🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 5 - 11 June 2024
Flaming Lips return, Pride sponsor dropped, Book Fest programme unveiled, hopes for Summerhall, ECA fashion show + busy week on local stages
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🆕 News & happenings this week
🎸 Famous for their spectacular live shows, The Flaming Lips have announced they’re returning to Edinburgh. The American psychedelic rockers will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of their classic album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The show is on 1 May… next year. Tickets will go on sale at this link on Friday 7 June at 10am.
⮑ Here’s a video from the last time they played the Usher Hall in 2019:
⮑ The Usher Hall also announced that singer Ben Howard will play on Sunday 13 October to perform his second album ‘I Forget Where We Were’ in full.
📚 The programme for this summer’s Edinburgh International Book Festival was unveiled this week. - You can search the events listings here. Tickets go on sale at 10am on 20 June.
⮑ Jamie Dunn delves through the programme in The Skinny.
⮑ Discussion around how the book festival is funded continues to rumble on after the partnership with Baillie Gifford ended last week. Event director Jenny Niven has warned the festival faces having to scale back next year if it cannot find new support. She pledged to do ‘everything’ possible to avoid job losses, reports Brian Ferguson in The Scotsman.
"It was not an easy decision to take last week and it’s devastating for us to be in this position now. I think it’s totally unrealistic to expect that we’ll still have events of this scale and magnitude if people are not interested in having corporate sponsorship in the mix. We really need to talk about that as a sector and look at it collectively. There is a lot to lose at the moment.” - Book festival Director Jenny Niven.
⮑ Allan Little, chair of the festival’s board, claimed at this week’s programme launch event that campaigners tried to put the event ‘out of business’ this summer. - Brian Ferguson reports from the launch.
⮑ Writing in an Evening News column, Scotland’s culture secretary and local MSP Angus Robertson said ‘the support of philanthropy is crucial’:
“I totally agree that the importance of the climate emergency, the appalling situation in Gaza as well as the invasion of Ukraine raise important ethical tests for funders. These however, should be settled through dialogue and agreement which do not undermine the culture sector, including festivals like the Edinburgh International Book Festival.”
🎤 Organisers of the Loud Poets 2024 Grand Slam Final, scheduled for August, say their event ‘is only happening due to the EIBF’s decision to part ways with Baillie Gifford’. They wrote:
“As we move forward with this event, with gratitude to EIBF for dropping BG as a sponsor, we continue to stand in solidarity with all those calling for a literary sector that does not rely on the profits from human rights abuses or environmental destruction.”
🌈 Organisers of Pride Edinburgh say concerns about the involvement of their sponsor Aegon have led them to part ways. The march, concert and afterparty are still scheduled to go ahead as planned on 22 June. Their statement is here:
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