Coronavirus: Edinburgh Festival should rediscover its wonderful original aim for 2021 – Stephen Jardine

20 September 1947: At the first Edinburgh Festival, are, (from left to right), Hungarian-American violinist Joseph Szigeti, Scottish violist William Primrose, Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel, and French cellist Pierre Fournier (Picture: Gerti Deutsch/Picture Post/Getty Images)

The first Edinburgh Festival was designed to be a ‘platform for the flowering of the human spirit’ and it can do that job again when it returns in 2021, writes Stephen Jardine.

The suspension of the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe was inevitable but still a shock when it came. The annual August extravaganza has happened every year in the city since 1947 but it couldn’t survive the coronavirus pandemic.

While Glastonbury and the Olympics pulled down the shutters, the Festival organisers played for time in the hope that the worst would be over by August. However this week it became clear, by then we may only just be blinking into the light after a long enforced lockdown. And if we are, is it really a good idea to have Chinese jugglers, Russian gymnasts, Brazilian bongo players and performers from over 60 countries flocking to the capital along with visitors from around the world?

In reality, from the moment this nightmare started, the Edinburgh Festival wasn’t going to happen. Over three million tickets were sold for last year’s event with nearly half the festivalgoers coming from outside Scotland. With international air travel virtually non-existent and many airlines teetering on the edge of collapse, overseas performers and visitors were always going to struggle to make it here this year.

For Edinburgh, the absence of the Festival is going to be a massive double blow in top of coronavirus. It’s estimated to contribute around £300 million to the local economy and that money is spread far and wide.

From bar takings and restaurant booking to the joiners who build sets and the printers who produce posters and flyers, virtually every business in the capital will suffer in some way from the cancellation. And the shockwaves will be felt beyond the corporate sector. From families who rent out their homes to performers in August to fund their summer holiday to the vast army of privately owned Airbnb properties in Edinburgh, the trickle-down of cash from the Festival to local people will simply not happen this year.

Hardest hit will be all the hotels that have sprung up in the city in the last decade. Many make their money with raised rates in August and then simply limp through the rest of the year. Industry experts predict hotel occupancy rates in the next 12 months could be as low as 40 per cent. Without further fiscal support, some will inevitably simply go out of business.

But we are where we are and things are never going to be the same again so let’s look for some positives. Last year voices of local dissent in Edinburgh were louder than ever before. With the Festival growing bigger and bigger every year, the strain had started to show with giant promoters like Underbelly accused of treating Edinburgh like a giant money-making amusement park.

This August will be different. Just as Glastonbury enjoys the occasional fallow year, this summer Edinburgh will have a glimpse of what life is like without the Festival. Perhaps it will make us appreciate it more. Or maybe it will give us the chance to examine how far it has strayed from its origins and what it has become.

The original Festival emerged from the ashes of the Second World War “as a platform for the flowering of the human spirit”. Following the horror of this year, next year it can do that job again but how it does it is up to us.