Time to cancel the Edinburgh Festival
As I write, the rumour machines suggest that the Edinburgh Festivals will be cancelled on April 1st, appropriately April Fools’ Day. If it does happen no one should doubt it. It’s not a joke, it's deadly serious for many artists and for the Edinburgh economy, which will lose around £300 million. My major question is why have the Festival authorities waited so long? I wrote the following letter over a week ago. It was published as the letter of the day in the Scotsman last Tuesday and was published in the National on Wednesday. Since then nothing from the Festival authorities. Indeed, as I point out in my letter below they no longer even bother replying to enquirers, saying they are "too busy"!
Letter, published in The Scotsman (24/3/20) and The National (25/3/20):
I love the Edinburgh Festival. I've been attending it most years for over 50 years. Every year I go to every morning concert in the Queens Hall and every evening for concerts or operas in the Usher Hall or the Festival Theatre. In recent years I've been reviewing festival events for The Wee Review, and was looking forward to reviewing for my new online magazine The Edinburgh Music Review. So why am I calling for it to be cancelled now? After last night's lockdown from Boris Johnson I would really think this is an academic question. I'm certain that the Festival and the Fringe will be cancelled. I have attempted to talk to the Festival Director and press officer about this but with no response. I suspect they may be a little busy, but when you send an email as editor of an online music magazine to the director of the festival and you get a response that says not only are they too busy to reply but they will never bother to read it you have to make your own judgement.
It's my judgement that the virus crisis won't be over by August, that even if it was held, no-one would come, or at least many fewer, making the festival an economic disaster. Performers need to know as soon as possible to plan their alternatives; people who come from overseas need to know to cancel their travel; we all need to know to plan our summers even if we aren't locked down.
Some in Edinburgh will welcome a festival free August and maybe it will give us time to rethink the role and the scale of the festival for the future. Edinburgh is greater than the Festival, though we do need it. But let's cancel it now to save it for the future!
The future?
Assuming I'm correct, the cancellation of the Festival and the Fringe will allow Edinburgh a chance to reflect on the future of the festival and its impact on Edinburgh. There is no doubt that the Fringe has become too big for Edinburgh and swamps the city in August. This, coupled with the rise in AirBnB in Edinburgh, has driven rents sky high. Edinburgh has the highest concentration of Airbnb in Britain with over 13,000 rentals in the city centre, many of them owned by absentee landlords, and this has driven up rents all year round in the private rented sector. The Scottish Government has taken some powers over the privately rented sector recently but these are not strong enough. Green MSP Andy Wightman has presented proposals for much tougher control in this area and the cancellation of the festivals may give us the space to implement them. Already the likely cancellation has caused a move in the AirBnB market to longer term rentals by some landlords. Edinburgh has also suffered from too much tourism during the year and in particular at Xmas and New Year, when the centre of Edinburgh has become a very commercial zone with Xmas markets and funfairs.
The cancellation of the festival may give us time for a reassessment of the scale of the event and maybe limit the size of the Fringe, and for the International Festival to return to its original purpose of presenting the best of Scottish culture to the world. This is something which has been neglected in recent years, particularly under the previous director Jonathan Mills, who didn't seem interested in Scottish culture. Of course, the Festival should also attempt to put on events of international quality, which sadly in recent years it has failed to do, particularly in the case of opera. Fergus Linehan, the newish festival director, did put on 9 operas during the Festival's 70th birthday programme, but since then the number has dropped sharply and rumour has it that there was only one staged opera scheduled for this year. Indeed Tim Ashley, the Guardian's opera critic, told me some years ago "sadly the Edinburgh Festival is no longer of international quality, as far as opera is concerned". Of course, opera is expensive, but surely if Wexford and Buxton can stage 3 operas in 3 weeks with a fraction of the budget of Edinburgh, we can do the same. The chamber music in the Queens Hall and the orchestral concerts in the Usher Hall are of a high standard and, as the visiting Ellen Kent Company showed recently (see reviews), the Usher Hall can be transformed into a very convincing opera house for semi-staged operas. So yes, let's cancel the festival and use the time to make it smaller and better.
