How the Edinburgh Festivals make the city a better place to live, work and play in

This article was written for Uncover magazine - Meaningful Leisure Experiences. 

Author: Dr Jane Ali-Knight is a professor in Festival and Event Management at Edinburgh Napier University.

Fringe festivals 
Fringe festivals are a particular type of arts festival committed to providing emerging artists with opportunities to present original, innovative, and experimental work (Frew & Ali-Knight, 2010). The ‘fringe’ originated in Edinburgh 78 years ago as a protest by a group of performers who had been excluded from joining the inaugural Edinburgh Arts Festival and so set up on the ‘fringe’ of the festival. This fringe model has been a model and inspiration for a proliferation of fringe movements around the world. 

Every summer, Edinburgh hosts the world’s biggest arts festival which showcases theatre, film, books, visual art, and the military tattoo. It is a little-known fact that the August festivals combined are the world’s third largest ticketed event, just behind the Olympics and men’s football World Cup, selling millions of tickets each year, though operating on a fraction of the budget of those global sporting events.  

Rapid growth 
Together, the five August festivals comprise over 5,000 events across Scotland’s capital, welcoming an audience of 4.4 million and over 25,000 artists, writers, and performers from 70 countries and transforming Edinburgh into a vibrant cultural capital every summer (Edinburgh Festivals City, 2020).  

However, the festivals are also no stranger to adversity and there has been significant criticism of the festivals’ rapid growth, with “the festivals themselves caught in the curious trap of endless expansionism: the notion that each year’s ought somehow to be bigger than the last” (The Guardian, 2018). The onset of the global pandemic in 2020 and subsequent lockdowns also required festivals to innovate to survive, creating new, digital modes of delivery and other more diverse income streams and their realisation of the need to be more embedded in the local community (Holmes & Ali-Knight, 2017). 

Impact 
There is little doubt that the festivals significantly contribute to making Edinburgh a better place to live, both culturally and economically. They bring in visitors, boost local businesses, create jobs, and enhance the city's global reputation which in turn generates soft power. The festivals also offer residents a variety of cultural experiences and contribute to their quality of life. Festivals also have a positive social impact on local communities: building community cohesion, offering positive emotions and shared connections, promoting social interaction and cultural exchange, and contributing to a general sense of well-being, especially in turbulent times (Yolal et al., 2016). One example is the collaboration between EIFs Festival Fridays and Tonic Arts (Lothian Health Arts Trust) to create a series of world-class monthly performances in NHS Lothian settings. 

The festivals are a showcase of both local and international artistic talent that promotes cultural exchange. The 2024 Edinburgh Fringe hosted 25,000 artists from 60 countries and the Edinburgh International Festival featured over 2,000 artists from 42 countries, including a quarter from Scotland.  

A recent report by umbrella organisation Festivals Edinburgh outlined their vision for Edinburgh to be a world-leading sustainable festival city by 2030, with six shared ambitions for the festivals: global solidarity; valuable skills and work; connected local communities; vibrant, sustainable gathering places; net zero carbon future; and increased resilience, partnership, and investment. Initiated during the pandemic, the project aims to understand how the city and its festivals could rebuild and support wider renewal and innovation in a changed festival environment that is “globally minded, rooted and creatively led” (Edinburgh Festivals City, 2022).  

Live 
It is a myth that Edinburgh’s residents are against the festivals. More residents support than oppose them, with large numbers actively participating in and/or attending events. The latest study by BOP Consulting (2023), which surveyed 22,000 people, shows that the Edinburgh Festivals continue to be Scotland’s world-leading cultural brands. Recent studies show that a substantial percentage of residents believe the festivals make Edinburgh a better place to live and are “loved by locals”. Around 1.5 million festival attendees are local residents (which is about 50% of total audience) while 89% of Edinburgh residents say that the festivals increase local pride in their home city.  

One of the key benefits, when managed efficiently and responsibly, is the money they bring into the local economy. Used effectively, it can be diverted into infrastructure developments, street dressing, and creating better facilities for those who live in the city. For artists, attending the festivals may be a financial risk given spiralling costs, but their contribution to the Scottish economy is undeniable generating over £260m yearly. 

