'The entire culture sector could implode'

How the Baillie Gifford protests have sent shockwaves through the city's cultural world

When Salman Rushdie appears on stage (via video link) at this summer’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, the subject of corporate sponsorship is guaranteed to loom large over the event, writes Euan McGrory.

As well as discussing the knife attack at a literary event in New York which almost killed him, there is every possibility one of the world’s most celebrated authors will be asked for his view on the controversy over the book festival’s sponsorship. 

One thing will be inescapable, regardless, the name of the venue, The McEwan Hall.

Built thanks to the largesse of the McEwan beer brewing dynasty, it tells a tale of the long and deeply intertwined relationship between arts and education in the Capital and some of the city’s most successful commercial enterprises.

The Victorian founders of the Fountain Brewery gave the modern equivalent of around £19m to build the university graduation hall, emulating the generosity of the Usher whisky dynasty which provided a similar sum to build the city’s then new concert hall on Lothian Road.

From a high to redundancy talk

This summer was supposed to be a high point for the book festival. It is moving into an impressive new home at the shiny new Edinburgh Futures Institute, with a widely admired new director and the biggest author talks in its history at the 1,100-capacity McEwan Hall. There are all the hallmarks of a spectacular comeback after the struggle for survival of the pandemic years.

On Tuesday, it launched its programme featuring 600 writers across more than 500 events, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph E Stiglitz, Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch, ‘Queen of Crime’ Val McDermid, One Day author David Nicholls, Heartstoppers writer and illustrator Alice Oseman, war journalist Jen Stout, percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and indie music pioneers the Reid brothers of The Jesus and Mary Chain.

Instead new chief executive Jenny Niven finds herself discussing the likelihood of having to lay-off staff - the Book Festival has around 30 year-round staff and employs more than 150 each summer - a dramatically reduced festival in future years after parting ways with its principal sponsor.

She has warned it is “totally unrealistic” to imagine the festival will continue in its current form without another corporate backer. “We may have to recast and reshape the festival according to our means from next year,” said Niven, who has described the situation as “devastating”.

When will the dominoes stop falling?

The fear being felt across large parts of the arts sector goes far beyond the future of the Book Festival. Everyone is asking ‘what might happen next?’