Nicola Benedetti leads calls for funding to save Edinburgh International Festival

10 January 2025, 13:41 | Updated: 10 January 2025, 14:09

By Will Padfield

The famous violinist and director of the Edinburgh Festival has warned that arts cuts put the festival’s reputation at risk.

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Nicola Benedetti, the Grammy-winning classical violinist who became the director of the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) in 2022, told The Guardian that she feared the creative arts that made up the festival were at risk due to repeated funding cuts.

The Edinburgh Festival is one of the greatest arts events in the world and Benedetti is keen to keep it that way far into the future, using her influence to highlight the consequences of decreasing funding to the arts.

She said that a recent increase in Scottish government arts funding was too late to positively impact this year’s festival, which must be planned a year ahead of the opening of the event.

A lack of funding has significantly impacted this year’s festival, with the opening event—usually a highlight—cancelled. Previous years have seen opening events take place in iconic venues such as Edinburgh Castle, Tynecastle Park football stadium and the Usher Hall.

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Creative Scotland, the government’s arts agency, is due to publish its spending plans in late January.

Benedetti hopes it will be sufficient to fund an expansion of the festival’s programming in the future. In 2027, the festival will celebrate its 80th anniversary, which is expected to be a huge celebration of the artistic impact it has had.

“I’m seeing the next three, four years of the festival as one grand opera that builds and builds and, you know, we have our 80th anniversary,” she told The Guardian. “And a year after any anniversary, you have to be incredibly bold with what you’re doing next. So, I’m looking at long term.”

Benedetti said there were still widespread fears about the vitality and health of Scottish arts, which have experienced year-on-year cuts, revealing that half of the arts companies appearing at this August’s festival would be Scottish, but the wider funding crisis was deeply damaging.

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Recent government cuts have meant the festival has needed to double its income from philanthropic sources, just to maintain a standstill budget, threatening the EIF’s leading position on the worldwide arts and culture scene.

Her calls are the latest warning in a succession of bleak news for the UK’s arts scene, with alarming cuts to cultural institutions across the nation.

“The financial picture that we are battling is not where I believe we should be, given to what degree we punch above our weight internationally and how the festival is heralded and celebrated and revered,” she said.

She added that wealthy individuals and businesses need “to see philanthropy as a part of their duty”, continuing: “If they or their organisation or their company is successful, that’s just what one should do.”