The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Arts groups feel impact of festival’s cancellation
We look at what the loss of the 2020 Edinburgh Festival means to the local scene
The show won’t go on – not this year, anyway.
Theatres and venues had already gone dark in Tayside and Fife when the 2020 Edinburgh Festival was cancelled. It added to the dystopian feeling as the world shut down.
The festival is one of the biggest arts showcases in the world and Scotland is the star.
The figures are dazzling too – Festivals Edinburgh estimates its annual events generate more than £313 million for the Scottish economy and create the equivalent of 6,012 full-time jobs, the main festivals being the Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe, the Military Tattoo, the Book Festival and the Art Festival.
The Fringe generates £173m annually, hosting artists, arts industry, media and audiences from more than 150 countries in 2019.
Of the 3,800 shows last year, some 25% were Scottish.
Essentially it is a giant shop window for the arts, a huge marketplace where promoters and theatre directors look for new talent, commissions and collaborations, where actors look for new work, and everyone gets access to an international network that can reap benefits for years to come. It’s Scotland’s chance on the world stage.
Dundee-based Scottish Dance Theatre’s artistic director Joan Cleville’s Antigone, Interrupted, was scheduled for the 2020 Fringe Festival as part of the Made in Scotland programme. Antigone was slated for a three-week run.
“As an artist it is great to be able to perform every day for three weeks,” he said.
“A work is always developing, and you learn so much from an audience,” Joan said from his home in Dundee, where he is, like everyone, in lockdown.
And of course there are the prospects, the networking, the chance to “plant seeds that maybe two years down the line result in a collaboration of some kind. You can feel a bit far away sometimes in Scotland, in Dundee”.
Local theatre companies will also miss being plugged into the powerboard; many performers will appear at their venues pre- or post-festival.
“We will have artists, especially comics, who want to try their work on audiences before the Fringe,” Dundee Rep artistic director Andrew Panton said.
“We are also able to help give their work another life after the Fringe, especially emerging artists. We’re part of the network, pre-fringe and postfringe.”
The Rep also uses the festival to stock up their “artistic fuel tank”.
“As a programming and planning team, we coordinate to see a wide range of work,” he added.
Perth Theatre artistic director Lu Kemp takes a similar view.
“The festival is an important source of both the large and small-scale work we receive,” he said.
“Much of the theatre work presented in our Joan Knight Studio is programmed out of the Edinburgh Fringe, and one of our most successful visiting shows of recent years, Wind Resistance by Karine Polwart, began life in the rehearsal room of the Lyceum as a small show within the Edinburgh International Festival programme.”
Greggs has pulled back on plans to reopen its first sites to the public next week over fears it could attract crowds.
Last week, the high street bakery chain told staff it planned a phased reopening of stores, with 20 sites due to open in the Newcastle area from Monday for takeaway and delivery as part of an initial trial.
However, it said it will run the trial “behind closed doors” due to fears customers will flock to its stores in large numbers.
A company spokeswoman said: “Due to significant interest in our 20-shop trial, and the risk that excessive numbers of customers may plan to visit Greggs, we will now initially operate these trials behind closed doors in order to effectively test our new operational safety measures.
“We will continue to review this and will invite walk-in customers into our shops only when we can be confident of doing so in the controlled manner we intended.”
The reversal of the plan, which was first reported by the Financial Times, comes after rivals such as Pret A Manger have reopened a small number of sites for takeaway and delivery.
Meanwhile, other chains such as Burger King and KFC have reopened for delivery only.
Greggs chief executive Roger Whitehouse previously said he hoped to open around 700 stores, including 150 franchise shops, with new operational measures in place from June 8.
It intended to then open all of its 2,050 stores by July 1.
Amateur gardeners are being urged to show off their efforts by entering a competition to find the best homegrown gardens and plant displays.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and the BBC’S The One Show are joining forces for the My Chelsea Garden contest, asking greenfingered householders across the UK to submit images of their green spaces and growing efforts at home.
The competition comes after the coronavirus crisis forced the RHS’S Chelsea Flower Show to be cancelled and replaced with online content.
The RHS and The One Show are also encouraging people to post images of plants and gardens on social media with the hashtag #mychelseagarden.