New sources of funding will need to be found to ensure Edinburgh holds onto its ‘world-leading’ festival city crown, according to a new blueprint.
The 2030 vision warns investment is needed for infrastructure, venues and support for workers to help the festivals cope with the impact of covid and the cost-of-living crisis.
It also stresses the need to tackle long-standing concerns over working conditions, the concentration of events in the city, and the ‘over-commercialisation’ of public spaces.
The vision, which both the Scottish Government and the city council helped draw up, backs the idea of the festivals spreading out more across the city.
The festivals, which get around £10 million in public funding, have been valued at more than £313m to the economy.
But they have suffered a 30 per cent ‘real terms reduction’ support since 2008.
The UK Government’s levelling up fund and the Scottish Government’s proposed tourist tax are among the possible sources of new funding.
The blueprint has been published by Festivals Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Festivals Forum, which the council, Scottish Government, and Edinburgh University sit on.
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It states: “Particular key areas of focus will include the refitting of historic city venues to modern standards, and the planning of new cultural infrastructure aligned with sustainability targets.
"Sustaining the attractiveness of Edinburgh’s cultural quality of life requires infrastructure plans backed by many levels of public and private support.”
Edinburgh: City of Imagination, said there is a ‘critical need’ to tackle sustainability, growing visitor numbers and the surge in properties being use for short-term lets.
It states: “Cultural workers, who have seen worse Covid losses than any other sector, want to see more diverse, accessible, sustainable and fair festivals as part of national rebuilding of the creative economy.
“Community representatives have highlighted environmental protection of the city centre and the over-commercialisation of public spaces as key concerns, and that they would like festival offers distributed more widely across the city.
“Businesses, universities and colleges have stressed the need for Edinburgh to re-establish itself as a world city, for the exchange of ideas and talent, and to enhance regional prosperity.”
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Simon Gage, chair of Festivals Edinburgh, said: “All of the festivals believe in this strategy and want to see it delivered.
"We see it is essential to our future flourishing.
“It’s powerful because it embraces 11 festivals and all our funders and stakeholders.
“We’re all excited about the future, but we’re in a period of recovery and a decade of massive change, maybe the greatest the festivals have had to experience since they were founded.
“Covid has hit us hard and we’re not out of the woods yet.
“We don’t know about the certainty of our audiences to return and recruitment is troubling because a lot of people have left our industry and left the country.
"Climate change requires business model revision on a scale that no festival has encountered before and the cost-of-living crisis is hurting our audiences, our staff and our supply chains.”
Susan Deacon, chair of the Edinburgh Festivals Forum, said: “Resources are always finite, but when the public purse is under the kind of pressure it’s under at the moment, it is even more important that people work together and share resources.
“This vision is rooted in reality – it’s absolutely anchored in the real world.
“The festivals have done a huge amount to think about how to renew, refresh and respond to all the challenges, but it requires a whole city to work together to ensure that that 'festival city' thrives."
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