Latest news with #EIBF
The Herald Scotland
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Edinburgh Festival faces a summer of Gaza sponsorship rows
A quick recap, then a look at why this matters. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg pulled out of an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) in 2023 on account of its long-standing relationship with Edinburgh-based investment firm Baillie Gifford. She viewed this hook-up as an example of 'green-washing' by a firm gaining from investments in companies whose interests were inimical to her beliefs. 'Green-washing efforts by the fossil fuel industry, including sponsorship of cultural events, allow them to keep the social license to continue operating,' she said in a statement. 'I cannot and do not want to be associated with events that accept this kind of sponsorship.' Following Ms Thunberg's withdrawal, and on the eve of the festival, over 50 authors published an open letter calling on the EIBF to end its relationship with Baillie Gifford. In May 2024, the EIBF announced it was doing just that. The Hay Festival, also sponsored by Baillie Gifford, announced the same decision a week earlier. Full disclosure: I was entirely on the side of the authors in the 2023 row and had little time or patience for the arguments of those who opposed them. Certainly not the cultural warriors of the right, who viewed the campaign as a chance to pour scorn on the 'wokerati' – but not even those festival directors and high-placed arts practitioners in the invidious position of having to defend tie-ins with companies such as Baillie Gifford. Grow up, they said, the arts wouldn't exist in their current form without this sort of corporate sponsorship. Really? I'm not so sure. Anyway, if you're right would that be such a bad thing? Fast forward another year and we have just had the launch of the 2025 EIBF. In the absence of Baillie Gifford as a corporate sponsor (a relationship which was always and self-evidently transactional in nature) we now have (cue drum roll) Sir Ian Rankin. As revealed in The Herald, the sainted knight has stepped in – though stepped up might be a better phrase – and agreed to help back the festival financially, along with fellow author Jenny Colgan and other organisations and companies including Edinburgh-based legal firm Digby Brown and privately funded arts charity the Hawthornden Foundation. I'm not saying it was easy to fill the funding gap left by Baillie Gifford, and I don't know how well it has been plugged, but the festival has announced its largest number of events since the pre-pandemic days. Just saying. But don't think this issue is going away. Even as I write this, in Tel Aviv Greta Thunberg is being forced onto a plane, a method of travel she abhors and avoids for conscientious reasons. This is following her detainment while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza aboard UK-flagged humanitarian vessel The Madleen. Greta Thunberg was detained by Israeli authorities while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza (Image: AP) Along with the wider situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the ongoing climate emergency – and as tensions, tempers, emotions and body counts mount – there will be more and more scrutiny by more and more activists of more and more companies and institutions with links to, say, arms sales to Israel or fossil fuels or [insert injustice of your choice]. This will inevitably impact on the UK's arts institution and, as Edinburgh gears up for August, it will be inevitably be felt in Scotland. Actually it already is. A body signing itself the 'Edinburgh International Festivals' was one of the co-signatories supporting a recent open letter by Sir Alistair Spalding and Britannia Morton of London's Sadler's Wells venue published in the Financial Times (ha!). In it the authors complained about the 'relentless negativity' of 'activist groups' such as the one which 'pushed out' Baillie Gifford from its place as a sponsor of the arts. They added: '[P]artnering with businesses ensures our work goes further and has a greater impact. It adds more value and enables growth, ambition and risk taking.' Quoted in The Art Newspaper last week, corporate fundraising expert Martin Prendergast addressed the open letter and said 'the causes are right but the targets are wrong'. But creative producer Naomi Russell had a different take. 'I think protest and resistance drive change and historically this has great precedent,' she told the publication. 