Plug to be pulled on Edinburgh Summer Sessions concerts for 12 months

The Edinburgh Summer Sessions were launched in West Princes Street Gardens in 2018. Picture: DF Concerts

More than 50,000 music fans had been expected to flock to Princes Street Gardens to see acts like Sir Tom Jones, Lionel Richie, Travis and Simple Minds.

However the Edinburgh Summer Sessions have now become the final major event of the summer in the city to fall victim to the corona virus pandemic after agreement was reached to reschedule the whole programme until next August.

Tickets for the series of concerts in August, which were also due to feature The 1975, McFly and Michael Kiwanuka, were still on sale last week, despite the cancellation of all of the city’s summer festivals.

However a council report published over the weekend revealed that are all now due to go ahead in the summer of 2021 instead.

Councillors have been told that the authority is working with the organisers of all events due to be held in the city this year to “mitigate” the impact of them being cancelled or rescheduled.

Allowing the third year of the Edinburgh Summer Sessions to go ahead in 2021 will ensure that tens of thousands of tickets sold since the concerts were announced in January do not have to be refunded.

City council officials said the nine-strong series of shows would have been expected to be worth more than £5.5 million for the city’s economy.

The Edinburgh International Festival, the Tattoo, the book festival and the visual art festival - all of which usually take place in August - were all officially called off at the beginning of April, less than a month after the Scottish Government started rolling out restrictions on events.

Other events to fall victim to Covid-19 include the city’s film festival, which normally takes place in June, and the jazz and blues festival, which has been held in July in recent years.

Two other major outdoor concerts at Edinburgh Castle - by The Script and Stereophonics - have previously been called off, although the former has been rescheduled to July 2021. Their promoters, Regular Music, has already rescheduled the series of Glasgow Summer Nights concerts, which were due to go ahead in July and August, to 2021.

Lewis Capaldi, Florence and the Machine, Madness, Chvrches and Primal Scream all played Summer Sessions shows in 2019. Organisers DF Concerts said more than a third of the 47,000 tickets were sold to fans in Edinburgh.

However the Edinburgh Summer Sessions proved controversial in their first two years because the gigs involved the early closure of the gardens, as well as the erection of temporary screens and barriers on Princes Street at the height of the Fringe.

In his report for the council, executive director of place Paul Lawrence said: “Council officers and the event organiser, DF Concerts, had started to progress planning and delivery of this year’s Edinburgh Summer Sessions, however since lockdown restrictions began on the 23 March it has been impossible to continue this process.

“The current guidance from the UK and Scottish Governments indicates that it will be some time before larger social gatherings will be permitted.

“The coronavirus pandemic is having a devastating effect across many sectors with live music and performing arts hit particularly hard, impacting artists as well as the agents, promoters, production, freelance staff and all employees involved in the supply chain that supports the delivery of cultural events.

“With little sign of this situation improving in the near future, the council and event organisers are trying to mitigate these impacts through planning and rescheduling for future periods. This maintains confidence in the sector that business and culture will work to emerge in good shape when it is safe to do so.”

Green councillor Alex Staniforth said: “The cancellation of this year’s Summer Sessions is no surprise, of course. However, to assume that things will pick up where they left off in 2021 is to ignore the very real debate about the use of Princes Street Gardens for so many large commercial events.

“No-one really opposes the idea of bringing big headline acts to play in Edinburgh in summer.

“But the impact on the gardens - ugly screens put up, public access cut off, litter to be cleared up - suggests to me that the council needs to seriously consider whether this is the right location, especially at the most crowded time of year.”

No-one from DF Concerts was available to comment.