Featured Image: Edinburgh International Festival 2023
Edinburgh International Festival director Nicola Benedetti has said that it could lose its status as a major, global arts event without an increase in public and philanthropic support.
Talking to the Guardian, Benedetti said that she “feared” for the creative arts that helped to curate the festival because of repeated funding cuts.
While the Scottish Government has recently increased arts spending, Benedetti said that it was a little too late, meaning 2025’s festival will be smaller.
She said in the interview: “It’s too close to impact our ’25 festival in any significant way. There are one or two late levers we’d be able to potentially pull [to stage extra events], but even that will be down to late availability. So it’s not leaving us in a great place for the ’25 festival.”
The festival has been forced to cancel its opening event and Benedetti said that there were still “widespread fears about the vitality and health of Scottish arts”. She also said that roughly half of the arts organisations appearing at the festival in August would be Scottish, but further funding cuts would be damaging.
“I have to say that my concern is mostly for the whole ecosystem in Scotland. We are so interlinked in our festival, [if] you remove the engine of the creative arts scene in Scotland, at the most specific and personal level, the impact to our festival would be monumental,” she told the Guardian.
Last year’s festival welcomed more than 125,000 attendees to the Scottish capital city across 160 ticketed performances. More than 50% of tickets available were sold at a price point of £30 (€36/$37) or less.
This year’s Edinburgh International Festival will take place from August 1-24.
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