On the day that one of the jewels in Scotland's culture, the Edinburgh International Festival, unveiled a fascinating, innovative and in some way unprecedented programme for 2015, it seems almost impolite to mention something as crude as money.
However, an annual extravaganza of opera, classical music, theatre, dance - and this year, for the first time, pop, folk and jazz - of the scale and ambition of the EIF does not run on air, and indeed this year's festival will cost around £11m to stage.
In his first year, the event's director Fergus Linehan has been keen to stress the key financial contributions of sponsors and supporters, and also the festival's entrepreneurial desire to raise as much money as it can of its own.
However, its core funding has been and remains public funds, from the City of Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland, with additional funds from the Scottish Government. These funds, he says, could be seriously compromised in coming years by continuing austerity and squeezed civic budgets.
The EIF has maintained its reputation and scale by being big: big on ambition, size, and, inevitably, scale comes at a cost. Linehan said the answer to his question of what kind of festival Scotland wants could well be 'a cheaper one'. But the consequences would a lesser event, for Edinburgh, Scotland and the world.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article