Attention-seeking is, of course, very much the name of the game in Edinburgh. You may have noticed that in the photographs on our news pages of persons in fancy costumes – or sometimes not much costume at all – publicising their shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It is seemly, however, that such behaviour remains the province of professional performers, because they do it well. Attention-seeking behaviour is less attractive in, say, a newly-elected member of parliament.
Yet that is the only way to read Tommy Sheppard’s ill-conceived address to the AGM of the Festival Fringe Society this week. In a speech based on such paucity of research that the back of an envelope would be an over-generous measure, Sheppard argued that the dates of the Fringe be moved back into July to coincide with the school holidays, because the current set-up discriminated against the local poor. His reasoning was not so much flawed as paper-thin and clearly off the top of head, but his kite-flying had the desired effect of winning him the column inches and air-time. It was the shallow action of a showman – Sheppard has returned to politics after a spell in comedy promotion – rather than the considered utterance of a policy-maker, as the people of Edinburgh East must have hoped their new Westminster representative would turn out to be.
Today, at the last of this year’s Herald Angels awards, we will award 2015’s singular Wee Cherub to the best of the reviews submitted by senior Edinburgh school pupils in our Young Critics project with the Edinburgh International Festival. This long-running partnership is built with a careful eye on the school calendar. Herald critics visit the schools to talk about their work after the EIF programme is launched and before the end of term, and the young people attend the productions after term has commenced. Interaction with the schools is at its heart, and the enthusiasm of particular teachers has been crucial to its success.
There are other projects at the book festival, which runs a discrete strand of events for children, and in the huge programme of the Fringe that similarly interact with schools. It is also true that schools from beyond Scotland, from south of the border and overseas, are able to bring shows to the Fringe because it is outside of term time and a working holiday for talented and enthusiastic young people. Sheppard clearly needs to be reminded that the population of Edinburgh doubles in August, and while the local audience is undoubtedly important, the place of the Edinburgh Festivals in the calendar is one of international significance.
Yet we would not expect Sheppard to suggest that the local school holidays be realigned to match the dates of the Fringe, because his concerns are small-minded and parochial. In this he comes across very much like a number of cultural spokesmen for the Scottish National Party of the past, when it was a couthy voice of opposition rather than the party of government in Scotland. Those men – and we sometimes hear from them still – are, I should stress, some distance from the more measured and knowledgable approach of the current, long-serving, Culture Secretary, a couple of ill-considered recent “bungs” of culture-cash perhaps excepted.
On the face of it, Tommy Sheppard, with his genuine hands-on experience of working in the arts sector, might have been reckoned to be a possible future contender for a culture spokesman role. On the basis of his rush into the limelight this week, we must hope that never comes about.
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