'That can be uncomfortable for the powers and established structures.' And so we come full circle: which side are you on? It's a question being asked a lot these days. Think carefully before you answer. Read more: Reel life Do you remember your first time? No not that. I mean the first time you realised there was more to the big screen than the latest James Bond or superhero offering. The first time you had your eyes opened to the kinds of films that maybe did not have car chases or shoot-outs and maybe did have subtitles and which – just as important – were shown in venues dedicated to what you later learned was called 'art-house cinema'. If you don't, I'm sorry. If you do, you'll know why I'm so delighted that Edinburgh's Filmhouse has announced its re-opening date: Friday June 27, just in time for this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) to return to its spiritual home. I was 16 the first time I went to the Filmhouse – in 1982, to see Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva. It was also the first subtitled film I had ever seen. A little later, still at school, I saw Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish. It's still my favourite of his films and definitely in my all-time top five. Matt Dillon in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish (Image: Universal/Criterion) In the same year I also saw director Nicolas Roeg discuss working with Gene Hackman in a Q&A following a screening of Roeg's film Eureka. Many decades later I found myself in my usual spot on the back row of Cinema One and chatting to an older man in the next seat. I told him about my love of the Filmhouse, and about these seminal events in my cinematic life and how vividly I could still remember them. It turned out I was talking to former EIFF director Jim Hickey, who ran the Filmhouse between 1979 and 1993. He was the one on stage interviewing Roeg that night 30 or so years earlier. I could have cried. Him too, probably. It's a very personal story, but it is in no way meaningless because so many people in Edinburgh have similar ones to tell. That's why the Filmhouse's absence since the collapse in 2022 of parent organisation the Centre for the Moving Image has left such a huge hole. Sure there's still work to do to keep Filmhouse 2.0 afloat. But now, thanks to the efforts of those who battled to keep the flame alive, it has returned. Eureka! Read more: And finally The Herald's theatre critic Neil Cooper has been busy recently. His peregrinations have taken him first to Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum where he watched The Mountaintop, a production of Katori Hall's Olivier Award-winning play about Martin Luther King Jr's last night alive. Five stars for that one. Just around the corner at the Traverse Theatre he took in Ramesh Meyyappan's radical reworking of King Lear, then watched the entertaining Meme Girls at Oran Mor in Glasgow, part of the ongoing A Play, A Pie And A Pint season, and hot-footed it to Pitlochry for Nan Shepherd: Naked And Unashamed, the latest chapter in the cult Aberdeenshire writer's move from the margins of literary history to the centre. Elsewhere music critics Keith Bruce and Teddy Jamieson have also been busy, Keith at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall where he heard the Royal Scottish National Orchestra perform 'the mighty juggernaut' that is Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 and Teddy at Glasgow's O2 Academy where he watched Morrissey. A slew of Smiths songs will have pleased many in the audience but Teddy was left wondering who the bequiffed Narcissus is really addressing these days.
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Can Scottish arts community survive without its sponsors?
A quick recap, then a look at why this matters. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg pulled out of an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) in 2023 on account of its long-standing relationship with Edinburgh-based investment firm Baillie Gifford. She viewed this hook-up as an example of 'green-washing' by a firm gaining from investments in companies whose interests were inimical to her beliefs. 'Green-washing efforts by the fossil fuel industry, including sponsorship of cultural events, allow them to keep the social license to continue operating,' she said in a statement. 'I cannot and do not want to be associated with events that accept this kind of sponsorship.' Following Ms Thunberg's withdrawal, and on the eve of the festival, over 50 authors published an open letter calling on the EIBF to end its relationship with Baillie Gifford. In May 2024, the EIBF announced it was doing just that. The Hay Festival, also sponsored by Baillie Gifford, announced the same decision a week earlier. Full disclosure: I was entirely on the side of the authors in the 2023 row and had little time or patience for the arguments of those who opposed them. Certainly not the cultural warriors of the right, who viewed the campaign as a chance to pour scorn on the 'wokerati' – but not even those festival directors and high-placed arts practitioners in the invidious position of having to defend tie-ins with companies such as Baillie Gifford. Grow up, they said, the arts wouldn't exist in their