WHEN Jonathan Mills, the man at the helm of the Edinburgh International Festival, gave his view that, without more money, the extravaganza would suffer "the death of a thousand cuts" he was not necessarily throwing an ill-considered public tantrum.
Far from it. Instead, what he may have been trying to do was to get people to imagine what life would be like in Edinburgh if the world's biggest arts festival was scaled down to a paltry blink-and-you-miss-it weekend event.
If that happened, Edinburgh would certainly be a greyer place – there would be fewer events to look forward to, and the Capital would no longer be such an attractive place to set up home. It would also be less of a magnet to visitors so we could also expect a significant dent in the £1 billion a year generated by tourism.
At a time when the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) is making its case to its public funders, the uncomfortable question of how much public cash it will receive will rear its head.
Last year, the EIF received more than £4 million from Edinburgh City Council and the Scottish Arts Council – a 26 per cent rise in two years.
However, recent reports have offered the opinion that this is far from enough and the council alone will need to increase its investment in cultural activities from 2.8 per cent of its total budget to four per cent – an extra £8m a year.
But at a time when council spending is in turmoil and councillors are wrestling with how to keep vital public services like schools and community projects going, why should it be a given that an already thriving arts festival should receive more public cash?
The reason lies in what the festivals do for Edinburgh's economy.
The most recent impact study of the Edinburgh festivals, conducted in 2004, estimated Edinburgh's year-round programme of 17 festivals generate £184m revenue for the Scottish economy.
Of this, £135m benefits Edinburgh and the Lothians directly and around 3900 full-time jobs are supported.
And the fact that the eyes of the world are on the Capital during the summer is estimated to be worth a further £12m in global media coverage.
These are significant sums and benefit everyone in Scotland, which is why it is hoped that this year funding bodies, including the Scottish Government, will contribute accordingly.
The return for public investment can also be seen in the huge number of visitors who spend their holidays in Edinburgh. The summer festivals alone – including the EIF, the Fringe and the International Book Festival – are responsible for attracting some 2.5m visitors.
But while that number is growing – there are now at least 1.45m more people coming here than a decade ago – competition is fierce and other cities are investing massively in their festivals.
To stave off the competition and to keep audiences returning to the Capital, researchers on behalf of Edinburgh City Council found that an incredible £100m will needed to be invested, including £43m on improving venues such as the King's Theatre.
Ticket sales have also doubled since 1997. This is good news for show organisers but it also means there is less affordable accommodation for the weary festival-goer – visitor and performer accommodation costs in Edinburgh have risen by 120 per cent since 1997.
The council's report also determined that a further £16m is needed over the next three years alone simply to maintain the current scale and quality of the city's 12 main festivals.
Organisers say that it is not a question of feeding the festivals so they grow larger but nurturing them so that the programme on offer is of a high enough standard to continue to attract visitors.
But while some of the things we get for the public spend are obvious, others are less tangible.
Public money is spent on marketing, as well as to act as leverage to generate vital private sponsorship. The EIF for example, last year, boasted almost £1.7m of private sponsorship.
And you only need to look at the Winter Festivals to see how necessary private sponsorship is – since the Royal Bank of Scotland pulled its estimated £300,000 a year from the Hogmanay celebrations, the event has been left struggling.
The city requires somewhere in the region of £2.8m to stage the winter events, drawn from its own funds, the Scottish Executive and sponsorship.
The returns are impressive but, despite generating an estimated £37m, the winter festivals remain at risk following the abolition of the Government's Cities Growth Fund which helped prop the event up.
This ring-fenced funding has seen £1.8m ploughed into the winter festivals over the last three years but any future investment will now have to be drawn from the £836m general pot of cash handed to the city council by Holyrood.
To strengthen the case for public funding of the winter festivals, business leaders are currently being quizzed about the benefit of the events to them.
Festivals Edinburgh, an association of 11 of the festivals, is also doing what it can to safeguard the future, acting as a forum to ensure that goals set out in various reports in recent years become reality.
Further goals are also soon to be set when, in June, a strategy will be unveiled by consultants to outline what needs to happen over the next five years.
What is clear is that if Edinburgh is to stay ahead of the game and continue to be renowned for its festivals, money needs to be spent on facilities, promotion and infrastructure. But as Scotland benefits greatly it should not be left to the city council alone to fund this. If this doesn't happen, the consequences will be devastating and the benefits will be lost far quicker than they have been won.
The full article contains 1011 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
