Arts diary: So was this year’s Edinburgh Festival a success or not?

IF you’re the kind of person who obsesses over Edinburgh festival box office figures – and aren’t we all? – you may now be scratching your head in confusion.

This week the Edinburgh International Festival (ie, the proper, official bit of the festival, not to be confused with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which it regularly is, especially when people like Camille O’Sullivan complicate things by performing at both) announced its 2012 box office figures.

This year, the EIF triumphantly announced on Sunday, ticket sales were 11 per cent higher than last year. This is an impressive feat given that, just a week ago, the Fringe announced a drop in ticket sales of 1 per cent – with some commentators claiming the drop was actually bigger than that .

The Fringe announcement was a surprise to nobody. Widespread anecdotal evidence throughout August painted a picture of deserted streets, fewer advance ticket sales, and struggling shows. Audiences, it was said, were staying at home to watch the Olympics, or to avoid the horrible weather, or simply because the recession has left most of us with little money to spend on theatre and comedy shows. There were familiar complaints that the Fringe has got too big, and ticket prices too high.

Even the Free Fringe, which you might think would benefit from a recession, doesn’t seem to have done so. Alex Petty’s Free Festival audiences were about the same as last year, Petty has said (although he also talked 2012 up as his festival’s “most critically acclaimed year ever”, with 46 five star reviews). Peter Buckley’s Free Fringe, meanwhile, experienced a sales drop and some show cancellations. “We were definitely down across the board and I don’t believe anyone who says otherwise about this year’s Fringe,” Buckley Hill told this newspaper last week, implying that his rival’s figures may not be entirely reliable.

And yet, as we’ve now been told, EIF tickets were 11 per cent up, despite charging some of the highest ticket prices in town (for the best seats, that is – much cheaper tickets were also available for all but the biggest shows). Book Festival ticket sales were up too, albeit by a more modest three per cent.

Why? It could partly be down to the fact that both of these festivals began over a week after the Fringe did – meaning that neither suffered from the Olympics effect that was widely blamed for the Fringe’s difficult first few days (which adds weight to the argument that the Fringe should have started later this year to avoid the clash). The scale of the EIF ticket surge can surely also be attributed to the combined effect of Speed of Light, NVA’s mass participation event on Arthur’s Seat, and the EIF’s gigantic new venue at Ingliston, which was packed for shows like 2008: Macbeth and Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir.

But increased capacity doesn’t guarantee increased sales, of course – as demonstrated by the Fringe, which added substantial new venues such as the Assembly Rooms and Summerhall (now in its second year, but with a hugely expanded programme this year), yet still experienced a sales drop.

All in all, the closer you look at it, the more complicated the picture gets. The good news for the Fringe is that, even with a sales drop on last year, this year’s total sales were still the second highest in the Fringe’s history. So yes, in the circumstances, it was a success. Glad we got that settled.

MEANWHILE, IN ENGLAND...

Goodbye then, Jeremy Hunt, described by one London arts correspondent this week as “the least mourned secretary of state in the culture department’s history”.

Even if Hunt’s reputation wasn’t in tatters over his handling of the BSkyB takeover bid, he was not a popular figure in the arts world, having spent his time in opposition promising that the arts were “fundamentally important” to the Tories, and then – making Nick Clegg look like a man of admirable consistency – spending his time in office presiding over brutal, 30 per cent funding cuts.

Hunt’s replacement as Culture Secretary (although not in Scotland, where we discovered yesterday that Fiona Hyslop will remain in her current job) is Maria Miller, pictured left, a graduate from the London School of Economics who went on to work as an advertising executive, and a marketing manager for Texaco, and a director of a PR company called the Rowland Group, before she became a Tory MP in 2005.

Nothing in Miller’s background suggests an obvious interest in, or knowledge of, the arts; then again the same could sadly be said for most former culture ministers, north and south of the Border.

After Hunt, though, few people are likely to want to give Miller the benefit of the doubt – especially since Miller’s brief also includes equality issues, a subject on which she has a dubious track record, voting against gay adoption rights.

This week also saw the appointment of a new chairman at Arts Council England – Peter Bazalgette, best known as the man who brought Big Brother to the UK. The news was notable for outraging both the Daily Mail (“the man who put TV in the gutter”) and Mark Thomas, which takes some doing.

Good luck England.