What do we need to do to plan for future festivals and cultural events?

welcome everyone thank you for joining us my name is janet archer i'm the director of festival cultural and city events at the university of edinburgh and i'm going to be your host for this evening so while people are joining us i'm just going to go through a few housekeeping points that we just want to flag um first off we are recording this session um so we will be recording it um and your contributions um and the q a will be recorded um we're going to start taking questions halfway through the session and you'll have the opportunity to ask questions through the q a of our panel members um so welcome everybody thank you for joining us my name's janet archer i'm the director of festivals culture and city events at the university of edinburgh i'm going to be your host for this evening i want to say thank you to everyone at the university who's helped make this series happen especially the festivals cultural and city events team and a special thank you to the artists creative academics and cultural leaders who are contributing as panelists across the series i'm really humbled by the people the incredible bunch of people who've agreed to take part in this series and i'm looking forward to talking to everyone as the series progresses thank you to to the edinburgh features institute who are our partners for this event efi is all about bringing people together to solve global challenges and build a sustainable future vitally important before cobid but even more essential now so this series is taking place against the backdrop of the world's biggest festival city successful because of its extraordinary community of festivals large and small 2020 is the first year since 1947 that the spring and summer festivals haven't been able to take place and it feels really important to mark this moment and capture how the arts and creative sectors can help society recover from the effects of kobit 19. i think we talk a lot about the cost of the arts but we don't always talk about their value and through edinburgh culture conversations we're going to talk about cultural value social value and economic value from the perspective of many different types of people engaged in academic study and arts practice today's event is about looking at what we need to do to plan for future festivals and cultural events the idea is that the idea that theaters are closed and that festivals are not able to take place is daunting on so many levels my background's in dance and theatre and like many of you i'm missing live theater so much we've been hugely fortunate over this period to be able to experience some great arts content online but it's not the same as live experiences and critically the economic model doesn't stick up the forced hibernation of cultural venues is having a profound impact on many people both those employed by venues and festivals and also on the freelance workforce about 70 of the uk theatre workforce is freelance and many in this bracket are falling through gaps in the system and not receiving support during this period although i know that our panel tonight have got some some positive stories in relation to what's being achieved here in scotland but the loss of cultural events and festivals is also having a huge impact on cities especially on the hospitality industry which makes this a really important conversation not just for venues and festivals but for other industries reliant on the arts including restaurants and hotels and for the huge freelance workforce that act as a supply chain for cultural venues and events so against this background i'd like to introduce my guests for this evening and i'll ask each to say a few words about themselves so over to you andy andy arnold who's the artistic director of the tron theater in glasgow thank you janet that's what i was going to say actually i'm the chief director of the tron cena uh where i've been for 12 years now and i spent uh about 18 years or so before that setting up and running the arches um which was a derelict space under central station in glasgow which we turn into an art center in theater so my aim in life is to direct theater make theatre and to write some and to enable as many people as i can to um do the same thank you and before i move on i'm just going to introduce donna jewell and greg collude from just sign who are our bsl interpreters for this evening um and now i'm going to move on to susan susan deacon who is the chair of the edinburgh festivals forum which is a strategic commission that brings together leaders and major organizations with a stake in edinburgh's festivals thanks dan it's nice to be here and as you see i chair enbre festival's forum which um is a an unusual body because it brings together very much on a voluntary basis leaders from across national and city organizations that all have a stake in maintaining maintaining edinburgh's position as the world's leading festival city so obviously um this current year is is is a very strange one but we're obviously looking to the future so discussions like this are really important as regards my wider background it's a wide and varied and i just don't fit in a box um as i've worked variously in education in business and public sector and most of my work over recent years has been in getting people to collaborate and work across different sectoral boundaries um i also have a background in politics so i tend to connect with with that world as as well and if ever there's a time where collaboration is important then it has to be now so um i think where we go from here as far as edinburgh's festivals are concerned but around the role of arts and culture more generally as part of that much wider shared challenge that we'll all have in the future is is really important thank you susan it's great to have you with us um i'm going to move on to fiona gibson who's the relatively new chief executive of capital theater capital theatres um with responsibility for the festival theater and kings theatre in edinburgh oh yes so i joined literally on the 20th of april so when all this chaos was ensuing good time to start um a new role uh you actually find me still in the northwest of england as i haven't even made it to edinburgh yet prior to this though i was the chief exec of the liverpool everyman and playhouse theatres and before that business director for the octagon theatre in bolton and like susan i have an eclectic background of um of experiences because i actually spent 22 years working in accenture the global management consulting company running lots of global businesses but uh something i was involved in was the northern powerhouse devolution work through working with the local enterprise partnership in greater manchester so i'm excited to come back to scotland i am scottish and one day i will make it up to edinburgh to be there with you all and shona shana mccarthy hello everyone i'm shona mccarthy i'm the chief executive at the edinburgh festival fringe society and which is the organization the charity that underpins the edinburgh fringe and prior to that i've spent 32 years in the cultural sector um at the head of derry londonderry's uk city culture and headed up belfast bid to be european capital of culture so i'm very passionate about the possibilities and opportunities that major cultural events offer in cities and both at citizen level and and to the artists and creatives who inhabit those places so good to be here this evening thank you shona gavin i'll cut i'll turn to you next thank you janet hello everyone very nice to be here i'm gavin reed i'm the chief executive of the scottish chamber orchestra which