FOR years Edinburgh has enjoyed the global prestige of being home to the world's biggest arts festival.
Now Glasgow is being urged to seize the opportunity of the Commonwealth Games to develop a major rival festival of its own.
Neil Butler, artistic director at UZ Arts, has been involved in the creation of high-profile events such as Glasgow’s Millennium Hogmanay celebrations and Dressed to Kilt in New York. He believes there is a gap in the market for a festival embracing all forms of Scottish art and culture.
Butler has previously directed the Merchant City Festival, which ends today, and arts charity UZ is running the international element of this year’s event. He says the Commonwealth Games of 2014 will provide the ideal platform to launch the new event.
Organisers have not yet set the budget for the Commonwealth Games cultural programme. That has lead to warnings that the chance to showcase the nation’s culture with a Games arts festival should not be treated as an “afterthought”.
With Edinburgh’s festivals largely based around an international programme, Butler argues there is scope for a new event in Glasgow focusing mainly on Scottish culture – ranging from dance and theatre to film and literature.
“It’s not about being in competition to Edinburgh,” he said. “If you wanted to go to a festival and see a bit of everything and really get a taste of what Scotland has to offer artistically and culturally, there is a wonderful gap in the market that Glasgow is perfectly placed for.”
At the moment the Merchant City Festival is expected to be the mainstay of the cultural programme alongside the Commonwealth Games.
The four-day event, now in its 10th year, has already been moved from its usual September slot to tie in with the Games. The programme this year includes a sporting theme to celebrate the countdown to 2014.
The budget for the festival, with 130 events in 54 venues, is £115,000. Last year it made £640,000 for the local economy and attracted 70,000 people, half from outside Glasgow.
In 2006, Melbourne spent around £5 million on a cultural festival to go with its Games. The 12-day event was billed as the largest free cultural festival held in Australia. Butler says if Glasgow wants to develop a similar festival it needs an adequate level of investment.
He said: “It would be fantastic if the Merchant City Festival programme could develop into the Commonwealth year and then beyond … The focus must be to seize this wonderful opportunity.”
The Merchant City Festival is funded by Glasgow City Council through arm’s-length body Glasgow City Marketing Bureau.
It is chaired by Glasgow City Council leader Gordon Matheson, who said it was now a highlight of the city’s cultural calendar.
He said: “We are setting the festival up to become the key cultural attraction for visitors to the city throughout the 2014 Games.”
The organisers of Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games said the budget and details for the cultural programme had yet to be decided.
A spokeswoman for Glasgow 2014 said: “It is something we will start to look at now and then flesh out the details when we have got the programmes in place.”
But MSP Patricia Ferguson, Labour’s spokeswoman for the Commonwealth Games, said plans should be put in place now.
“We must make it our mission to ensure those visiting for the Games see more of Scotland than the running track,” she said.
“Showcasing Glasgow, and indeed the rest of Scotland, cannot afford to be an afterthought.”
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