The Herald - The Herald Magazine
The future of Wigton
Wigtown Book Festival’s creative director Adrian Turpin on his big decision
YOU wanna be in the room where it happens,” goes the line from the musical Hamilton. It’s how I always used to feel about book festivals. If I wanted to read a book, I could read a book. But the magic of literary events was to be in the room where it happens, a one-off alchemy of place and people, one reason why at Wigtown Book Festival we rarely filmed events.
Then the virus happened. No room. No people. At Wigtown we swiftly did what has become known as a digital pivot. A viral pandemic which kept most people in doors hardly seemed the right time to stay silent.
As well as live midweek events (“the Zoom room where it happens”), we commissioned new writing, began a podcast, created online exhibitions and mined our archive for gold. Sally Magnusson graciously acted as guinea pig for the first one, which more than 100 people attended. Baillie Gifford Prize-winner Hallie Rubenhold and broadcasters Robin Ince, Rev Richard Coles and Natalie Haynes were among those to sign up for future sessions.
Like many cultural organisations run by people with an arts background – for whom online stuff has been at best a bonus and at worst a necessary inconvenience – we learnt on the job. As we grappled with how to make the best of a website not built to be what has become a digital magazine, it became clear the 2020 Wigtown Book Festival would not take place in any significant physical sense.
The problem wasn’t just the obvious issues around audience and volunteer safety. Uncertainty clouded every area, from author availability to food, drink and accommodation, and that was if the audiences wanted to travel. A not inconsiderable number of book festival audiences are over the age of 70, in the protected category. It seemed likely they wouldn’t want to be in the room where it happened, or anywhere near the room. So, we made the jump: this autumn, Scotland’s National Book Town will host its festival online. We were through the digital rabbit hole.
It will take a little getting used to. In the nicest possible way, Wigtown prides itself on being a determinedly analogue kind of place where the “in person” is valued more than in larger communities. When our office is open – it seems like a long time ago now – people are always popping in. A lot of baking takes place.
The festival itself never seems more itself than when it involves walks, dinners, stargazing or all the other bits round the literary core. How will that translate into the atomised medium of cyberspace? One of so many questions to answer before the full programme is announced in early August.
When we decided to go digital, we picked two key themes for this year’s event: resilience and connection. The former runs through the Book Town like the proverbial stick of rock, from its beginnings as a regeneration project. The dozen or so secondhand booksellers there are nothing if not resilient, surviving against the odds during the rise of Amazon, even seeing sales pick up in recent years as more people celebrate the vintage and antiquarian books.
For these businesses the crisis offers a new, possibly existential challenge, as it does for many of the others that rely on tourism. One thing this year’s digital festival must do is support them, raising their profiles and that of Wigtown and its region, all of which adds a sense of purpose and urgency.
We chose connection as a theme for a couple of reasons. By virtue of its location, Wigtown has always been a little bit in the margins, though inhabitants of the Royal Burgh might put the pin marking their town firmly in the centre of the map. But with the world in lockdown many geographical barriers dissolve, so long as the rural broadband holds up. While the circumstances are unwanted, a festival online offers new opportunities to look internationally.
One lesson of the crisis is that to be a citizen of the world, you do not have to be a citizen of nowhere. So we will be looking to the Arctic periphery, teaming up with other Book Towns around the world and reaching across the sea to Ireland. But we’ll also celebrate the Solway saltmarsh, explore southern Scotland’s distinct literary heritage, champion local writers and give the notorious Wigtown’s Got Talent show a digital makeover.
This little town has been through too much to give up
The festival’s enforced change of format will not be to everyone’s taste, though it’s interesting that many of our regulars (of all ages) have already taken to attending our events online. We may lose some audience members who feel a virtual festival will be a pale substitution. But with luck we will also attract new audiences from far and wide, virtual for now, but inspired to visit Scotland’s Book Town in person one day.
SO, I am confident we can create an autumn festival that has the weft and warp of Wigtown. I wish I could say I felt as sure about the future of arts festivals more generally. Anyone who says they know what the landscape will look like in six months, let alone a year, is a liar.
Finding ways to charge for digital events will continue to be tough, and this will increasingly become an issue. Writers and moderators still need to be paid for free events. Public money will almost certainly be more scarce for culture in future, not least with vital Lottery funding reported to be down more than 50 per cent. Many organisations will be stretched, especially following the end of the furlough. Audiences, sponsors and the charitable trusts and individuals who underwrite so many festivals will have less disposable income.
Book festivals, with their older audience demographic, are likely to be disproportionately disrupted. Even if social distancing can be achieved, audience confidence may be slow to recover. Plus festival-going is habitual: how many may lose that habit with no physical location to gather?
This year’s torrent of online literary events, from the BBC-backed Big Book Weekend and Hay Online to publisher-organised virtual tours, also raises a question. Will publishers – who face their own financial trials – be so keen to send authors across the country when they’ve tasted the possibilities of online?
As I write, I’m taken aback by the gloominess of this list. Yet I can’t help continuing to feel optimistic about Wigtown. It all comes back to that theme of resilience. This little town has been through too much to give up easily.
Like other the festivals most likely to survive and thrive in the new literary landscape, Wigtown has a few strings to its bow, from working with young people, mentoring writers and linking with partners across Europe, to developing new approaches to literary tourism. All that will be invaluable as we make our case in future.
But more important still is the unique community brought together by the power of books. If we get it right, a digital festival will only make that stronger.
Wigtown Book Festival runs from Sept 25 to Oct 4. See www.wigtownbookfestival.com