is one of scotland's five national performing companies based in edinburgh my background is um pretty much entirely in the classical music industry i started life as a trumpet player and in manchester spent a long time uh in fiona's part of the world now uh in in living and working in greater manchester in the northwest of england and came back to scotland uh 10 11 2006 to be the director of the bbc scottish symphony orchestra spent a decade there working within the corporation and have been with the um the seo since 2016 and i currently chair the association of british orchestras which is our membership association for the entire professional sector also incorporating youth uh youth ensembles conservators so um a trying time for everybody and um i'm looking forward to this evening's conversation very much thank you thank you and last but not least josh josh ryan saha who is the data driven innovation lead for tourism festivals and infrastructure at the university of edinburgh yep thank you very much for inviting me and hello everyone and as janet just said yes the data driven innovation lead for tourism festivals infrastructure and my role has been trying to explore the ways that um i guess data can be used to benefit the tourism sector here in the city region around edinburgh also festivals and my background has been in data science working at the data lab leading on skills development there and before that i worked at nesta where i helped set up something called the longitude prize and before that a little bit of time in bosnia and slovenia working in some international development roles thank you josh and when we've clearly got a huge wealth of expertise in the room um and you know just thank you hugely for being with us here this evening i mean clearly all of us were stunned and shocked when we first entered into lockdown decisions had to be made very quickly and you all had to move to scenario planning i guess in relation to what might happen week on week what was your approach to planning i'm going to start with shona um responsible for the largest fringe festival in the world what was your response to planning when you first realized and recognized that you were going to have to take some very tough decisions over this this current period yeah i mean i think probably like most people our first thought was towards the artists um and so for the fringe society we're funded largely through the contributions that are made through registration fees of the artists and companies who bring shows to the fringe and so our first kind of port of call was to make sure that we could refund all of those companies and that the artists here kind of the front line in the cultural sector were not going to be out of pocket as a result of this and so we once we were able to refund all of the artists and companies and we moved into how do we provide an alternative platform for them during this year's festival and so we just launched um what has been a completely rethought-out sort of digital program of work as well as signposting to all of those companies who did very quickly go online themselves and many of the venues we are kind of nimbly adjusting their programs into an online space this year as well and then straight into fundraising as well so we've got several initiatives that we've just launched as a means for artists to actually earn an income during this time because as you said at the get-go janet it's um the digital space is one thing but how to actually monetize that as an artist or a company and it's slightly trickier so we've been putting all of our all of our initial efforts into supporting our sector and also lobbying for the new investment that has been so badly needed and then secondly and one of the big priorities for us was the survival of the fringe society because in the absence of being able to sell tickets or um to have artists and companies registered to participate this year and literally uh the vast majority of our income was gone and so so we had to quickly um approach scottish government and have a resilience group and set up around us to ensure that we could survive and i'm delighted to say we were able to negotiate alone and and and are now into trying to kind of stabilize and and then futurecast and come back stronger because there's many things that we can do in this fallow year to um to really ensure that whatever version of the fringe re-emerges in 2021 and beyond is the best possible version of itself and that's something i'm kind of really excited about and once we get over the delivery of the digital phase in in august we'll be seriously future casting and and working with people like yourselves and people around this table to really explore how we make the best the best fringe not just the biggest but the best version of of the fringe i'm presuming that there is lots of appetite from artists to come back strong yeah well it was extraordinary i mean we had over 2000 shows already registered and by the time we had to make the decision with the other festivals in march and and the response and the kind of you know normally in the public domain we hear a lot about what people don't like about the fringe and um it was just it was really encouraging that at the moment of cancellation this year uh there was a real outpouring of love for the festival and we felt very strongly that kind of importance of it as a showcase and a platform for artists from across scotland and across the uk and indeed globally and so yeah huge amount of interest and it's going to be really interesting this year's experiment just to see how the online fringe um really kind of engages in some ways with a wider audience and a wider a wider global network and much of that is about connecting professionals as as well as audiences yeah well that's one of the pieces that we've got we're very quick to move into the digital space was the arts industry side where over 1600 curators and programmers come from all around the world every year to see the work that showcased at the edinburgh fringe and so we were very keen not to lose those important relationships for our sector here so this year we're experimenting with the the digital the fringe marketplace in in the digital landscape and we've kind of done some real sort of technological innovations to get there so this year will be an experiment but i think one of the interesting things is whatever we learn from uh from that kind of having that forced going into the the online landscape this year i think is going to really influence the shape of the fringe going forward and in all likelihood we'll always have a kind of hybrid model from this moment on so this year is very much a learning process yeah so i'm going to move us over to glasgow andy you've been doing some really interesting work to support artists over this period um do you want to tell us a little bit about the things that you've initiated well um thanks janet it's uh it's been a it's been a while to adjust to the situation actually it's um it's taking i i at first i was completely lost and actually uh i just want to say that i mean we were closed down on the 23rd of march but the week before that uh the government said we'd advise you not to go to the theater and that was a very strange few days because we had sold out productions we had a garlic production in upstairs and we had a vanishing point selling out with metamorphosis for the following week and in the main house and we thought well what do we do and and people were still coming and we weren't sure and gradually we thought we'd better stop and then obviously then we were told to close our doors but that was a dreadful period actually a sheer