current form without this sort of corporate sponsorship. Really? I'm not so sure. Anyway, if you're right would that be such a bad thing? Fast forward another year and we have just had the launch of the 2025 EIBF. In the absence of Baillie Gifford as a corporate sponsor (a relationship which was always and self-evidently transactional in nature) we now have (cue drum roll) Sir Ian Rankin. As revealed in The Herald, the sainted knight has stepped in – though stepped up might be a better phrase – and agreed to help back the festival financially, along with fellow author Jenny Colgan and other organisations and companies including Edinburgh-based legal firm Digby Brown and privately funded arts charity the Hawthornden Foundation. I'm not saying it was easy to fill the funding gap left by Baillie Gifford, and I don't know how well it has been plugged, but the festival has announced its largest number of events since the pre-pandemic days. Just saying. But don't think this issue is going away. Even as I write this, in Tel Aviv Greta Thunberg is being forced onto a plane, a method of travel she abhors and avoids for conscientious reasons. This is following her detainment while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza aboard UK-flagged humanitarian vessel The Madleen. Greta Thunberg was detained by Israeli authorities while attempting to deliver aid to Gaza (Image: AP) Along with the wider situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the ongoing climate emergency – and as tensions, tempers, emotions and body counts mount – there will be more and more scrutiny by more and more activists of more and more companies and institutions with links to, say, arms sales to Israel or fossil fuels or [insert injustice of your choice]. This will inevitably impact on the UK's arts institution and, as Edinburgh gears up for August, it will be inevitably be felt in Scotland. Actually it already is. A body signing itself the 'Edinburgh International Festivals' was one of the co-signatories supporting a recent open letter by Sir Alistair Spalding and Britannia Morton of London's Sadler's Wells venue published in the Financial Times (ha!). In it the authors complained about the 'relentless negativity' of 'activist groups' such as the one which 'pushed out' Baillie Gifford from its place as a sponsor of the arts. They added: '[P]artnering with businesses ensures our work goes further and has a greater impact. It adds more value and enables growth, ambition and risk taking.' Quoted in The Art Newspaper last week, corporate fundraising expert Martin Prendergast addressed the open letter and said 'the causes are right but the targets are wrong'. But creative producer Naomi Russell had a different take. 'I think protest and resistance drive change and historically this has great precedent,' she told the publication. 'That can be uncomfortable for the powers and established structures.' And so we come full circle: which side are you on? It's a question being asked a lot these days. Think carefully before you answer. Read more: Reel life Do you remember your first time? No not that. I mean the first time you realised there was more to the big screen than the latest James Bond or superhero offering. The first time you had your eyes opened to the kinds of films that maybe did not have car chases or shoot-outs and maybe did have subtitles and which – just as important – were shown in venues dedicated to what you later learned was called 'art-house cinema'. If you don't, I'm sorry. If you do, you'll know why I'm so delighted that Edinburgh's Filmhouse has announced its re-opening date: Friday June 27, just in time for this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) to return to its spiritual home. I was 16 the first time I went to the Filmhouse – in 1982, to see Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva. It was also the first subtitled film I had ever seen. A little later, still at school, I saw Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish. It's still my favourite of his films and definitely in my all-time top five. Matt Dillon in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish (Image: Universal/Criterion) In the same year I also saw director Nicolas Roeg discuss working with Gene Hackman in a Q&A following a screening of Roeg's film Eureka. Many decades later I found myself in my usual spot on the back row of Cinema One and chatting to an older man in the next seat. I told him about my love of the Filmhouse, and about these seminal events in my cinematic life and how vividly I could still remember them. It turned out I was talking to former EIFF director Jim Hickey, who ran the Filmhouse between 1979 and 1993. He was the one on stage interviewing Roeg that night 30 or so years earlier. I could have cried. Him too, probably. It's a very personal story, but it is in no way meaningless because so many people in