The Festival and Fringe have flowered with vigour

The platform for the human spirit has come on in leaps and bounds since 1947, finds Kate Wimpress

In the midst of post-war rationing, 1947 saw the Edinburgh International Festival set up; ‘a platform for the flowering of the human spirit’. Unbeknownst to the good city fathers of the time, the Festival and the gate-crashing ‘Fringe’ would become the city’s lasting global USP, boosting the local economy by around £280 million a year.

In Scotland we have incredible examples of cultural regeneration; from Patrick Geddes considering ‘the situation, inherent virtue, and potential in a given site’ and advocating in 1917 for ‘opportunities without distinction of class, rank or sex’ to the Stove Network’s reinvigorating of Dumfries today, via David Harding, to touch on a few.

Reflecting on being Glenrothes Town Artist 1968-78 David said: “The idea came from the Chief Architect and Planning Officer of the town. They simply believed that it was a natural thing that an artist should work with the architects and other professions in creating a new town’

I propose David’s statement gets to the nub; regardless of the prevailing economic climate, artists must be working as part of a multi-disciplinary teams; in the making of a new place, or remaking of old. And we need to restate Scotland’s ground breaking history of doing just that. Upholding one of Scottish Urban Regeneration Forum’s key regeneration pillars – ‘root it in the particular identity, culture, assets and connections of people and places’ – Scotland can once again be a leading light.

NEA is in the heart of Muirhouse, an area undergoing a welcome £150m of targeted physical regeneration. Whilst new bricks and mortar are good, their shine fades and fails if the new ‘story’ of this place isn’t shared by existing residents and potential newcomers. A place is made by the myriad stories we tell about it and artists are adept at finding, sharing and learning from these stories.

So let’s get on with developing a shared language, useful in harnessing the imaginative capacity of artists for civic innovation and, crucially, let’s make the space: mental, physical and in time, where these innovations can be nurtured. Does all this time and space sounds expensive? Maybe, but set against the potential for concrete mistakes within a multi-million regeneration programme it seems like a small, but very shrewd, investment.

Despite our narrative of austerity, as one of the richest nations on earth how can we afford not to have artists working with and for us? Within every community; not as a commodity for the moneyed elite. Why not now, to join the dots from Geddes in 1917 and the Festival pioneers in 1947? Let’s not, as artist and academic Frances Whitehead so pithily puts it, waste money ‘trivialising art, and the artist, to the decorative’. Rather let’s focus our efforts on shoring up and extending those platforms. ● Kate Wimpress is Director at North Edinburgh Arts (NEA) and Chair of Scottish Urban Regeneration Forum. ’Making of the Future: Now’ is an Edinburgh Arts Festival event at NEA which considers the continuing importance of the ideas of Patrick Geddes, 11 August at 2pm