uncertainty and of course then when we did close some theaters talked about opening again in may and so on and we thought oh that's paul hardy we're that's nonsense we'll we will open a game with our summer show underwood lane in in the end of june which of course after a while i realized that was full hardly as well so and it's next year with so an awful lot of yeah and all we said on a practical level we had an awful lot of reprogramming of events trying to uh paying off contracts and so on and uh just trying to find a way of you know obviously um ticket sales having to uh repay and all and so on just as something that um that shownus has been talking about as well and and so just on a practical level of survival that's the first thing uh and the furlough thing meant we could um do that with our staff and and we were ironically the theaters that make we don't make money at the tron we're a small theater we're only a couple hundred seats so we do rely on subsidy for a large part of our income and the com the successful theaters the commercial there is the ones are really in trouble because you know they're when they're totally dependent or licensed depending on the box office uh they're the ones who are were in big trouble words we are relatively um able to survive with a small staff uh and um uh light uh yeah keeping our costs low um and with a furlong scheme and with this 10 million pounds of venues that's coming in as well we're looking forward to develop things but i think um we got involved with the digital work uh but as you yourself said janet it's um it's not the same as there i mean i'm not artistically criticizing it we're involved i'm directing something myself but if i'm given the choice of uh one actor performing live to one audience member as opposed to an actor performing on camera to ten thousand people in their homes i choose the first of those two because you know that's there and the other one isn't and the live experience is what we're we're desperately um missing i had uh planned i wrote an article about this in the scotsman last week that you know the situation was for the freelance community was pretty bad before this all happened uh and i had already planned in the spring of next year to stage a piece called actors only it's a working title of staging some work on the tron stage where we have for just for that one occasion we just spent all our money on actors uh so we have no production we do an empty stages and uh no big production teams or sets and so on and by and by that means employing as many assets as we can quite a large number of actors i'd worked out and as an exercise i thought i would find out how many new actors i didn't know in the west of scotland to come and um be part of that season rather than working with the actors i did know so so i put out a i put out a call for self tapes and i kept it what i thought was a very strict guidelines they had to be actors based in the west of scotland there had to be actors who had the page and spotlight the the industry magazine and they had to be actors i'd never met before or auditioned before or cast before and i received 420 self tapes so that that made me realize how many people are out there and how many people we have to try and get work for uh and that is the thrust of what we're trying to set up um it's very exasperating not being in our building i mean even though we can't make theater in the traditional way the audience is sitting in an auditorium watching shows there's other ways we can make work we've been doing i say a lot of work digitally workshops and uh mentoring and online work with the arts community and also all our youth theatre even our trom uh that's been all that's been carrying on online uh but um we're very much hoping that uh in the uh hopefully by the early autumn we can actually get back in our building and then we can uh start to develop other types of work engaging self-employed artists that may be work that goes out in the community uh open air theater uh that also uh providing rehearsal space for artists to develop work and so on so uh we just have to think differently how we make theater in some ways um i enjoyed when i was at the arches doing a lot of site specific work one-to-one theater promenade there to that type of work and i'll look forward to returning to that until we're at the time when we can actually have audiences sitting uh alongside each other uh you know watching a show in the way that we all crave what will happen uh in the not too distant future so it's yeah we're just looking at yeah we've got a great team in the toronto and um we're working very busily at um uh finding ways of engaging the freelance arts community because uh yeah they're very much been left out in the cold uh through this whole process uh very disastrously it's been very hard for an awful lot of people thank you andy and it's it's i mean it's good to know that that there are ways to do things differently to an extent during this period while we're locked out of venues uh but as you say it's it's it it doesn't it's not the same experience as sitting in the theater in a theater with an audience uh and and watching a live show fiona you're you're calling us in from england um where the rules are slightly different to scotland um and obviously you've got that as a backdrop in terms of your planning uh in in relation to your responsibilities in edinburgh what's been your approach in terms of thinking about what needs to happen across across your venues how have you have you tackled that yeah so so step one was really to think about how we kept our mission going so our mission is to inspire a lifelong love of theater and so we looked to our community engagement activity that we were doing in-house to say okay we've got very large programs with people living with dementia with care-experienced children with the royal sick children's hospital young kids lgbt communities and it was important we felt that we kept something going that would keep people connected both with each other uh and with the activity that they'd been used to coming to at capitol theaters so we created raise the curtain which is our online community campaign perform it create it and discover it and that has you know kept the mission out there but then obviously it's about survival it's about ensuring that financially we are able to keep going we are not a subsidised theater but neither are we a commercial theater we are actually scotland's largest theater charity so for us it's been about really working out the financial scenarios linked to a lot of ambiguity about when we might be able to open again and then you link to that the health and safety of ensuring that our buildings and venues can be used in a safe way but you know socially distanced theater as many of us have talked about is really challenging financially um so we might be able to do it physically but actually in terms of really being able to to keep that going that that will be challenging and this is where you get to the differences in the nations with england now saying first of august you can actually have performance open indoors um but from a socially distanced approach so um you know we're kind of turning our thinking to well what could this mean and are there ways that we can do smaller scale things promenade as you have said yourself andy we've got quite big spaces in the likes of the festival theater so we've been working hard to understand what our audiences want but also our our programming so you know we work with some of the largest producers across the uk and internationally dance companies opera companies um different you know programmers um from around the