Edinburgh Promise reflects desire for collective action

Edinburgh’s cultural community has joined forces to draw attention to the key issues facing the arts sector in the city. Individuals and organisations involved in the cultural scene have endorsed a series of common aspirations, which have been dubbed ‘The Edinburgh Cultural Promise’. The ‘Promise’ reflects a determination that “short-term funding pressures do not become a barrier to future artistic excellence and pubic engagement in culture,” and is published in ‘Desire Lines’ – a new report highlighting the key issues facing the city’s creative community.

The document presents a set of strategic objectives for the cultural development of Edinburgh, and reflects a common desire among the cultural community for the positive impact of the arts and culture to be more widely articulated; an enabling attitude towards venue regulation and cultural provision; greater support for the development of partnerships; wider access to high-quality cultural activity; and more investment in sustaining the local artistic community. The report also lists a series of practical suggestions that could help achieve these objectives, including lobbying for tourism revenues to be redistributed to the arts and culture; investigating empty council buildings that could be put to community use; encouraging the City of Edinburgh Council to appoint a Director of Culture; and creating an annual ‘Dragons Den’ style event to enable cultural organisations to pitch for new investment.

The ideas in Desire Lines have been developed following a “dynamic city-wide conversation” around a common desire “to put inclusion and participation at the heart of Edinburgh’s cultural provision”. The consultation was started after the council invited members of the cultural community to help them draw up a cultural policy in 2014. A series of events and an online survey enabled more than 600 people producing and participating in culture in the city to have their say on questions such as “what excites you about Edinburgh’s cultural life?”; “what three things might make Edinburgh’s cultural life better?”; and “what is the biggest challenge to improving the cultural life of Edinburgh?”