The Scotsman Bulletin Thursday August 01 2024 #Festival
Scotsman head of news Dale Miller speaks to arts correspondent Brian Ferguson as Edinburgh Festival season gets underway
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CreativityTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Thursday. My name's
00:12Dale Miller. I'm Head of News at the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Arts and Culture Correspondent
00:17Brian Ferguson. And Brian, no better time to join than the festivals in full swing,
00:22the Fringe starting, correct me if I'm wrong, tomorrow on Friday, and the other festivals
00:27all gearing up. You'll be excited? Absolutely, yeah. Best time of year. It all seems to just
00:34suddenly happen at the last minute. So yeah, the start of the week seemed very quiet but
00:39it's all about to kick off officially tomorrow. Let's hope the weather plays ball. It was
00:45lovely yesterday. It's looking grey and overcast as we film this today, Brian, so fingers crossed
00:50for a good couple of weeks for the festivals in Scotland as a whole so we get a summer.
00:55Let's talk about the front page of today's Scotsman firstly. And we led on an issue that
01:00is going to impact on the festivals and it's been strikes. Confirmed that eight days starting
01:07from August the 14th, this will be in the thick of the festivals, that we are going
01:14to see waste strikes. They will impact Edinburgh but not just Edinburgh, they'll impact a lot
01:19of other cities and towns and councils across Scotland as well. Wastewater workers intend
01:25to walk out. We'll have a story at Scotsman.com shortly about a warning from Edinburgh Council
01:33leader, Cammy Day, urging tourists to take their takeaway coffee cups, their takeaway
01:39boxes, etc. with them rather than trying to find a bin on Edinburgh streets. It's a worry.
01:45We had this two years ago. Edinburgh looks like a bit of a tip, Brian, and there'll be
01:50plenty of people, including those running the festivals and the venues and hosting shows
01:55that will hope some sort of resolution is reached over the next couple of days. I do
02:00want to talk about slightly better festivals news with you. You've got a couple of exclusives,
02:06one of those on the front of today's paper. You can read it at Scotsman.com. It is about
02:12tourist tax and hopes from those attached to the fringe.
02:16Yeah, I think generally people are getting more and more used to the idea that the tourist tax
02:22or the visitor levy, as the council prefers to call it, is actually going to happen. So people
02:30are now very much trying to lobby on behalf of their own sector or industry or area to make sure
02:42that they see some of the money that they believe they generate actually coming back to them,
02:48basically, or benefiting their industry. Unsurprisingly, in the cultural sector in
02:54general, but some of the big festivals in particular, who have really struggled to get
02:59any new public funding in recent years, despite the huge growth of these events and the huge
03:07popularity of them, the funding has actually dwindled quite dramatically over the last 15
03:13years or so. The Fringe Society, in particular, lost its Creative Scotland funding about six years
03:20ago, has tried to get back into that system and has failed, really hasn't made any big progress
03:26with the Scottish Government in trying to really get that event properly funded. So
03:33the Fringe Society in particular is pretty hopeful that there will be some funding found for,
03:40it's certainly a potential big route for new funding to be allocated for festivals in general,
03:50but for the fringe in particular. Again, they are by far the biggest event in Scotland,
03:56the fringe is actually by far the biggest culture event anywhere in the world, but
04:00certainly there's nothing on the same scale that happens in Edinburgh this month. There are loads
04:05of other festivals and it is a very different beast, it's a very complicated beast as well.
04:11There are multiple venue operators, they range in size, some venue operators are put on something
04:20like 250 shows, some venues basically have a handful of shows, some are based in Edinburgh
04:27all year round, some pop up and have been built basically in historic buildings and open spaces
04:35in the last few weeks, so it's a very complicated picture. There are tensions as ever behind
04:41the scenes, I think it's fair to say that some councillors will probably take a bit of convincing
04:46that some of that money should be ploughed back into the festivals. I think a lot of
04:55local politicians don't particularly either understand how the festivals work, or it seems
05:03to me they don't often understand the benefits that they bring, they often see them as an
05:07inconvenience I think. So that will take a bit of convincing, but I think certainly within some of
05:14the senior council officials they see it as the visitor levy, as a real hope that they'll finally
05:21be able to get some new investment into culture, which is always quite hard to tell when it comes
05:26to the country. So it's similar at the Scottish Government level, when it comes to the country,
05:30the budgets have been set, arts and culture tends to be quite low down the priority list,
05:36but this is seen as a bit of a way of making that impact I think.