world who all have different perspectives as well about the art of the possible so remounting some of those tours is quite challenging for them it's like a massive game of jenga which in turn then has an impact on our ability to make sure we've got good shows um for our audiences to work to see and come back to so it is that combination i would say of making sure our mission is out there making sure that we're financially viable making sure that we're safe and that people understand the changes we will make to our venues when we're allowed to come back in and of course making sure we've got great shows with our all of our artists able to come back and and use our spaces so that's what we've been focused on thank you and i've got a question that's coming from the audience so i'm going to bring it in gavin before i um introduce you um but the question is around dude it's from violeta sim janoska and do you think that the arts and cultural sector showed lack of strategic management skills in direction of predicting the risks and finding a solution um and many of the cultural organizations are still in the trap on practical level of survival um and less ideas of how to go further are there things that you can bring into play from an orchestra perspective gavin in the terms of innovation during this period that enables people to continue to engage with the arts well i think what um what all of the performing arts sector found very quickly was um there was um a profound need that went well beyond the desire from artists to make work and we saw that across all the various different disciplines and um there was in the first months of lockdown uh what became a very um busy uh and uh and diverse and um uh active online um performing space with a lot of innovation and uh you know the in the orchestral world and it wasn't long before distanced performances of beethoven symphonies from orchestras around the world were flooding the um the internet and it was a joy to see it um the the the musicians in my orchestra are no different from musicians in orchestras all around the world they desperately need and want to perform and they did that from their homes and and that that has continued um throughout the throughout the period so so i and and i think it has driven um us on the other side of the stage um forward every day you know if we've if we have really needed to look for a reason to um to get on zoom and to go to work every day from home it has been to find ways in which our artists can perform again and connect with audiences and provide that um astonishing uh experience that you really only get when you bring people together in a theater or a concert hall um for for uh for memorable experiences online has been incredibly useful um and we we have discovered skills and ways and means of creating um art for our musicians and our actors and our dancers to perform but also for our audiences to remain connected with us and that will continue have no doubt in a complementary kind of way but i think it's already been said um here and it's been said by many others and that that that is additional uh and it's important that we do it and it helps us to reach many more people in a in innovative sometimes very fun quirky ways um but it doesn't replace the live experience that that we that we all crave so i think it um yes yes it's been uh helpful uh it will continue to be useful it will become uh ever more part of our core offering i am sure but i don't think it will replace the live activity that we all say that we all need so much whatever whether we are on stage or in the audience so i'm going to bring us on to that the idea of being in a space in a venue again with artists and audiences connecting through through energy human energy and we've seen in some countries that we people are able to go back into this i've seen some orchestra examples where musicians are playing together but in a way where they're dispersed across the concert hall um even um sort of taking um places in in the audience uh as well as the stage and i we we've heard that england we've seen the uk government now say that with it with social distancing rules venues can start to reopen again um is that is that a discussion um particularly at your in in relation to your role as chair of the association of british orchestras how is that playing out in terms of of the uk what's the feeding and view from from orchestras in relation to what's achievable and what's not at this point in time well i think i think we are going through a process and i think that process will um continue to develop and evolve until um there won't be a finite end point but certainly until such time as we can get um symphony orchestras and choruses and large companies on stage in front of a couple of thousand people um what what it's throwing up is the need to explore all sorts of different formats and that that is that that actually having the time if we're looking for positives in all of this having the time and the space to reflect on what we do and and and think about new ways going forward has has also been um uh of of benefit but i think um the notion that we will go from full lockdown to um back to what you might call normality in one goes is is not going to happen so it is going to be a process and it's a process of both helping and supporting musicians uh in venues to um uh to to gain their confidence uh in in how they're going to be able to perform to the in in professionally again but it's also about um helping to instill confidence in our audiences uh so within with the the the guidance that's just been published by the uk government through dcms the department for culture media and sport um recently on performing arts artisan venues there are some pilot projects that have been identified one of which is with the london symphony orchestra at their rehearsal and recording and community and venue scent looks in the city of london and and it's aimed at developing confidence in audiences and it started last week and it's a this is the london symphony of one of the great symphony orchestras of 90 plus musicians in the world it's two musicians with an audience of 30. and next week i think it will be an uh it'll be a group of three musicians and hopefully they'll be able gradually to increase the numbers of audience involved so it's a process at the seo we are right back to um chamber size we're uh we're ordinarily on an orchestra of 38 musicians sometimes more sometimes less for the next few months certainly up until christmas which is our probably our next major staging post in this process it's going to be largely chamber music and and that may be uh that will be a combination of um filmed for online uh stream streaming as live more likely as live with some concerts as and when we can in venues with much reduced audiences but hopefully over the course of three or four or five months confidence will be developed both with the musicians and with the audience members and of course with us as as presenters so that gradually we can develop that confidence and work out test what will work test what we need to do try things out so that come january and this at the moment is a huge assumption we may then be able to be in a position all being well to develop further but we're in this for some time to come yes and and i suppose bringing us back to the now there there's some some performance start taking place in in some parts of the uk i think outdoors um so we've seen some examples of productions which are going to take place outdoors um josh you're doing some work in relation to festivals in thinking about data and disbursement of activity to keep audiences safe um how does that