Edinburgh festivals make a comeback and prepare for the future
Edinburgh festivals are making a comeback.
© RFI / Assa Samaké-Roman
Text by: Assa Samaké-Roman Follow
6 mins
An air of familiar strangeness hangs over Edinburgh.
After their cancellation last year due to the pandemic, which had never happened since their birth after World War II, Edinburgh festivals are making a comeback.
The Scottish capital is adorning itself with posters for events, shows and exhibitions as part of the International Fringe Festival, the International Book Festival, the Art Festival, and the Film Festival, which take place concomitantly in August.
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"
The festival experience will be close to what we know,
" said Angus Robertson, Scottish Government Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution. “
They take place in the same city, in the same atmosphere, always with an international touch. In addition, the last restrictions related to the coronavirus will be lifted in a few days, which will contribute to this return to normal
”.
Yet so much has changed.
The Fringe, the largest festival in the world, which had nearly 4,000 shows on its program in 2019, will take place in reduced form, with four times fewer shows this year: it will be a mix of in-person performances. and online, to watch at home.
Québec @ EdFringe
, the Québec selection at the festival, will participate this year exclusively online.
A challenge for organizers and artists
For its part, the French Institute of Scotland (IFE), which this year offers six shows (three face-to-face, three online) as part of its special program “Vive le Fringe”, will continue, even if it will not be. more compulsory from August 9, to respect the social distancing of one meter between each spectator.
For artists too, the period of the pandemic and the return to the public is a challenge. Exchange Theater Company director David Furlong, who presents
The Cat in (re) Boots
, a family play about anti-racism and diversity
at IFE
, reflects on the impact of the past 18 months. “We
had to totally reinvestigate our forms of artistic expression, and it was a period of introspection for all of us. We also had to think about all our limits: geographic, but also how to overcome the bubbles to which we usually address
”.
With the constraints that still exist to travel and get together, especially internationally, a vast reflection has been put in place around the issue of accessibility.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival experienced this in 2020 by offering only online roundtables, says Nick Barley, the director.
“
We didn't know what to expect, but the first shock we got was how international our audience was.
We had spectators in almost every country in the world,
”he recalls.
In every upheaval, an opportunity
Based on this observation, it is impossible to go back: this year the festival will experience its greatest transformation since its creation in 1983. It leaves the haven of peace of Charlotte Square, in the city center, to invest the premises of the school of Edinburgh art. This will make it possible to broadcast the events that will welcome the public live on the Internet, for those who cannot or do not want to travel. Those who watch online will be able to pay what they can. "
It also allows us to take the festival to other audiences, such as prisons or retirement homes
," says Nick Barley.
In any upheaval, there is therefore an opportunity: for festivals, to rethink themselves for the future, and to anticipate the next big challenges. For the Book Festival, in this year of COP26 which will take place in the autumn in Glasgow, it is obvious that the next urgency will be to tackle the climate crisis. “
The festival's carbon footprint is too high, and solutions will have to be found to remain an international event despite everything. This year, none of the participating authors will be flying, and in the future, we will be thinking of collaborating with other festivals in the country so that no one has to fly from the other side of the world to come only to Edinburgh.
"
Angus Robertson, who has represented the constituency of Edinburgh Center in the Scottish Parliament since last spring, sees the need to seize the opportunity of the pandemic for an assessment time. “
In the Edinburgh festival community there are a lot of people who are very actively thinking about how to continue after the pandemic. There have been some very heated debates in Edinburgh over the past few years about what kind of city we want to be. We host the biggest festivals in the world, but we are a city of only half a million people,
”he says. “
It is healthy to think about their future development: are we going to want at all costs to have the greatest number of shows and people, or rather a maximum of quality, including quality of life?
“See you in 2022, when the worst of the pandemic will potentially be behind us, to find out.
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