Before this year's Edinburgh International Festival – his first as director - Fergus Linehan issued a promise but also some reassurance. The promise was that there would be some changes to the festival, particularly to a music programme that he saw as too conservative. But the reassurance was just as clear: "the barbarians are not at the gate," he said.
And so it has proved with a successful few weeks that have combined the best of the way the festival traditionally does things, with some interesting experimentation. For the first time, the music programme has featured several rock and pop acts, and while such innovation might normally have been expected to frighten the horses, it has proved popular because Mr Linehan has tried out new ideas without breaking a successful mould. It is also proof of his belief that high and low art can sit together well and the early signs are that it is working well at the EIF. The only note of caution for him is that in years to come a balance will have to be maintained between acts at the pop and rock end and the Usher Hall concerts that form the backbone of the festival.
One of Mr Linehan's other experiments in his first year has also worked, although in a sense it is a return to the festival's roots. In recent years, the EIF and the Fringe have been staggered, but one of the new director's first decisions was to move the EIF back a week so both events ran concurrently. The fear had been that doing so would put the festivals in competition with each and damage ticket sales, but exactly the opposite has happened. This year has been a record one at the box office at the EIF, with sales up 20 per cent, and it has been a successful year at the Fringe too, with attendance by Glaswegians particularly healthy. The fact that there have been no clashes with major sporting events and the weather has held up (as well as can be expected) have also helped.
In some ways, all the success this year would appear to be in defiance of an arts landscape in which public funding is under continuing pressure, but in road-testing some new ideas, Mr Linehan is also aware that he will have to find more commercial answers to the question of how it will be paid for. This year's opening event, a free performance of the choral work Harmonium with a series of spectacular animations projected on to the Usher Hall, was an exciting innovation, but also the kind of event that would work perfectly in an increasingly commercial future.
There will be other challenges for the EIF and its sister festivals in years to come. The recent Festivals Forum report was a sequel to the absurdly titled Thundering Hooves and made all kinds of apocalyptic predictions about Edinburgh being toppled from the top tier of cultural cities if it did not raise more money and innovate much more. The title did not help but there is truth in the need to innovate, particularly on digital platforms, and commercial sponsors will always be needed and needed more in years to come. But the early signs are that Mr Linehan is aware of all these risks and opportunities and is up for taking them on. He has made a strong, promising start.
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