tally up with potential opportunities for the future in relation to what might be able to be achieved in the city uh in in in relation to uh different types of festival activity yeah thank you johnny um one of the projects that um the data driven innovation program here at the university of edinburgh funded um was something called uh simulation of spread um and it followed on from a project for brendan miles and myself and others um started up a couple of years ago trying to support the festivals and transport providers to understand um how to manage the network better during the time where it gets really busy and through that process we captured a lot of data and we started sharing a lot of data um and then of course the the crisis here and what we thought was well how can we use this type of analysis to um to help inform the future of festivals so how can all of these events take place in a city in a very short space of time which attracts a lot of people but do it in a safe way and how can you plan it out how can you find the spaces to do that how can you do the right timing of shows and events so that it reduces the potential crowding so what we're looking at at the moment is data from uh city wi-fi all anonymous and aggregated the events data from the list and also transport data to start to understand if you could predict when a particular place in edinburgh might get very very busy and may become a potential hotspot for infection spread what things can we tweak and change to potentially reduce that so that could be the way that you manage people flowing through the city it could be the timing of events or it could be i think as you just sort of mentioned potentially finding new spaces for events across the city may be outdoors which seems to be the well at least from the modern science i guess the most saying that that seems to be the best way to reduce spread so that's a project we've got going at the moment and it's only quite short but hoping it might be able to provide some sort of advice at least for edinburgh where there are a lot of events taking place in a very short time with it with a huge number of people so it seems we've got it we've got we've talked about artists and the need to keep artists safe we talked about audiences um and and and venues susan from a city planning perspective what's what are the things that you think we've absolutely got to focus on in this period where clearly there's going to be a requirement to do things differently for a time at least what are the things that you think that we need to focus on um to continue to to celebrate the the great value that the arts bring to cities and their lives well i think you know one of the really big positives that's come out of all of this and you know my goodness there's huge negatives obviously but but it has forced all of us individually and collectively to really think about the things that matter to us and about what makes us human fundamentally and you know everybody's different and the things that we miss and we long for are all different but i'm very struck that you know every one of the i know certainly of different age groups and there's a whole lot of data and evidence coming out on this as well you know i are looking to reconnect with other human beings again so i think um that there will just be a natural progression towards us as us doing that and the question is how those who are well the question really for for people in leadership roles i think whatever they're doing is how they can be agile and responsive to what is fundamentally the most uncertain situation that i think any of us have ever faced and you know the really clever people worldwide whether they're scientists or economists or whatever the the really clever ones i think are the ones that are just saying we don't know where this is going to go so there's something about adaptability agility responsiveness that um is going to be really really important i was very struck in edinburgh and sean i spoke about this a little bit earlier on i i was really struck and really impressed and heartened by how quickly um both the scottish government and the city council but other agencies and other partners and and people with an interest in the festivals all responded very quickly to the immediate efforts that had to be made to frankly shore up the core infrastructure that has been built up over 70 plus years in edinburgh that has created just this wonderful array of festivals and events and cultural activities that are known and love the world the world over um we have to make sure that that agility continues when we're out of if you like immediate reactive crisis mode because things are going to keep changing i think there's 41 different vaccines being tested just now but you know it's anybody's guess however when these are going to actually be available and you know how or if or when we will actually get into a post covered situation you know everybody knows that we may be living with this for a long time so agility and responsiveness i think is important um but there's also i think for for cities there's a particular challenge um and again some of this is just developing organically in terms of people's choices and behaviors so maybe it's early doors to make too many predictions but you know we're already seeing that cities are being viewed less and positively um than they were previously the data came out just last week that showed that the rate of infection of covered has been much higher in cities across the world and there's some interest in early signs and for example edinburgh well the scotland's property market and i think this is mirrored elsewhere that um people are shown an increased interest in living outside of cities so cities are really going to have to think about how they renew and adapt and to this new world that we're in and i think you really need to polish the jewels in the crown and foreign festivals and our whole cultural offering you know absolutely is a is a whole mass of giant jewels in that crown so there is a really pressing need to think about how um we do work collectively but while going with the game of where people themselves are going in their behaviors and their choices and so on but how how we build back up these fantastic offerings that we've had albeit in a different shape and forming you know we've talked a lot about the online experience but you know let's be honest about it i mean most people now even young people you know are getting pretty desperate now to be away from screens you know so it's fantastic that um there's been so many creative things done online and you know a lot of these will live on into the future and in terms of being part of a more kind of hybrid and blended offer but um they have the limitations so um so i think we need to think big and we need to make sure we keep our ambitions big and um as i say be able to adapt and be agile for this really uncertain period that lies ahead thank you susan and yeah but i mean i think online clearly has its limitations i would much rather be in a room with all of you and our audience right at this very moment just now but there have been i want to give a shout out to some of the great things that have been put up online so i think national theater of scotland's um work has been tremendous and i i've really enjoyed the scotsman sessions uh so lots of things that i think are there for us to enjoy and also the opportunity to see um work that we just wouldn't have had the chance to see um in other parts of the world but i want to go back to that point about cities and cities changing and and people choosing to live differently um is that really a thing i'm