Edinburgh have similar ones to tell. That's why the Filmhouse's absence since the collapse in 2022 of parent organisation the Centre for the Moving Image has left such a huge hole. Sure there's still work to do to keep Filmhouse 2.0 afloat. But now, thanks to the efforts of those who battled to keep the flame alive, it has returned. Eureka! Read more: And finally The Herald's theatre critic Neil Cooper has been busy recently. His peregrinations have taken him first to Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum where he watched The Mountaintop, a production of Katori Hall's Olivier Award-winning play about Martin Luther King Jr's last night alive. Five stars for that one. Just around the corner at the Traverse Theatre he took in Ramesh Meyyappan's radical reworking of King Lear, then watched the entertaining Meme Girls at Oran Mor in Glasgow, part of the ongoing A Play, A Pie And A Pint season, and hot-footed it to Pitlochry for Nan Shepherd: Naked And Unashamed, the latest chapter in the cult Aberdeenshire writer's move from the margins of literary history to the centre. Elsewhere music critics Keith Bruce and Teddy Jamieson have also been busy, Keith at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall where he heard the Royal Scottish National Orchestra perform 'the mighty juggernaut' that is Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 and Teddy at Glasgow's O2 Academy where he watched Morrissey. A slew of Smiths songs will have pleased many in the audience but Teddy was left wondering who the bequiffed Narcissus is really addressing these days.
Daily Record
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Outlander's Sam Heughan to host cocktail class at Edinburgh's International Book Festival
Outlander star Sam Heughan is set to host a cocktail masterclass in the capital this August to promote his new cocktail recipe book and fans will be able to snatch up tickets for the event very soon. Outlander's Sam Heughan is set to host a cocktail class at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) later this summer to promote his new cocktail recipe book. The beloved Scots actor, who is famed for his role as Jamie Fraser in the Starz show, is also soon to make his Royal Shakespeare Company debut in Macbeth. As a man of many talents, the 45-year-old is set to discuss the significance of cocktails in his journey to stardom in the Capital in August. He will also show fans and cocktail lovers how to create some of his personal favourites drinks in an event linked to his book, The Cocktail Diaries: A Spirited Adventure, which is to due to be published in September. Sam reposted the news of his appearance at the festival to his Instagram stories where he boasts 4M loyal followers. The post, which was uploaded by the Scotsman, quickly garnered fans attention as one excited Outlander fan commented: "WHEN?!" Another user called @german,outlander simply responded with three clapping emojis as they expressed their joy over the news. Someone else exclaimed: "Yes! Bravo Sam! Slainte!", alongside a mix of love heart and beer emojis. A fourth penned: "Awesome!", accompanied by a heart eyes emoji. Sam is expected to be making his appearance to host the cocktail class 'Sam Heughan: On The Rocks' in the Capital on August 23. The event will last for one hour from 18:15 until 19:15 on the second last day of the festival, which will run from Saturday August 9 until Sunday August 24. The website details what fans can expect on the day: "Outlander actor, founder of Sassenach Spirits, and local lad Sam Heughan launches his new book, The Cocktail Diaries. "Journey around the world with Heughan as he shares his favourite cocktails, the stories behind them, and the memories they made. Join us for a truly spirited and intimate evening (and there might even be a wee tipple). Sláinte!" Fans can snatch up tickets for Sam's cocktail class when they go on sale later this month on June 21 at 10am. Other actors who are set to appear at the EIBF, which announced its full programme today, include Brian Cox, Viggo Mortensen and Vanessa Redgrave. The Edinburgh festival will see an element of performance alongside a more traditional schedule of events, with Olivier Award-winning Harriet Walter delivering an overdue voice to the women of Shakespeare, and a cast including Ms Redgrave and Mr Mortensen conveying 'powerful messages of protest from around the world' in The People Speak. According to publisher Penguin, Heughan's book, The Cocktail Diaries includes chapters on the Outlander star's top ten all-time favourite cocktails. The book will also feature a final section titled Made by Friends, featuring recipes created by international bartenders for the actor. Heughan, who originally hails from Kirkcudbright, moved to Edinburgh with his family when he was 12-years-old before going on to study at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.
