Dale speaks to arts correspondent Brian Ferguson about festivals and the upcoming only UK tour date for ACDC at Murrayfield
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00:00Hello, and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Tuesday.
00:05My name is Dale Miller.
00:06I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman.
00:08I'm joined by Arts and Culture Correspondent, Brian Ferguson.
00:12Brian, plenty happening as always, even though it's February in the world of arts and culture.
00:17We'll get to that front page of today's Scotsman Thirstly.
00:22And we land on Labor being accused of hoodwinking the public over lower energy bill claims.
00:28This was comments from John Swinney, who made the hoodwink, winking reference after the
00:34new boss of GB Energy, the public investment firm set up by the UK Labor government admitted
00:40that the GB Energy initiative would take 20 years to create the 1000 jobs promise for
00:48Aberdeen.
00:49This is in the hub.
00:52Certainly not exactly the language that was coming out of Suu Kyi's government when they
00:56won the election.
00:58So John Swinney hitting back at that.
01:00But essentially, every party was the Scottish Tories, the Greens as well, critical.
01:06And I would expect we'll hear more on that front over the next 24 hours.
01:11Anna Sower speaking today at the time of recording this and would expect there'll be some tough
01:17questions put to him about GB Energy and whether the wall has been pulled over the eyes of
01:23people that voted for Labor at last year's general election.
01:27Also, the latest on Six Nations coverage, we're eyeing a big, big match that's going to take
01:33place this weekend at Murrayfield, a Scotland hosting island, one to watch.
01:39And you can read all the latest transfer deadline details, the wrap up from the conclusion of
01:47the transfer period yesterday at Scotsman.com.
01:50Brian, arts and culture, though, we've had Celtic connections ongoing, which is coming to an
01:56end now, but it's still a busy period.
01:59And you've got a good story today with outgoing Fringe Society head Shona McCarthy.
02:05Tell us a bit about it.
02:07Yeah, so Shona's into her final weeks in the job after a kind of real rollercoaster nine years.
02:13Obviously, five years ago this year, Covid happened, the whole thing ground to a halt
02:21dramatically, along with all the other festivals and events in Scotland.
02:24So she's had a real kind of rollercoaster tenure.
02:27There's been a big battle through her whole time, really, to try and get more funding support for
02:33the Fringe, but particularly coming out of Covid when, you know, the acute financial challenges
02:38around the event have just become more serious for everyone, particularly in terms of everyone's
02:42costs, including the Fringe Society.
02:45They basically lost their very small public funding that they had, government funding, seven or eight
02:54years ago, a very controversial decision at the time when Creative Scotland basically cut a number
03:00of organisations.
03:01There was a U-turn, but not for the Fringe Society.
03:03So they've been battling ever since, really, to try and get some kind of funding recognition from
03:09the Scottish Government.
03:11There's a distinction, really, between the Fringe Society and support for Edinburgh's festivals in
03:17general.
03:17There is quite a lot of support, or has been, for Edinburgh's festivals, particularly the
03:22Edinburgh International Festival, which has always had more than two million pounds from the
03:29Scottish Government in recent years.
03:33Basically, the Fringe has been a bit of an outlier.
03:36The Fringe Society has been a bit of an outlier.
03:38They don't put on any shows or run venues, but they do run a very big operation at the heart of
03:45the event.
03:45They run the official box office website.
03:49They publish the programme still, and that has perhaps been held against them by Creative
03:54Scotland and the Scottish Government, and certainly by some of the venues.
04:00It's been an awkward relationship between the Fringe Society and pretty much everyone else
04:06over that nine-year period.
04:08It's fair to say that, as far as Shona's concerned, there's been a breakthrough in terms of the
04:14relationship with the Government in particular, and that's really come out of the increased
04:19funding for culture that the Government has been very keen to talk about in the last few
04:26weeks, culminating in a big announcement last week, obviously, with the money that's been
04:32made available to pretty much every major arts company, festival, venue and event in the
04:38country.
04:39There was one glaring omission from that list of more than 260 different organisations.