just interested in what other panel members think of that um andy from a glasgow perspective what's what's your take on on that uh well i love glasgow and i'm not going to move out of it i don't think i think obviously yeah the virus is stronger since it is because that's where most people live and and that's the nature of city life and uh you know without seeing too cynical about it i think there's far more chance of me getting mugged outside the tron uh or come up on a mower by weaving in and out traffic to get together than there is anything else but uh i think we but you know you have to balance that um desire maybe you know i mean there's this great virtue and wanted to get to to live away from this is cities and away from everything that goes on in them but at the same time uh city life i think the people who live in says uh enjoy uh that you know their infrastructure is there that's why they live in sears because you put up a lot of inconveniences to living in says it's a lot cheaper and everything else to live out out and about but uh to be able to go to arts events to culturally engage uh in a vibrant place and i mean obviously i'm prejudiced towards glasgow but i mean guys is a massive arts and uh literary community uh and it's uh i think we're all waiting a lot of us are waiting today when we can reestablish that so you know this yeah i think we've all been damaged by this and and i'm sure there will be a hesitancy amongst a lot of people returning to to cultural life to to particularly things which you know which involve people being very close together where it's there or nightclubs and all the rest of it but uh beyond all that i think um uh the the the cultural life city is so vital that um uh yeah long may it continue so shona i'm going to come on to you in a moment but just before i do that i'm just going to just um acknowledge some of the points that are coming through so question here around the type of work that's being made by artists that are reflective of the pandemic so that's hazel lamb but we've got a session just on that coming up so i'm going to ask you to come to our next events uh to talk about that uh we've also got some questions around copyright and ip uh thinking about the implications for artists online again uh that's that will feed into other sessions um and then a point here shona uh from lily hughes saying it's great to hear the edinburgh fringe putting the financial well-being of artists at the center of its response to lockdown and will the fringe continue to prioritize the well-being of artists as it plans for future festivals well there's a short answer to that yes um absolutely and again you know i just say i think this is a real opportunity actually to look at the things that were less successful about the festival and look at the things that we that we were already um paying our attentions to and i think in cities generally and i know across the the festival's landscape in edinburgh we were all already looking to issues around the environment sustainability reduction of print equity and equity of access for people of all backgrounds and these were all the kinds of issues that we were already focusing our attention on i know from the fringe perspective our focus was very much on one more show not two more feet and because we were minded of that just the scale of impact in in the city and so i see this as an opportunity to actually accelerate some of that agenda as we go forward and the work that josh and the team were doing um around that whole transport piece and that kind of data driven innovation and that we were partnering on as well and i just think was enormously helpful to give us some real factual information about the kind of hot spots and about and the pressure points in the city and so that we can be part of the solution rather than be part of the problem uh so i think i think the direction of travel was already there for so many of us in the cultural sector and i see i see this as a kind of accelerant and if anything probably the biggest challenge for all of us is that we were so far the arts pushed down that road of of having to and commercializing having to develop commercial streams of income and we were all i think looking around this room incredibly successful at that and but but when a global pandemic hits it suddenly kind of exposes all of the cracks and weaknesses and and so i think there's a debate to be had about um ongoing investment in culture that is more meaningful than it has been in the past and um so yeah and and certainly from our point of view it will be as the fringe returns in 21 and beyond um all of our focus will be on how do we provide the best possible experience for the artists and performers on the stages thank you josh you had your hand up yeah firstly i'm really sorry shona i should have recognized the fringe straight away and then it's completely didn't the national festival were involved as well now i think i think it's really interesting change in cities around how people are using them so um you know when lockdown was in in place and uh in a more strict way and you could go out once or twice a a day you'd explore what was in your doorstep in a much more uh um uh well just much more deeply i guess so i'd go down to i live up to grandson in edinburgh and i'd go to the beach at wardy bay i say beach i mean it's tiny but it was absolutely packed in a good way because there was people exploring and experiencing things on the doorstep and i think that's going to be a potentially interesting opportunity for performances and uh cultural and creative um uh will work i guess um which is how's it how does it sort of tap into the new localhood a new neighborhood um what people want to see close to them thank you josh so i had a question around audiences and how do you think audiences will feel about coming back to venues when will they be ready to do that we've also got a question from the audience coming through here in a similar vein so question for all of the speakers i'll start with fiona i'll give you a heads up are you guys confident in the recent stage of reopening policy in scotland and do you think it's a dilemma for us to attract audiences which would also attract the virus from a variety of countries and how are you balancing your expectation and risk management so that's from freddie chan yeah i mean we've done a number of audience surveys about what would it take uh for you to come back to the theaters and the key kind of headline items that people say they want to see are social distancing of some description timed entry so changing your in and out processes um obviously hand sanitizer one-way direction but also it is um about uh the kite mark so we've got this good to go kite mark that is uk wide um which uh scotland is also participating in and making sure that the venues are all following those rules and guidelines and demonstrating and being assessed as having done so those are the things that audiences want to see and that will bring them back so we also ask the question when would you be willing to come back and at the minute they're saying in about four months time that's when we would be willing to say in the main i will feel happier now obviously the backdrop of this has got to be the vaccine any local researchers and all of those things and i think scotland has actually managed this really well so far and it's really important that we do look very carefully at where those local hot spots might be and make sure we've got you know things in place to make sure they don't spread to the the wider population so um it is tricky because um you know in terms of a lot of diminishing returns as per the question