05:40And Brian we know, we're on that, we know how much Creative Scotland in terms of working out
05:47the funding has been under pressure to have enough money, and the fact that it doesn't,
05:53you've written a lot about that for the Scotsman, so there's plenty to dig into there.
05:57Just to move on to your other story, the Scotsman's Fringe First Awards, it's a big deal,
06:04we love it every year, we love having our name attached to these awards, but there's a new
06:09partnership that's very exciting that's going to take it forward into a new year.
06:13Yeah well as with a lot of these things these days, commercial sponsorship has never been more
06:18important right across the festival landscape, and the Fringe in particular, and you know the awards
06:24are no different. Edinburgh University came in a few years ago with some very important funding for
06:29the Fringe First Awards, which saw them through their 50th anniversary last year, and yeah some
06:36great news really that Queen Margaret University and Edmund Apron have come in for this year.
06:42The Fringe First Awards, a tremendous history, they were brought, actually brought in at quite
06:47a precarious time for the Fringe, I think there was a feeling in the early 70s that there wasn't
06:52so much new work being presented, so the awards were instigated by our then arts editor Alan
06:59Wright to really ensure that new work was championed at the Fringe, and some of the early
07:04people that kind of were recognised were people like Stephen Fry, Rowan Atkinson, Billy Cornley
07:12actually, and you know people who may be not best remembered for their work in theatre, and of
07:19course in recent years you know the two big badges of honour for the Fringe First were Phoebe Wallet
07:25Brinch in 2013, was a complete unknown when she was here with the first incarnation of Fleabag,
07:32which went on to a huge success, you know had, I was just looking back yesterday, had you know
07:39success at the BAFTAs, won Emmys, Golden Globes, goodness knows how many other awards,
07:44and Phoebe actually has agreed to become an honorary president of the Fringe Society,
07:51on the back of that and is always telling her story, and then there's been a kind of
07:55fairly remarkable recent story of course with Richard Gadd, who was a stand-up comedian on
08:02the Fringe for a long time, he won the big comedy award, I think it was six or seven years ago at
08:06the Fringe, playing in a really tiny venue in the old town, and on the back of that he did a big
08:12theatre show just before Covid, Baby Reindeer, which was really talking about his experiences
08:20of being stalked, and that won a Fringe First that year, it was then commissioned for a Netflix
08:27series, which a lot of people will have seen by now, and has been one of the big Netflix
08:31success stories this year, so it's fair to say that there's a lot of people around there still
08:36trying to find, they'll be looking this year for the new, either the new Baby Reindeer or the new
08:41Fleabag, because these kind of things undoubtedly, you know they really kind of feed
08:49the kind of industry that's behind the Fringe, so there'll be, there's you know countless people
08:54will be looking from the film and TV industry for the next big things in Edinburgh over the next
08:59few years, and again people like Richard and Phoebe, you know they weren't playing in big
09:03venues when those shows were on, they were playing in venues just either on or off the Cowgate in
09:09Edinburgh, so you know those venues are still very much where the stars of the future can be found
09:16in the most unlikely places. And I just want to highlight to all our viewers and readers that
09:21throughout the festival, over the rest of August, we're going to have content from across the various
09:27festivals showcased prominently on our home page, we've got an Edinburgh Festivals section
09:34that will be updated throughout the course of the month, and you'll be able to get all the latest
09:40reviews, what shows to see, and including some of the latest news and on the ground coverage
09:47from yourself Brian as well, so please visit our website and read everything that you want ahead
09:53of going to shows this month. Now Brian thanks for joining us, please follow us on X Facebook,
09:59Instagram, and go out and support local journalism and buy a copy of The Scotsman tomorrow. Thank you.