What really happened at Kate Forbes' Fringe interview

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

We always thought The Herald's run of events at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe might spark a bit of debate — but we weren't expecting anything quite like this.
Instead, we've found ourselves a reluctant party in this year's big festival censorship row.
On Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported that Summerhall Arts had issued an apology to other performers for the 'oversight' of allowing Kate Forbes to be interviewed onstage as part of our Unspun Live podcast.
They also said the venue set up a 'safe room' for performers upset by the Deputy First Minister's presence in the building.
Actually, it was a 'designated relaxed space'.
We know this, because they also sent the apology to us too.
Just to be clear, the venue knew back in April that we'd booked Kate Forbes to appear as a guest at Unspun Live.
The first we heard there might be an issue was last Tuesday — two days before she was due to appear on stage and be interviewed by me.
At a meeting, we were told some artists had complained to management. There were fears about 'hate speech' and anxiety around the sort of audience Ms Forbes might attract to the venue. They said they were worried about the questions she might asked by that audience.
As far as we were concerned, this was our event — and we were determined to run it the same way we would any other.
The same way we ran the events with John Swinney and Anas Sarwar.
On the night, we were steeling ourselves for some sort of protest or disruption, but as far as we know, in the end there was nothing more than a bit of graffiti in the toilets: 'Summerhall platforms transphobic, anti-abortion, homophobic polititian (sic) Kate Forbes.'
In that emailed apology to all companies, the venue made clear that Ms Forbes would 'be in the Dissection Room in the Summerhall building today at 5pm for an interview until 6.30pm, after which she will leave immediately.'
They went on to say Unspun Live was booked in by them before the line-up of interviewees was confirmed — but that they 'should have considered the likelihood of her being booked to attend, and the understandable upset it would cause'.
'We apologise unreservedly for not notifying you all sooner — we should have done,' they added.
They said their main concern was that 'cancelling the event could pose significant additional risk to the safety and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ artists, staff and audiences by attracting those who share Kate Forbes' views outside of these walls to Summerhall, and as such the interview will take place as scheduled, with all proceeds from the event donated to a local LGBTQ+ charity.'
Summerhall said they had 'work to do to repair the damage from this oversight'.
'At this stage, we can guarantee that we will be writing robust, proactive inclusion and wellbeing policies that prevent this from happening again.'
We got through the night and, even though it was always likely the story would get out, we were — at that point — content to leave it there and move on. Aside from the Kate Forbes disagreement our working relationship with Summerhall and particularly the people who worked on our show was good.
But it feels important to say something.
Summerhall told us they did not want to cancel. Nor did they ask us to cancel.
I mentioned this on stage last week, and went on to say that for the avoidance of any doubt, if they had asked to cancel, we would have said no — and that we stood by our decision to invite the DFM, and were very happy she said yes.
Debate, challenge and the exchange of difficult ideas should be at the heart of the Fringe. They were certainly, I hope, at the heart of Unspun Live.