i do think that people don't want to see things digitally forever they do want to come back into a live environment and i think as andy said you could get run over by a bus tomorrow there are so many risks in life and you choose to take whichever risk you want i also have done a number of calls with our patrons who tend to be a little bit older and they have said we so miss the live performance we just want to come back so as long as you provide an environment that we trust you and i think that's a really important word it's making sure that all of us are trusted as places that will look after our audience members when they choose to come back and put all the right things in place you know that is the best that that we can do and hopefully we'll encourage people when it's right to come back thank you fiona and gavin i'm gonna i saw you nodding there i'm going to bring you in on the same question um i would i would echo everything fiona has said and i mean clearly the um government guidance um is uh some something uh that we're waiting for here up here dcms has produced the um from the uk government uh and that's that's going to be a terribly important um benchmark and where where organizations are able to put on activity and i guess i'm thinking of the the subsidised sector uh which has has in some cases the opportunity and the financial ability to put on smaller scale social socially distanced events and that might be easier in the music sector and and it's something certainly within the classical sector that we are looking we are all looking at um very carefully um if we're talking about fairly large venues with a very small number of people it makes no economic sense and it makes no economic sense for for a lot of organizations but i think where the the subsidised sector is is um has has a potential role to play is in the responsibility of stepping in and and helping to build confidence amongst our audiences i completely echo what fiona says about um our patrons desperately missing um what's um uh a a a life a lifeline for for many of them and what i hope and i i you know i i'm i'm i'm living i'm trying to live as optimistically as possible at the moment is if um you know i put on some chamber music it presents some chamber music in the autumn to an audience of 100 people in a hall that would otherwise take a thousand people and there's and the their distance and we get the guidance and the support and the um the the senate sanitization pro probably also putting on one hour one act shows which avoids the need for toilets and and and going to the going to the bar and the interval and everything that ensues um actually i'm i'm hoping that gradually we'll see those seats being sold and confidence developing over the course of a number of months that will help the whole sector then to to grow um in an organic kind of way and so so uh so i think we do have a responsibility and what the the great temptation uh and i and i say this very um uh carefully because for many many organizations there has been no choice um but the great temptation has been to hibernate and and and wait for it all to pass and i don't think it again if if one one's organization is in a position to incentivize activity for all sorts of reasons that must be the route to to go down and and to to support artists to support the recovery and development on the health and well-being of audiences and and to support the recovery of the sector so i think it's terribly uh terribly important just on the on the the the city's um subject if i may um for me it's not it's not a particularly binary um uh discussion answer um i think one of the things that um we i i feel quite confident one of the things that will emerge here is much more of a community focus on the arts so there will be those big moments in the great concert halls and the great theatres of course they will um but there will be much more um community focused art within cities you know we're you know those of us who have our um home in one of those cultural jewels and we perform there every week actually we've got a responsibility to get into the nooks and crannies of the city much more probably than we have done in the past and but also taking it out with the cities into in into more rural communities many organizations do that but i think there will be much more of that so i think i was somebody i think it was susan used the word agility earlier on i think that that could well shape a lot of planning and thinking going forward thank you gavin and i'm going to just open up to more questions coming through from the audience just in case people are restraining themselves because i haven't pressed the green button to say go um so please do send your questions through those of you that haven't yet done that i mean it seems to me that what what with a theme that's run through consistently is that everything's different depending on what scale and size you are uh whether or not you're a commercial entity or whether or not you receive public subsidy there are lots of very complex and different challenges uh and some opportunities depending on on where you sit in the overall arts ecosystem um but good gaming to hear that there's this there's some things happening in fact i was talking to one of our panelists who's coming in on an event um going forwards uh the very wonderful karine polward uh who is playing for her neighbors right now in her streets and i heard uh the brilliant leonie bell uh who's just taken up the post uh as uh as the new director of b a dundee and she was on one of these zoom calls um a few a month or so ago and she was she was talking about the wonderful work that's going on at street level in terms of creativity where great people are coming together or great artists are coming together with communities um and opening up their their artistry and their their their talent in in in different ways so keeping that vein of creativity going in in at a very local level um but of course that doesn't that doesn't necessarily that isn't necessarily sustainable unless unless subsidy is in place and not everybody's able to do that i'm going to move us on to a question from me really so just focusing on critical issues going forwards in terms of planning so if we imagine that we've moved on a few years and where where what will we need to have done in order to get to that place in a in a as positive a way as as we can taking into account all of the challenges that we've reflected on other things that need to be going back to that early question about strategy are there things that need to be put in place now in order to safeguard the future who wants to take that susan i'm gonna oh i'll show now i'll come to you oh andy had his hand up so i'm i'm happy to kind of uh let her first okay when i i was just from the point of view of um how we run our theaters i think um uh you know hopefully a few years time uh we'll we will sort of this problem but i think we have to think about how we stage work i would love to for example uh i said some theater are better able to do that than others uh where you've got uh for example i'd love to the sean have an auditorium where we could put all our seats back out um and have an open space uh because uh or to even find another space we can put perform work in where uh audiences can uh watch a production uh which is doesn't involve them sitting alongside each other and we know that there's plenty over the many years there's been something wonderfully exciting theater companies uh and arts companies who produce work in that on that basis it's very exciting audiences as well we know this at the edinburgh fringe often the most popular productions