Work 
The UK music, performing and visual arts sectors lost 30% of total jobs because of the pandemic, with young people worst affected, and many have not returned to the sector. Beyond direct employment, festivals play a critical role in supporting many thousands of jobs for wider service businesses and local traders. The festivals alone create the full-time equivalent of 5,850 jobs in Edinburgh. This sector together with arts, entertainment, recreation and other services are significant employers in the city, accounting for 44,000 jobs between them (Edinburgh Festival City, 2022). Although the sector faces many employment challenges and can be seen to be fragmented, seasonal, poorly paid and reliant on volunteer staff, research by Edinburgh’s Fringe in 2018 revealed that over 90% of respondents would still work at the Fringe again. All of the Festivals Edinburgh members pay at least the real living wage, have a code of practice on volunteering, and are keen to rebuild and maximise access to the skills, employment and development opportunities the festivals create. 

Networks and interpersonal connections matter to festivals, the people involved, the organisations that produce them, and the communities that support them. In a recent project by the author using the lens of social network theory, we investigated festival networks, examining the interpersonal networks of core staff across the three largest global Fringe Festivals: Edinburgh, Adelaide and Perth. From an organisational perspective, we wanted to investigate the extent to which international and interstate connections help in achieving desired outcomes, impacts and results. From a personal perspective, we wanted to tell the stories of festival people and how they have developed, nurtured and used international networks in their careers. Fringe staff continually emphasised the challenge of festival work, where it is hard to maintain a work-life balance, and staff are often underpaid but our findings confirm the importance of networks in providing transformative career opportunities and ongoing development support for fringe staff. 

Play 
Finally, festivals are playful. One month of the year the city takes on a joyous carnival atmosphere which tens of thousands of locals join in. They are escapist and bring joy and laughter to communities, and the places in which they reside. It is a privilege having so much world-class, innovative art on our doorstep and the locals clearly love being part of it. One common observation during Covid was how quiet and lacklustre Edinburgh felt without its festivals, no matter how frustrating they can sometimes be. Festivals can help to break down silos and bring people together in a fun and relaxed environment to learn, challenge their thinking and gain insight, and are a huge distraction from the big issues facing the world today. 

Conclusion 
So, as the planning cycle for the 2025 festivals begins, amid a background of public funding cuts and drops in sponsorship revenue, rising inflation and production costs, cost-of-living challenges, and shortages of skilled labour and materials, the organisers of Edinburgh’s world-leading events will have to assert the contribution of its festivals to making Edinburgh a better place to live. Echoing a The Guardian writer’s opinion: “Cultural institutions like the Fringe are about more than making money and stars. In our age of disinformation, artificial intelligence and alienation, such gatherings of people, talent and ideas are more vital than ever” (2025). 

Sources 

• Edinburgh Festivals City. (2022) Edinburgh: city of imagination: 2030 Vision for a Resilient and Ambitious Festival City.   
• Economic Impact of the Edinburgh Festivals (2023), BOP Consulting.
• Frew, E., & Ali-Knight, J. (2010). Creating high and low art: Experimentation and commercialization at fringe festivals. Tourism Culture & Communication, 10(3), 231–245. 
• Holmes, K. & Ali-Knight, J. (2017). The event and festival life cycle-developing a new model for a new context. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(3), 986–1004. 
• Wade, M. (2020, April 2). Edinburgh’s Festivals Cancelled for the first time in history. The Times. 
• Stewart, H., Ali-Knight, J., Kerr, G., & Holmes, K. (2022). Covid & innovation within Edinburgh’s festivals: Post Covid-19 recovery, innovation & technology. Edinburgh Napier University.
• The Guardian view on the Edinburgh festivals: bigger is not always better (2018). The Guardian, 22 August.
• The Guardian view on the Edinburgh fringe: it’s no joke – festivals need investment Editorial. (2025). The Guardian, 5 March.