Edinburgh International Festival Funding: Freedom and Whisky?
The official announcement of the Edinburgh International Festival’s programme, which the EMR pre-empted by a couple of days, came with a side order of whisky, courtesy of The Macallan’s new sponsorship deal. This will fund a new opening event – indeed a “New Ritual” for ten thousand or more people, in keeping with the EIF’s 2024 theme, ‘Rituals that Unite Us’. Pinwheel, under creative director, Katy Fuller, is the organisation employed to run the event. It specialises in Son et Lumiere presentations, both large and small, with ‘The Scotsman’ betting on Salisbury Crags as the backdrop. Their article also notes the EIF has previously indicated their opposition to any curbs on alcoholic drinks’ sponsorship of cultural organisations – they have been actively seeking new partnerships with Scottish food and drink brands for some time.
The Festival Director and her team are rightly delighted to have a new commercial sponsor. However, any freedom one sponsor provides is short-lived, before the EIF staff grapple with other funding challenges. With much penny-pinching going on in the arts, it’s salutary to look at the billions which have been wasted on HS2 or hived off to tax havens from Covid funds, or even closer to home, spent on ferries which aren’t ready, or the £35 million paid out for a weekend Cycle Event – by the Cabinet Secretary for Culture! Nicola Benedetti and Francesca Heygi have done a good job in making us aware that the EIF’s public funding from the Scottish Government (via Creative Scotland) and Edinburgh Council has scarcely altered in recent years. In 2009, Jonathan Mills received around 4.6 million which represented about 50% of his budget; in 2023 the EIF received a similar sum, now worth around 38% of total funding. The EIF produces Annual Reports, and it’s easy to trace the gradual decline in the value of public funding over the years. Currently tax reliefs from the UK government on orchestral and theatre performances provides a useful top-up (16% of the total last year), but that is due to end in two years.
Culture Counts, a body representing Scottish arts organisations, forecast last year that a “perfect storm” of long-term budget pressures, reduced income generation and increased operating costs would lead to some going out of business. This year’s report finds the situation even worse. They point out that the amount Scotland spends on the arts as a percentage of GDP is one of the lowest in Europe, 28th of 34 countries and recommend an immediate increase of 30% in the culture budget for 2024-2025. This would be £104million, or 0.16% of the Scottish Government’s total budget of £59.8 bn. Angus Robertson may be half-listening, as his statement to the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture committee last week certainly mentioned £100 million, but this was the target for 2029, safely after the next Holyrood election. Next year’s proposed uplift is £15.8 million which the Culture Secretary “recognises will not rectify many years of standstill funding”.
Edinburgh Council has given out grants for the arts totalling £4.6 million for each of the last three years. Funding for the next three-year cycle will be decided shortly. At their December meeting, the Culture and Communities Committee received a report commissioned in October on the impact of standstill funding, which estimated that the council’s arts fund would need to have risen by £1.1 million to keep up with inflation in the four years since 2019. (Their revenue increased by 2.2% while inflation went up 24%) The EIF is its largest beneficiary, receiving £1.9 million in 2023 (Capital Theatres are second highest with around £500, 000), so they have “lost” over £400, 000.
It's a grim picture all round for the funding of arts in Scotland and a tough way ahead for the EIF in the immediate future. If there’s some hope, it lies in the occasional willingness of the UK government to fund capital projects. The King’s Theatre, still out of action for 2024, has received a grant of £2 million from the Levelling-up Fund to make its revamped buildings fully accessible. EIF Reports can be found here:
Annual Reports | Edinburgh International Festival (eif.co.uk) Culture Counts 2024
Funding For Culture 2024 - Culture Counts' Evidence — Culture Counts
Cover photo: Laurence Winram