04:46It was the Fringe Society.
04:47There wasn't a penny announced last week, once again.
04:52But Shona is adamant that there has been an acknowledgement at the highest level of the
04:58Government that the phrase she's used over the last year, that the Fringe Society has
05:05somehow fallen through the cracks in terms of public funding, she's told me in a really
05:12interesting chat the other day that there's been a breakthrough on that, there has been
05:15a commitment that that will be addressed, and there will be support for the Fringe Society
05:20out of new ring-fenced funding that's available.
05:24There's £4 million that's been set aside by the Government to bolster the ring-fenced
05:32funding for festivals.
05:33Now, that will be supporting events across the country, but the Fringe Society says they
05:40have a clear commitment that they will be getting some of that.
05:45There are some tensions around that.
05:48It's not all been finalised.
05:50Certainly, as far as a lot of the big venues are concerned, who are really obviously powerful
05:55and very influential, they want to see that funding support come directly to them.
06:01They want to bypass the Fringe Society and really believe that they've been far too influential.
06:08I've really expanded too much over the years, and they are separately trying to lobby the
06:16Government for direct support for them.
06:19There will be a lot of debate around that whole picture, basically, and who's right
06:24and who's wrong.
06:25But I think the Government does seem to have acknowledged that for the Fringe Society to
06:33get no support when every other arts organisation in the country does have support, there's
06:38something wrong with that.
06:40So, Creative Scotland didn't really feel that the Fringe Society met their funding
06:47criteria, but that was all said.
06:51I think that really was the catalyst for the Government to have a proper look at this,
06:56at the same time as the Government has obviously instigated a review of Creative Scotland,
07:01but also the whole wider culture sector and how it's supported.
07:06That review, the Government's promised that there'll be something back on that in the
07:10summer.
07:11I'd imagine by then we'll see the details of this support for the Fringe.
07:18It's a bizarre scenario where a lot of people in Edinburgh, particularly in terms of local
07:24politicians, see the Fringe as a huge money-making machine that is a huge success story.
07:33And the feeling is that maybe the city in general doesn't really see as many spin-offs
07:40as possible.
07:40But I think the reality behind the scenes is that the Fringe Society as an organisation
07:45has struggled financially in the last few years, but also anyone trying to put on shows
07:50at the Fringe has become harder and harder in the last few years to make that happen.
07:56And we see a lot of things that come out of nowhere all the time.
08:01You know, the new rules on short-term letting, for example, seem to have made it more difficult
08:06for people to find accommodation.
08:09And then another new thing that's been added to the mix, there was a big announcement
08:12yesterday that made this even more difficult is that the Scottish Rugby Union have been
08:18putting on, really ramped up the number of concerts that are on over the summer.
08:24Some of them are now filtering into August, so we've now got both Oasis and ACDC putting
08:30on huge shows that will, you know, the Oasis ones will be sold out.
08:34There's no doubt ACDC will be sold out.
08:36So that's another thing that's going to potentially make it harder for audiences and
08:41artists to come to Edinburgh at the same time.
08:44But, you know, I think it's long overdue that the Scottish Government address this
08:51situation, basically, because the inescapable fact is that the Fringe is by far the biggest
08:57event in terms of the number of performers and tickets sold, but it's also by far the
09:04biggest and most high-profile event Scotland has.
09:08So Shona will be hoping that there's a bit of a legacy there when she leaves the job
09:13in a few weeks' time.
09:14It's a good reminder there, Brian, not to take anything for granted, including the Fringe,
09:20clearly one of the biggest arts events on the calendar each year.
09:25Brian, I know you're bringing us more news around the Fringe in the next 24 hours.
09:30Please tune into the Scotsman site first thing Wednesday morning for all the latest on that
09:36front.
09:37You can follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram and Blue Sky, and please go ahead and pick
09:42up a copy of Tomorrow's Scotsman for all the very latest in the arts and culture scene
09:48here in Scotland.
09:49Brian, thanks to you and thanks to everyone for joining us.