For the first time in their long history, Edinburgh Festivals have come together with their stakeholders on the Edinburgh Festivals Forum to launch a joint Vision for the future.
Launched in the festivals’ 75th anniversary year,Edinburgh: City of Imagination is a vision for a resilient and ambitious Festival City by 2030. The idea is based on the value the festivals bring in connecting people, inspiring creative ideas, and bringing places alive in concentrated moments of communal celebration.
The 2030 Vision is to be a ‘world leading sustainable festival city’, based on six ambitions and an accompanying series of twelve actions across festivals and their stakeholders – a collective effort and leadership aimed at ensuring that Edinburgh’s Festival City flourishes even in uncertain times. It recognises that in order to renew and rebuild after two damaging years, there is a need to adapt in this changed era while holding onto fundamental purposes.
The six collective ambitions for the 2030 Vision are:
Global Solidarity: Seeing festivals, national agencies and governments at all levels working together to push for the best possible conditions for the free exchange of people and ideas across borders.
Valuable Skills and Work: Rebuilding opportunities for Edinburgh’s artists, workers and traders, along with Scotland-wide pathways for creation, production and participation, and the national events supply chain.
Connected Local Communities: That festivals create deeper relationships with community and education partners will require sustainable longer-term resourcing of wider cultural and social services, as well as of the programmes themselves
Vibrant, Sustainable, Gathering Places: Redevelop successfully will require investment for works of excellence, innovation and risk, and integrated multi-year planning from local and national authorities.
Net Zero Carbon Future: Creation of a shared carbon reduction route map which identifies how they will reduce emissions in line with Edinburgh’s goal to be a net zero carbon city by 2030.
Increased Resilience, Partnership and Investment: Post Covid to identify new investment and partnership models that can support maximum resilience and public value.
Simon Gage, Chair of Festivals Edinburgh said “This vision sets us on course for action. It is the starting point for each festival to consider the shared ambitions and identify their particular areas of contribution; and for joint efforts across the festivals, funders and stakeholders to identify how we can thrive as a world leading sustainable festival city in this decisive decade.”
This 2030 Vision replaces the previous Thundering Hooves strategies (released in 2006 and 2015) and is the result of an extensive process of review and reflection based on a draft Vision released in August 2021 – which involved a wide range of discussions including with residents, through Edinburgh community councils, and local artists, through Creative Edinburgh, among others.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 