What Works: Success in Stressful Times. Hamish McRae
was put on display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street. It was an amazing jumble of stuff, bringing together the work of renowned artists such as Joseph Beuys25 and Richard Demarco’s role in the whole festival scene. (He had, for example, co-founded the Traverse Theatre26 in 1963.)
As we talked, two things became clear-two things at the core of the spirit of Edinburgh. One is that it is vital for the different aspects of art to commingle; theatre should not be separate from the visual arts-it is all part of the whole. And, of course, Edinburgh mixes everything together. The other is that you need failure; people need to be free to fail. Richard Demarco himself always maintains that he set out on his career in the arts because he had failed his exams at school, but the point is much bigger.
What I think Edinburgh does is to create a platform not just where people can feel free to experiment but also one where they do not need to worry if it does not work. There is surely a wider message there: individual failure is an essential part of the wider success of almost all enterprises-and absolutely to a venture as huge and amorphous as the Edinburgh Festival.
•Create an open marketplace •Blend top-down and bottom-up •Listen-and accept failure as part of wider success
3. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Nothing is for ever but the sheer size and variety of the talent on display in Edinburgh gives it a stability that other arts festivals lack. Because it is market-driven, it cannot be snuffed out by a squeeze on funding; as long as it provides a useful showcase function for the entertainment industries, it will survive. If you were trying to create a new venue for putting talent in the shop window, you would not invent Edinburgh, but it is there, it is huge and it would be hard to displace. Critical mass matters.
But so, too, does efficiency. In 2008 the film festival moved its timing forward to May, thereby getting the city to itself. This decision was largely due to the global film calendar-a case of trying to fit in between Cannes, Venice and Toronto27-but the sheer congestion of Edinburgh in August was apparently a factor too. That year the Fringe booking system broke down and ticket numbers were down year-on-year, though they recovered spectacularly in 2009.
Thus the main threat is not that all the new shows will suddenly up sticks and decamp to New York, London-or Hollywood, rather it is that the festival will become an inefficient showcase, making it hard for the talent-spotters to find what they want and for the best shows to gain their attention.
It may become too big for its own good. This is not principally a matter of logistics-though the city needs to think more innovatively about the way in which it manages the weight of visitors-but of marrying the needs of the ordinary public, who largely fund the whole show, with the needs of the industries that use it to show their wares. If it becomes inefficient for the professionals and they find other ways of locating the new performers, then the city loses a crucial element of its importance.
At a popular level that might hardly be noticed; the more punters who come, the more the market will create stuff to entertain them. The retail trade would continue unchecked, at least for a while. But if Edinburgh were ever to lose its edge-if, for example, the new comedians started to test their acts elsewhere-then after a while the public would begin to notice.
There is an element of danger about Edinburgh in August; not physical danger, of course, for there is remarkably little crime given the number of people. No, it is artistic danger. Alongside the possibility, even probability, of seeing the new stars before they are famous, there is the certainty of seeing some poor hopefuls tank, embarrass themselves and their audience, and disappear from the entertainment world for ever. From the point of view of the visitor, the cost is a wasted afternoon or evening of leisure time. From the point of view of the critic, the cost is higher: it is not seeing something of greater merit elsewhere. From the point of view of the performer, it may simply become better to bypass Edinburgh and find other ways of making your talent known.
There has been a little evidence of this in recent years. The danger sign is key critics not turning up or only going for a couple of days. This is not yet a serious problem but you can see some cracks in the facade. The number of tickets sold is wonderful but some say that the essential edge-the artistic danger-may not be quite as sharp as it used to be. The Fringe is the key here. If ever the word gets round that it is on the skids then, well, the festival could implode.
First, Edinburgh would cease to be as important as a trade fair, or rather a set of trade fairs. The professionals would no longer attend. Instead, they would find some other place where cutting-edge performers would test their acts on audiences and the critics could gauge their talents. Next, the public would become a different, less experimental audience, seeking entertainment that was more conventional, more ‘commercial’, more downmarket. Then after a while numbers both of performances and attendees would start to fall and the trouble would become obvious to the world.
Now I think this danger is quite small because every year the artistic focus shifts as demand for different types of artistic experience waxes and wanes. In recent years there has probably been an excess of stand-up comedians, as Richard Demarco complained, though that reflected a demand from the somewhat cynical early 2000s. But there were also a number of religious-themed events-something that reflects society’s changing values and would not have happened ten years earlier. There was much about Christianity, as you might expect from the home of the Church of Scotland, mostly questioning it but also celebrating its musical traditions. There was everything from early Christian music in pretty early Christian churches to the Soweto Gospel Choir. There were also a Yiddish song project, Buddhist tutorials and a small Islam festival, which featured Arab calligraphy, talks and music at the Edinburgh Central Mosque.
Edinburgh has a great plus in its organization in that there is not and never has been a single mind running the show. So there is little danger of the city taking a decision that would undermine the festival phenomenon. But this also means that were, for whatever reason, the movement to lose its edge, it would be hard for the city to do much to recover it. Edinburgh sings to Mao’s dictum ‘Let one thousand flowers bloom’, rather than his policy of Cultural Revolution. There is no mind to mess things up, but equally there is no mind to sort things out.
As well as being the biggest set of arts festivals in the world, Edinburgh is also the most commercial in two senses. One is that it receives less of a subsidy proportionate to its size than any festival anywhere;28 arguably it subsidizes the city as a whole, for the additional revenue it brings in is far greater than the modest municipal contribution it receives. The other is that because it is completely open access, it gives an early signal of what the market for artistic or creative endeavour is seeking, hence the growth of religious events noted above. It has prospered because it both fills a market need and has a sense of mission to be the greatest show anywhere.
The chances are it will carry on doing so. However, tastes change in the worlds of arts and entertainment as much as in other areas of human endeavour.
So far, Edinburgh seems to have caught the fickle shifts of fashion and retained its lead. Long may it continue to do so. Meanwhile, anyone in the world who is interested in the arts should have at least one shot at braving the cacophony on the High Street of Edinburgh one August. Go to ten shows in a day and stagger back to the hotel battered and ready for some more tomorrow. Better still, put on one: back some students or even commission some music and give it a world premiere.
At some stage the ever-greater size of the festival will become a more serious obstacle. Maybe the re-timing of the film festival carries a warning here-it cannot go on growing for ever and the switch from its present very big bang to some sort of steady state will be tricky. But for years to come it will remain, quite simply, the greatest show on earth.