Scotsman
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh book festival: No Baillie Gifford funds puts community work 'at risk'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... 'Powerful' loss-making community work by the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) is at risk if a new sponsor cannot be found to replace Baillie Gifford, the director of the event has warned. Jenny Niven told The Scotsman work was ongoing to secure funding for the festival. She said work such as recorded events being beamed to libraries around Scotland - as well as the children's books programme at the festival itself - could not be funded indefinitely without more financial support. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ms Niven also warned of a 'literacy crisis' among Scottish school children and said without more funding, some initiatives to help get children into reading could have to be halted. Last year, the festival was forced to end its partnership with Baillie Gifford, warning it was no longer able to deliver a 'safe and successful' event amid 'threats of disruption'. Climate activist Greta Thunberg had cancelled an event a year earlier over the Edinburgh-based financial firm's fossil fuel investments. Notable celebrities at the book festival Ms Niven's comments come as the EIBF launched its programme for this year's festival at its new home at the Futures Institute. Scottish authors Irvine Welsh and Maggie O'Farrell are to join Heartstopper writer Alice Oseman, as well as former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, at this year's festival. Outlander star Sam Heughan will also give a cocktail class to promote his new book of cocktail recipes, while actors Brian Cox, Viggo Mortensen and Vanessa Redgrave will take part in events. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The festival today unveils its full programme, which is based around the theme of Repair, seeking to explore things which feel broken, and looking at how they could be fixed – from the physical to the political, the emotional to the environmental, and beyond. Why community work is important Ms Niven said: 'Our community work is so powerful - the stuff we do for children and young people, but particularly those elements, they don't generate income. The community [work] runs at a high cost, and if you look at the amount of cuts going into other third-sector organisations, the operational costs are high. 'Because if organisations like the Streetreads Library [organisation to support book access for homeless people] are on their knees, then for us to just to be able to run the same same type of programme is difficult. Even to maintain a standstill - it is not a standstill when there's all so many other cuts going on, particularly in the third sector.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad When asked if that work was at risk if more funding was not found to replace the money lost from Baillie Gifford's sponsorship, Ms Niven said simply: 'Yes.' She added: 'It's a question of ambition. You can see in the programme all of the different directions that we would like to go and what we could do, and the many more people that we could reach.' Author Ian Rankin's John Rebus Ltd company is understood to be funding a small part of the Communities Programme this year in a deal which is expected to last five years. The Book Festival supports year-round access to reading through its communities programme, which connects authors and artists with places across Scotland who might not otherwise have access to cultural experiences. Meanwhile, organisers said they would this year livestream over 100 festival events to libraries across 12 Scottish local authorities. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ms Niven pointed to the 'heavily subsidised' programme for children and young people. A typical paid-for ticket for a children's show costs just £6, while many tickets and books are given away free to school groups, after Scottish schools return in mid-August. Jenny Niven, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. | EIBF 'That work is really important to us, but it gets more and more expensive every day - that's not covered in our costs,' she said. 'So it depends on what type of festival people want to have. If it's only designed for people who can afford to pay top dollar, high-price tickets, then you're presenting a very different offer than if it is inclusive and reaching all these different communities. I know what sort of organisation I want to run.' A literacy crisis Ms Niven warned a crisis among young people was resulting in not only falling literacy rates, but a change in how children see the world. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad She said: 'Significantly, it is not just about literacy, but it's about empathy. It's about looking out the way. It's about engaging with people's lives who are not like your own. It's about reading books from other countries and expanding your horizons and all of that, I think, is a really important set of benefits you get from reading.' Earlier this year, US president Donald Trump criticised his State Department's 'radical' sponsorship of the book festival, attacking the event for its promotion of discussion on 'gender identity and racial equality'. Funding of $39,652 (£31,000) granted under the Joe Biden administration supported the Transatlantic Conversations programme at the 2023 festival, which featured nine American authors. No funding has been forthcoming from the US State Department this year. Ms Niven said she had been 'a bit taken aback' over the surprise the festival had received support from the US government. This year's festival features authors from Norway, Korea, France, Germany and Spain, all sponsored by their respective embassies and consulates. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad She said: 'Now, we are now no longer in receipt of US support, which makes a difference and that's to the detriment. There are amazing US artists and writers who it's vital that we hear from, and not being able to work with them directly would be a travesty. So we will, of course, look for other funding to replace that US government money, but it won't stop us.' Funding sources for the festival The People's Postcode Lottery has a long-term partnership to support elements of the festival's communities programme, which Ms Niven said 'we could not work without'. The festival was given a multi-year funding package from Creative Scotland earlier this year. However, Ms Niven said it was 'not 100 per cent of what we asked for', forcing the festival to continue to fundraise 'from a range of sources'. 'We're really pleased to have their partnership, but we need to keep looking at corporate sponsorship,' she said. 'That's obviously undergone a huge amount of change in the last ten years, specifically with us, so we've got continued work to do there. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'For funding at the moment, it's the same ones we've always looked at: philanthropic, corporate, public funding, ticketing. It's a heady mix of all those different things, and each one of them, for different reasons, are under pressure one way or another.'
Edinburgh Reporter
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
The Edinburgh International Book Festival – small changes this year
The Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) 2025 will be held at the Edinburgh Futures Institute on Lauriston Place where the festival has now made its home. Jenny Niven Director and CEO said they are comfortable in the still relatively new space but are making a couple of changes to improve the event even more. The entrance will this year be placed on the corner of the site nearest to Middle Meadow Walk rather than opposite the back door. This will allow full use of the space at the back of the Institute where there will be tents and more catering outlets along with the Spiegeltent where all sorts of magical events take place. A new box office will be positioned outside the site on Middle Meadow Walk to open the festival up even more to everyone. The site is free to access but tickets will be needed for most events – with a range of offers including some £5 tickets. A great deal of the programme is as usual wide and varied and designed to stimulate conversation in the tents and the gardens. But there are a few new elements. There is a new strand for Young Adults (meaning 30 and under) with romantasy, sci-fi, horror, health, food and wellness all given room in the programme. There will be a new Kids Zone on Lauriston Place in a safe hub between two of the former hospital wards and there will be more than 100 events for children – with a retrospective featuring author Jacqueline Wilson who gave her name to the girls magazine Jackie all those years ago. Cressida Cowell of How to Train Your Dragon fame is sure to be a popular event. In the Spiegeltent there will be a wide variety of poetry, spoken word and music events all performed live. The popular Table Talk series which began last year will return with more chefs and food writers to the fore – but also events involving eating – a supper with Rosie Kellett, Have Lunch with Spaniard José Pizarro, Brazilian cuisine with Ixta Belfrage and Palestinian food writer Sami Tamimi. And if none of that grabs you, there will be a fermenting workshop… Paul French will be in Edinburgh to talk about his book on Wallis Simpson who had an 'amazingly riotous' couple of years in China in the 1920s. The programme will be online here for you to peruse before tickets go on sale- and copies will be available at many outlets in the city from 10 June. We will bring you more details when we get our hands on an actual copy rather than the pdf. © 2024 Martin McAdam Repair The theme this year is Repair with a list of international writers and performers that we have come to expect at the book festival with 700 events from 9 to 24 August. This idea will encourage audiences to explore the many things in the world which