What Works: Success in Stressful Times. Hamish McRae

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      At the Fringe, by contrast, the minds have to focus almost exclusively on logistics. They do not concern themselves about the artistic merit of the performers; all they have to do is make sure that anyone who fills the basic requirements is able to set up a show, for this is entirely a bottom-up exercise. There is, however, one crucial function that the Fringe performs beyond logistics. This is teaching.

      Every year it holds a series of seminars to show would-be performers and promoters how to put on a show. These include: how much the different venues will cost; how to manage publicity; the timescale for decisions; the need to go for as long a run as possible to cover costs, and so on. It is in the interests of everyone that people go into the project aware of the costs and how to budget for them. Even performers have to eat.

      The trick, which the various organizers of the Edinburgh festivals have managed to pull off, is to achieve balance-to plan but not to over-plan, to lead but also to follow the demands of the market.

      That leads to the third lesson: the need to listen. This has been central to Edinburgh’s development at three stages.

      First, what started as a conventional arts festival, and might have remained so, was swiftly transformed by the demands of the market into something much bigger. Had there been no uninvited guests at the first party, the Fringe might never have taken off.

      Second, in the middle years, Edinburgh allowed market forces to develop the Fringe, rather than trying to stifle it. Technically, the Fringe has become extremely innovative, from the first comprehensive programme to the centralized ticket office and, later, to internet booking.

      Third, whenever a new festival wanted to tag along, it was welcomed. So films and TV, jazz and books were all grafted onto the official and Fringe core. This tradition continued into 2004 with the formal addition of the art festival-though as I noted earlier, the visual arts had been represented at Edinburgh for many years in an informal way.

      By chance, on a visit to the festival in 2007, I met the key person in bringing modern visual arts to Edinburgh-a man called Richard Demarco,²⁴ who grabbed me by the arm and taught me something else. A tiny, mercurial Italian Scot in his late seventies, he had gone as a 17-year-old to the very first festival-and been so enchanted that he decided to devote his life to bringing art to Edinburgh.

      And so over the years a string of European and Scottish artists had their works exhibited in Edinburgh at Richard Demarco’s gallery, and in 2007 his archive was put on display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street. It was an amazing jumble of stuff, bringing together the work of renowned artists such as Joseph Beuys²⁵ and Richard Demarco’s role in the whole festival scene. (He had, for example, co-founded the Traverse Theatre²⁶ in 1963.)

      As we talked, two things became clear-two things at the core of the spirit of Edinburgh. One is that it is vital for the different aspects of art to commingle; theatre should not be separate from the visual arts-it is all part of the whole. And, of course, Edinburgh mixes everything together. The other is that you need failure; people need to be free to fail. Richard Demarco himself always maintains that he set out on his career in the arts because he had failed his exams at school, but the point is much bigger.

      What I think Edinburgh does is to create a platform not just where people can feel free to experiment but also one where they do not need to worry if it does not work. There is surely a wider message there: individual failure is an essential part of the wider success of almost all enterprises-and absolutely to a venture as huge and amorphous as the Edinburgh Festival.

       •Create an open marketplace •Blend top-down and bottom-up •Listen-and accept failure as part of wider success

      3. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

      Nothing is for ever but the sheer size and variety of the talent on display in Edinburgh gives it a stability that other arts festivals lack. Because it is market-driven, it cannot be snuffed out by a squeeze on funding; as long as it provides a useful showcase function for the entertainment industries, it will survive. If you were trying to create a new venue for putting talent in the shop window, you would not invent Edinburgh, but it is there, it is huge and it would be hard to displace. Critical mass matters.

      But so, too, does efficiency. In 2008 the film festival moved its timing forward to May, thereby getting the city to itself. This decision was largely due to the global film calendar-a case of trying to fit in between Cannes, Venice and Toronto²⁷-but the sheer congestion of Edinburgh in August was apparently a factor too. That year the Fringe booking system broke down and ticket numbers were down year-on-year, though they recovered spectacularly in 2009.

      Thus the main threat is not that all the new shows will suddenly up sticks and decamp to New York, London-or Hollywood, rather it is that the festival will become an inefficient showcase, making it hard for the talent-spotters to find what they want and for the best shows to gain their attention.

      It may become too big for its own good. This is not principally a matter of logistics-though the city needs to think more innovatively about the way in which it manages the weight of visitors-but of marrying the needs of the ordinary public, who largely fund the whole show, with the needs of the industries that use it to show their wares. If it becomes inefficient for the professionals and they find other ways of locating the new performers, then the city loses a crucial element of its importance.

      At a popular level that might hardly be noticed; the more punters who come, the more the market will create stuff to entertain them. The retail trade would continue unchecked, at least for a while. But if Edinburgh were ever to lose its edge-if, for example, the new comedians started to test their acts elsewhere-then after a while the public would begin to notice.

      There is an element of danger about Edinburgh in August; not physical danger, of course, for there is remarkably little crime given the number of people. No, it is artistic danger. Alongside the possibility, even probability, of seeing the new stars before they are famous, there is the certainty of seeing some poor hopefuls tank, embarrass themselves and their audience, and disappear from the entertainment world for ever. From the point of view of the visitor, the cost is a wasted afternoon or evening of leisure time. From the point of view of the critic, the cost is higher: it is not seeing something of greater merit elsewhere. From the point of view of the performer, it may simply become better to bypass Edinburgh and find other ways of making your talent known.

      There has been a little evidence of this in recent years. The danger sign is key critics not turning up or only going for a couple of days. This is not yet a serious problem but you can see some cracks in the facade. The number of tickets sold is wonderful but some say that the essential edge-the artistic danger-may not be quite as sharp as it used to be. The Fringe is the key here. If ever the word gets round that it is on the skids then, well, the festival could implode.

      First, Edinburgh would cease to be as important as a trade fair, or rather a set of trade fairs. The professionals would no longer attend. Instead, they would find some other place where cutting-edge performers would test their acts on audiences and the critics could gauge their talents. Next, the public would become a different, less experimental audience, seeking entertainment that was more conventional, more ‘commercial’, more downmarket. Then after a while numbers both of performances and attendees would start to fall and the trouble would become obvious to the world.

      Now I think this danger is quite small because every year the artistic focus shifts as СКАЧАТЬ