What it looks like when a city is serious about being a cultural capital

The Fringe does have impact, and this is reality, not a boast. Of the 3.2 million tickets issued in Edinburgh in August, around 85 per cent are for the Fringe, and about a third of those are bought by people who live here. We estimate the Fringe’s annual return to this city at around £500 million. That upside is felt all year, as restaurants, bars and small businesses cite the August boom as the thing that keeps them afloat. 

We know that not every resident experiences August as a gift. For some it means crowded pavements, noise and a city that feels briefly borrowed by other people. It can feel intrusive and disruptive. That can mask what the Fringe enables us to do the rest of the year, in schools and community groups in every Council ward. Last year we worked with 37, making sure access to the arts is not a luxury only for those who can afford it. We, together with the Fringe community, issued tens of thousands of tickets to people who could not otherwise have bought them. And then there’s the other point: people save for years and fly halfway round the world for something that, if you live here, is a bus ride away, waiting to be stepped into. 

There is, though, a disconnect between what we do and the level of Edinburgh City Council support. The Council’s total financial contribution to the entirety of the Fringe is £75,000, earmarked for Street Events. The Fringe Society and the many venues who operate in the city pay the Council significantly more than that back for permits and licences and, now, as a result of the Tourist Visitor Levy, an extra £6 million from artists, venues and audiences. Six million pounds in, £75,000 back. Nothing  to those who build and run the venues, nothing for the artists who give visitors a reason to be here. Council are proposing a 5 per cent uplift which will add £3,750 to the current grant, to £78,750, fixing that level for another year, while still ignoring the rest of the ecosystem. Ask any capital in the world what it would contribute to an event issuing 2.6 million tickets. The answer would not be £78,750. 

The comparison with other cities is stark. Adelaide Fringe is the world’s second largest, inspired by ours and built on the same open-access model. Its city council pays $290,000 a year, roughly double our grant in sterling, for a festival issuing 42 per cent of our ticket numbers. Per ticket, Adelaide invests about five times what Edinburgh does. Berlin gave the Berlinale a token €25,000 for years, then moved to €2 million in a single budget cycle when it judged the festival at structural risk.

Avignon, Montreal, Melbourne and Salzburg tell similar stories. That is what it looks like when a city is serious about being a cultural capital, and serious about protecting the golden goose rather than putting it in jeopardy. 

The Council’s current plans do not match that ‘cultural capital’ ambition. The Visitor Levy is a chance, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the birth of the world’s most admired Festival City, to correct that. We support the principle: tourism puts pressure on city services, and residents should not carry the cost alone. We also feed it.

Underfunding the single biggest driver of funds into the levy is a different order of risk. When that driver weakens, the whole fund becomes at risk. Nothing holds the rest together. Unless the levy is seen as a chance to invest in what generates it, the moment will be squandered and, ironically, the levy will be poorer for it. 

We tabled a proposal for TVL to support an annual grant of £1.7 million. This amount is consistent with the Council’s commitment to other projects, sports events and festivals – all with considerably less impact than the Fringe.  This would create two types of support for Fringe venues and producers: to upgrade the infrastructure venues need to stage the festival at all, addressing their escalating costs and increased risk, and to underwrite the financial costs of creative ambition, so what happens on our stages stays world-class. A better, more accessible and sustainable Festival would be the result. 

The ask is grounded in the Fringe Society’s convening role, not our own balance sheet. The Society does not programme shows, own venues or retain ticket income yet we are also the only organisation positioned to speak for the whole. We carry the brand, governance, marketing, box office, support for participants, and the market-making that lets several hundred independent operators behave, for three weeks, as one festival.   

Our proposal isn’t to take from other festivals and give to us. This is not a zero-sum contest, but recognises each festival’s unique value and asks how each can still deliver for this city over the next eighty years. 

We have handed the Council something straightforward. We were told it cannot make an exception for the Fringe. That is challengeable, given the other exceptions being made, but it misses the point. We are not asking for an exception. We are asking the Council to demonstrate its commitment to an asset the world reveres and that adds value to its own backyard, and to answer one question with us: how do we look after it together? 

The answer is not £3,750. It is an investment to protect what the Fringe delivers for this city. The Fringe was born in Edinburgh and is proud to call it home. It would be good to know the feeling is mutual.

Tony Lankester is Chief Executive, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society