Edinburgh Festival Fringe chief's 'constant struggle' for support and fears for future of Scottish culture

The outgoing figurehead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has admitted it has been a "constant struggle" to get more financial support for the event - as she backed a new campaign to lift Scotland off the bottom of a European league table for arts spending.

Shona McCarthy has revealed her frustration over the treatment of the event and raised concerns over the future of Edinburgh as a city of culture.

She has told how she felt the Fringe was more valued in England and overseas than within the city council and the Scottish Government.

And she said there was a "very real fear" across the Scottish cultural landscape over the lack of future funding for the arts.

Ms McCarthy suggested the Fringe was still seen by decision-makers in Scotland as "messy" and amateurish rather than a crucial event for the UK's cultural ecosystem.

She suggested a key reason for her departure was having to repeatedly make the case to support the festival. She drew a contrast with the £7m in new funding which had been committed to the Fringe Society by the UK Government in recent years.

Ms McCarthy, chief executive of the Fringe Society, which oversees the festival, was speaking as it published its annual review, in which she warns that the 77-year-old festival is too valuable to be allowed to slip into decline.

She will leave the role in the spring after a nine-year tenure, during which she has constantly highlighted how the Fringe is the second biggest event in the world after the Olympic Games, which are held every four years.

She told The Scotsman: “When there is a big sporting event that a city wants to secure or bid for there is not a problem with coming up to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of pounds. Their legacy is largely about infrastructure.

"I think there’s been a lack of understanding and a lack of investment in proper research to look at the legacy of the Fringe, on not just Edinburgh or Scotland, but the UK’s whole cultural ecosystem.

"Edinburgh is a crucible for the performing arts from all over the world. These people are not investing to come here for no reason. They are all fueled by the opportunities that Edinburgh offers. Somehow, that is just not captured, or the message just doesn't land.

"People here almost see the Fringe as a messy, free-for-all, amateur thing. They don't see it as an amazing, professional, ecosystem for the creative industries.”

Ms McCarthy announced her departure in October, weeks after publishing an open letter warning of a risk of complacency over the "hard-won and fragile" success of the Fringe.

Ms McCarthy said there was an element of "snobbery" over how the Fringe is seen in Scotland, particularly around stand-up comedy.

She added: "We can go to the UK Government and make a case. People can look at the Fringe completely objectively and see with fresh eyes what is happening in Edinburgh every single year, how incredible it is and why it is so important to the UK’s cultural ecosystem.

"Here, it has felt like a constant struggle over the last nine years. Honestly, one of the reasons I am going is that I see the red mist descending. You go into a room and find yourself eye-rolling because you are hearing the same conversations that you heard nine years ago.

"I can't keep making the same case to the same people and for them to not get it."

Ms McCarthy said the "defining moment" of this year's Fringe was a "collective rallying cry" from performers and companies at the shutdown of a Creative Scotland fund for arts due to uncertainty over its Scottish Government support.

There was a further blow for the cultural sector in October when it emerged that Creative Scotland had been forced to delay hundreds of long-term funding applications for months after the government failed to commit a budget to the programme.

The Fringe’s annual review has been published days after the launch of a new campaign demanding the Scottish Government "follow through" on £100m of promised new investment for the arts, which now accounts for just 0.56 per cent of its overall budget.

Ms McCarthy said: "You can have all the warm words in the world, but the fact is that Scotland is now at the bottom of the European league table. It’s not acceptable and something has to be done about it.

"If the European average is 1.5 per cent, that should be the target. Do we not want Scotland to be up there with the best in Europe?

"I really don't understand how it's got to this point. Maybe there have been too many strategies and not enough prioritisation or action.

"The frustration across the whole sector is palpable just now.

"But there is also a very real fear - for jobs, infrastructure, programming and for a reputation that Edinburgh and Scotland has built up over many years.

"When you see the kind of amazing things that are happening in places like Manchester and Liverpool, I really fear for Edinburgh and its position, whether that is as a festival city or as a cultural capital.

"I don't know how organisations like the Lyceum, the Traverse and other organisations in the city are functioning at the moment."

Ms McCarthy suggested the city council also needed to rethink how it supported the Fringe, to reflect its popularity with people who live and work in the Scottish capital.

She added: "The city still needs to decide what Fringe it wants.

"It needs to understand the bits of it that are outwith its control and decide whether it wants to provide a supportive, nurturing, welcoming space for this incredible thing from and within the city, which also brings people to the city.

"The relationship between the citizens of Edinburgh and the Fringe, that sometimes gets totally misrepresented.

"What we know is that the citizens are the biggest supporters of the Fringe in terms of the people who are going out to shows.

"A tiny number of complaining voices get much bigger amplification in their thinking than the quiet majority who are just going about their business, and supporting things by buying tickets and attending.

“The mayors of Liverpool and Manchester talk about culture being the rock fuel of the economy.”