaller.

“It’s too close to impact our 25 festival in any significant way,” she said. “There are one or two late levers we’d be able to potentially pull [to stage extra events], but even that will be down to late availability. So it’s not leaving us in a great place for the 25 festival.”

The festival has this year been forced to cancel its opening event, which has previously included gala concerts and light projections staged at Edinburgh Castle, at Tynecastle Park football stadium and the Usher Hall.

Benedetti said it was unclear whether the extra £34m secured in the budget by Angus Robertson, the Scottish government’s culture secretary, including £4m more for festivals, would lead to a significant boost to the international festival’s future funding.

The government arts agency Creative Scotland is due to publish its spending plans in late January. Benedetti hopes it can fund an expansion in the festival’s programming in later years. Founded in 1947, it celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2027.

“I’m seeing the next three, four years of the festival as one grand opera that builds and builds and, you know, we have our 80th anniversary,” she said. “And a year after any anniversary, you have to be incredibly bold with what you’re doing next. So I’m looking at long term.”

The first Scot and the first woman to lead the international festival, Benedetti said there were still widespread fears about the vitality and health of Scottish arts, which have experienced year-on-year cuts.

She said about half of the arts companies appearing at this August’s festival would be Scottish, but the wider funding crisis was deeply damaging. It chipped away at artistic and human potential, and that harmed the sector as a whole, she said.

Robertson’s funding settlement had not dispelled those concerns. “There is still definitely anxiety. I do not believe that the recent announcement has quashed everyone’s fears; that’s not what it’s done.”

She added: “I have to say that my concern is mostly for the whole ecosystem in Scotland. We are so interlinked in our festival, [if] you remove the engine of the creative arts scene in Scotland, at the most specific and personal level, the impact to our festival would be monumental.

“Speaking as a musician and a cultural advocate, and just as a Scottish citizen, you start to take that away and diminish that from the broader, you know, societal picture in Scotland, and we’re just in trouble.”

The Covid crisis led to the cancellation of all the city’s summer festivals, including the book festival and the fringe, in 2020 and then severely restricted events in 2021, heavily affecting their finances and scale.

Benedetti had no experience as an arts administrator and was hired for her insights as an artist and teacher, and to democratise the festival – a bold, risky move, in her words. Her arrival coincided with significant financial challenges: thanks to the pandemic and funding cuts, its spending power has fallen by 26%.

In 2019 the festival raised £13.85m, a sum worth about £17.4m at current prices, and made a surplus. By contrast, it raised £12.8m last year, 9% less than in 2022, and has lost £4m over the past two years – deficits heavily reduced by tax credits.

Benedetti said government cuts meant the festival had had to double its income from philanthropic sources simply to maintain a standstill budget – a situation that threatened its global standing.

“The financial picture that we are battling is not where I believe we should be, given to what degree we punch above our weight internationally and how the festival is heralded and celebrated and revered,” she said.

She said wealthy people and businesses needed “to see philanthropy as a part of their duty”, particularly in an era when so many profited from selling “highly addictive” games and electronic devices. “If they or their organisation or their company is successful, that’s just what one should do.”