This article appears as part of the Herald Arts newsletter.

Budgets, financial reports and spending plans are issues making headlines at the moment. But while those things occupy politicians and business leaders, they’re also never far from the minds of those who make Scotland’s cultural weather.

With the last Edinburgh Festival stragglers having long since departed, there has been time aplenty for the bean counters, strategic planners and business analysis types at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society to take stock of the 2024 event.

With that process concluded, the Society has now published its annual review of the preceding 12 months. Amid the blizzard of facts and stats – 3,746 shows in 262 venues featuring performers from 60 countries – comes the news that overall ticket sales are still well down on 2019 (2.6 million versus three million, though that’s still an increase on last year’s 2.45 million) and that the society continues to operate at a loss, as it has since 2021. Total income was revealed to be £5,532,678 versus expenditure of £5,759,268.

On the handy coloured doughnut graphic accompanying those figures, the portion of income from public funds is coloured orange. It wouldn’t amount to much more than a nibble of our deep-fried treat though, a point regularly made by the Society’s Chief Executive, Shona McCarthy. The European average for state investment in the arts is 1.5% of overall national spend. In Scotland, it’s a third of that.

The Edinburgh International Festival may be Scotland’s cultural jewel but the Edinburgh Fringe is the crown in which that jewel is set – a weighty superstructure which, though golden, has been losing its lustre in recent years. It is, according to Ms McCarthy, in need of some TLC – and maybe a good polish into the bargain. That, of course, requires cash.

Read more:

Herald Arts | The Day of the Jackal is ruined by this one major problem

With all that in mind, she has given this year’s annual review a second purpose – to stimulate conversation and act as a “launchpad” for discussion. For which read rattle a few cages and knock a few heads together.

“This year’s review is an invitation for discussion and to find solutions for the future of this amazing festival,” she says. “The whole sector needs action and investment and so does the Fringe. As the most influential and important performing arts marketplace in the world, the Fringe is crucial for the whole cultural ecosystem, not only for local, UK and international artists, but for the thousands of arts industry and media delegates who come here every year to view work, and source content for their own theatres, festivals and platforms.”

She adds: “Warm words do not support our vital cultural life and creativity. Warm words do not provide platforms for Fringe artists on a global stage. Warm words do not help communities and audiences experience an event of global significance, on an Olympic scale, on their own doorstep. Now is the time to step up.”

Ms McCarthy, by the way, is stepping down. She leaves her position next spring, in part because she is tired of every year deploying the same ‘fund it or lose it’ message to the powers-that-be. Her as-yet-unnamed replacement will take the helm for the 2025 Fringe. But will the seas ahead be choppy or calm? The smart money, if there is any, should be on the first.

Good as new-ish

Congratulations to the Burrell Collection, which has won the Andrew Doolan Best Building In Scotland Award, as judged by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.

The accolade comes in the wake of a £68 million revamp known by the grandiose title the Burrell Renaissance project and undertaken by John McAslan + Partners, the international practice headed up by Glasgow-born John McAslan.

Read more:

Herald Arts | EIF programme ascends under Benedetti – meanwhile, BBC Scotland are stuck relying on London

He cut his architectural teeth with Richard Rogers, whose greatest hits package include the Pompidou Centre in Paris, London’s Millennium Dome and Lloyds Building, and the Senedd in Cardiff. Quite the lineage, then. I experienced the refurbishment first hand while attending the Burrell’s Discovering Degas exhibition in May, its first major ticketed show since the revamp. It’s kind of awesome and well worth its prize, just as the Burrell itself is well worth your time and attention.


Also featured on the five-strong shortlist was Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, recently re-furbished and extended by Reiach and Hall Architects. If you haven’t been, they’ve knocked through into what used to be a nightclub and painted the space black as a counterpoint to the white-washed halls of the gallery proper.

It’s here you’ll find this week’s Deep Time event, the Fruitmarket’s now annual (hopefully) mini-festival of new music. Last year’s inaugural outing was fabulous and this year’s festival has been tied both to the gallery’s 50th anniversary and to the 40th anniversary of the appearance at the venue of two legends of the New York cultural scene – composer John Cage and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Deep Time opens on November 27 and runs until November 30.

And finally…

You may have heard that a certain Alan Cumming is due to take over the artistic directorship of Pitlochry Festival Theatre next year. Outgoing director Elizabeth Newman still has one last production to gift us, however, and it is a doozie – The Sound Of Music. The Herald’s theatre critic Neil Cooper (16 going on 17) took his seat and doubtless tapped a foot or two. More seriously, he found one of the 20th century’s greatest stage musicals transformed into a play for our time.

Sign up for Herald Arts and get weekly info and insight into arts and culture from Scotland and beyond.


Elsewhere Brian Beacom took in Katy Nixon’s award-winning two-hander Jellyfish at Òran Mór in Glasgow, part of the much-loved A Play, A Pie And A Pint season, and also had a chat with actor Kyle Gardiner ahead of what could be the role of a lifetime – as the lead in Oor Wullie: The Musical. “You have to find the truth in the character,” Mr Gardiner tells him. The show has just opened at Dundee Rep where it runs until December 30. One for the bucket list?