feel broken and how they might be fixed. There will be a wide range of active opportunities to rebalance and 'restore a sense of calm in the face of a world in chaos' through listening to talks and being encouraged to read the works of some of the many authors. Jenny Niven said: 'At a time when important conversations can feel impossible to have without igniting conflict and anger, we want the Edinburgh International Book Festival to provide a safe place for challenging but considered discussions. This year our programme features over 600 writers and artists from 35 countries who have a wide range of perspectives on topics of personal, social and global importance. We invite you to come and learn something new, feed your curiosity and to broaden your horizons.' She continued: 'We're hoping that we can present new writers and thinkers who are offering solutions and new ideas and great analysis that moves the conversation forward. And Repair is a very expansive idea. It's really fun when you talk to creative people about this idea, because everybody comes at it from all these different angles. So we're repairing in lots of ways. 'We're starting off with our Repair Gala, which is on Saturday the 10th, our opening day, and we've commissioned five different writers to think about the idea of Repair from whatever perspective they want. It's an amazing lineup, and as you can see, we're going for the really international sweep.' The organisers hope to provide a memorable and engaging experience for everyone and the focus will be on making the festival accessible, inclusive, and relevant to a diverse audience. The festival claims that literacy is decreasing in the UK and the Communities programme will stream more than 100 events to libraries in 12 Scottish local authority areas this year as one way of expanding the festival's reach. Big Names Irvine Welsh, Val McDermid, Nicola Sturgeon, Diane Abbott, Maggie O'Farrell, R F Kuang, Asako Yuzuki, Ash Sarkar, actor Brian Cox, Ruth Jones, Adam Buxton, Viggo Mortensen and Vanessa Redgrave are all in the programme. Joe Boyd credited with producing Dylan and who 'electrified' him at the Newport Folk Festival will tell some tales of the people he has worked with. Local names Music from Edinburgh's own Hamish Hawk will reinterpret the work of Ivor Cutler. Devi Sridhar from the University of Edinburgh who became such a well-known voice during the pandemic will talk about Health for All and explain the key to a longer, healthier life based on her book How Not To Die (Too Soon). Rock the Boat is the monthly stand up night from Push the Boat Out Festival and Loud Poets, the nationwide programme bringing together younger poets competing in poetry slams are also listed. Credit Thomas Heatherwick The Front List and tickets The Festival Front List has been on sale for some time with all events taking place at the nearby McEwan Hall in a collaboration with Underbelly. Tickets for those events have sold well and now the main events will go on sale to members of the public on 21 June. If you become a Friend of the Festival then there are advance booking privileges and a Festival coffee gathering as well as a Christmas event. Details here. There are specially priced tickets for the Under 30s and other events priced at £5 for those on low-income benefits. FUNDING The question of funding the book festival still looms large even a year after the EIBF ended their 20 year partnership with Bailie Gifford which funded much of the programme and particularly the schools events. In 2024 Ms Niven said that the goal of the board and management was to deliver an event which was safe and successful for audiences, authors and staff. Some authors had threatened to withdraw if the relationship with the Edinburgh based investment fund did not end. Despite the fact that Bailie Gifford explained their investment in large companies such as Amazon, NVIDIA and Meta, fossil fuels or The Occupied Palestinian Territories had been misrepresented. Nick Thomas, partner, Baillie Gifford, said in May 2024: 'Our collaboration with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, spanning decades, was rooted in our shared interest in making Edinburgh a thriving and culturally vibrant place to live and work. In recent years we have been proud to support the Schools' and Children's programmes, providing free books and creating opportunities for young readers to meet authors. 'The activists' anonymous campaign of coercion and misinformation has put intolerable pressure on authors and the festival community. We step back with the hope that the festival will thrive this year and into the future. We hold the activists squarely responsible for the inhibiting effect their action will have on funding for the arts in this country. This year the festival is dependent on many different sources including the sponsorship from the People's Postcode Lottery which has an HQ in Charlotte Square. Tickets go on sale to the general public on 21 June. © 2024 Martin McAdam Like this: Like Related