are where audiences are taken on a physical journey or to an interesting unusual space and so we have to think differently maybe about how we make our performance spaces uh just in acknowledgement of something that may be with us for many years as well as the you know the the one-way routes and and so on but i just i think uh audiences just come back think about coming back and and not being too nervous about things and traveling and so on i think people will get alarmingly get back very quickly i've i've just um i've just driven back from the north of scotland today this afternoon stopped off on the a9 of the house of bower and uh he wouldn't think there was a any any uh pandemic the place is jammed uh people not so producing everybody buying you know and it's extraordinary actually it's quite some ways but it's quite alarming but i think people will adjust to uh i think very quickly going back into auditorium but nonetheless i think it provides an opportunity for us to think about how we present art differently and that's very exciting and we've got a point coming in about travelling to venues and how can audiences take into account the factors surrounding traveling to venues and supporting patrons is that something fiona that you have thought about um or indeed shona are there other things that the fringe is thinking about in terms of how people might access things in the future uh yeah i think that um some other cities in europe have put in place things like um i would call it equivalent to our dialer ride type thing so um you know bus pickup things that are much more door-to-door and that are very um you know socially distanced in terms of how they are set up is how some other cities have done it across europe um the other thing i would say is you know obvious things like parking suspensions allowing people to use their own transport and other things other cities have done liverpool for example has put in a lot more cycle lanes they've just literally siphoned off the road and put in much more sustainable routes into the city centre for people to you know either walk safely or cycle so i think it's those kinds of things that um cities um are thinking about and i'm sure we could think about in edinburgh as well yeah i i mean i just think there's lots of things that we can do and you know everything from reducing the transactional stuff because that was one of the things i think come out in the national audience survey that's a real concern about the handover of money or the you know tick handling tickets i mean there's there's nothing to stop us you know aiming to go ticketless uh within the next year or two there's nothing to stop us kind of um having absolute contactless payments for for everything so there's very practical things like that right through to i mean i i think we had we didn't have enough time this year to kind of really explore how performance could happen in a different way in the fringe landscape and we didn't have the licensing or permissions either but i was really struck by you know in the early days you saw scenes from italy and spain of people performing on their balconies in in housing blocks and uh where i live in leith and there's a lit literally a natural courtyard in the center of our flats of the blocks of flats that i live in in lease and it's kind of occurred to me so many times that's a perfect social distancing space for a performance to happen in the center of that courtyard and the audience is naturally surrounding in the you know in in all of all of the flats the challenge there is how do you monetize that so the artists get paid for that for their work so i'm i'm looking at josh here because i'm kind of throwing that as a throw in that as a kind of real world piece of research that the university of edinburgh could weigh in with but um you know i do think even even if uh even if a vaccine is found that that there's this is still going to have instituted a real change in how we work because having now been exposed in our lifetime to a global pandemic of this nature that has affected us all it would be naive to think that that may not recur again in the future and in our lifetimes so so i i think we're going to have to have plan b's and plan c's going forward um and i'm kind of really interested in and exploring those whilst we have this time so that if this ever did occur again that we'd have we'd have ways of still bringing an art to people kevin i i think um the the yes to all of those um uh practicalities and you know in in the classical music world uh and it's the same for others here we plan years ahead and we tie tie a season up a year up at a time and put it away and publicize it and um put it on sale and then we're thinking um two three years ahead uh in in other art forms it's even more than that and what's been challenging but fascinating is thinking about what we might be doing in in a few weeks time and and reimagining and and just and being forced to um think in a much more flexible and sort of spinning on a six-man's kind of way and i think that's i think that's positive because it sparks off a whole load of different ideas and different ways of thinking and it comes back to that agility and flexibility and as leaders our um our comfort with attitude to risk and our comfort with complexity and i think we're going to have to think uh a lot about that uh as we as we go forward um but aside from the um the the the practical issue i think that when um we get musicians and audience back into a concert hall on any scale for the first time the atmosphere is going to be absolutely electric i think it is going to be astonishing and what i hope um in many ways more than anything else is that we can capture that and keep that sense of excitement every single time so in two three four years time when hopefully we're looking back on 2020 and thank goodness we're over it we we don't slip into comfort into a comfort zone again uh and and i think if we can somehow bottle that energy which we all have and it's pent up at the moment but at some point it's going to come out it's going to burst out how do we keep that and how do we um because the other thing is i think we we everybody here knows this i'm sure everybody watching and listening knows this but there's something very very very precious at stake here and and and it's it's slightly too easy to take it for granted in the good times and we suddenly realize what we might not have and again how do we keep hold of that because it's very very precious thank you gavin and well said josh you had your hand up um a few sentences ago yeah no it was just a quick point about the agility i've been working along with the hospitality companies that have just been opening up and the booking windows uh insanely short so you're going at the moment if you want to do a rafting tour um you used to be sort of two or three weeks in advance and now it's can we do it tomorrow if they can't do it tomorrow we'll call someone else and it'll happen it'll happen in in within this industry as well i think that sort of agility is really really difficult to plan for um especially with the monetization problems which have been discussed so um yeah i think that's gonna be an extremely difficult uh challenge to grasp thank you so we've got a question here um looking at tickets for events so many people have postulated but a lottery system for tickets could work a large percentage of tickets would be almost double the usual price and the remaining percentage would be a lottery system for standard pricing what do panelists think about that fiona so i'm just trying to un

2021-01-30 11:56

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