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Fewer performances. Public funding, in real terms, at 2008 levels. Corporate sponsors spooked by activists. The Edinburgh International Festival is a hotbed of drama before it even starts.
The annual festival of performing arts, which kicks off on Friday, is a highlight in Britain’s cultural calendar. The concomitant fringe festival, featuring weird and wonderful independently produced acts throughout the city, is bigger still, issuing more than 2.6mn tickets. The EIF attracted more than 127,000 attendees last year, an eighth of whom were international.
But funding the extravaganza is a tough act. EIF box office receipts make up just around a fifth of income. Raising ticket prices means reducing access: half the festival’s tickets are priced at or below £30, well beneath the levels of London’s West End or New York’s Broadway. That leaves the show heavily reliant on funds from the public and private sectors, both of which are constrained.
UK arts across the board are hampered by the dearth of philanthropic tycoons, of the type who gladly decant funds into shows and museums in the US. Corporate funding now comes with lashings of risks attached, as Baillie Gifford discovered last year. The Scottish fund manager’s support of literary festivals ended when it was targeted by activists for purported investments in the fossil fuel industry and in companies with links to Israel.
Fringe shows, which run the gamut from utterly brilliant to absolutely dreadful, are performer-funded, although small bursaries are available. Organisers warn they are unlikely to cover costs, which include venue hire, £100 to £400 registration fees and ticket commissions on top of transport and living expenses.
Still, there is a script to make it work. The festival, and especially the fringe, showcases creative talent. This is a pillar of the UK government’s aims and part of a sector — taking in films, gaming, music and other arts — growing at 1.5 times the rate of the overall economy, according to industry body Creative UK.
Bear in mind too the trickle-down spending generated as theatre and concert goers eat, quaff and sleep — to the tune of £500mn for Edinburgh, reckons consultancy BOP. That argues for a bump in public funding.
Corporate sponsors may well have decided the risks of supporting the arts outweigh the benefits. They are also becoming less generous across the board: overall charitable donations by FTSE 100 companies in 2023 were substantially down over the decade, according to the Charities Aid Foundation, even as profits rose by half as much again.
There is an economic case for companies to increase support. Sponsoring the Edinburgh International Festival, the world’s third-biggest ticketed event — after the Olympics and football’s World Cup — isn’t an entirely altruistic endeavour. Audiences span the demographic spectrum and include more than a sprinkling of affluent big spenders. When the curtain comes down, that counts for a lot.
louise.lucas@ft.com