It is one of the defining moments of an Edinburgh August. In the dark of late
evening, a piper stands high on the castle ramparts. Then, thrillingly, the
sound of his lament pours down from battlements and fills the air around the
packed crowd who have gathered to hear him play.
Every night, for three weeks next month, this lone piper will signal the end
of a performance of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the music and dance
spectacular that puts thousands of performers from 40 countries in front of
a nightly audience of 8,600. One of the city's most famous sights and
sounds, it is as permanent a fixture as the castle itself.
Or so you would have thought. For the first time in its 59-year history, the
Tattoo faces financial uncertainty. It remains world-renowned, is
acknowledged as a market leader and has sold every available ticket for the
past ten years. But now its organisers are more than £5 million short of the
funds they require to revive their outmoded and unloved arena on the Castle
esplanade.
The problem centres on a £15.5 million project to design and build a fully
demountable new grandstand, which got under way last year. A funding package
appeared to be in place, but uncertainty has emerged about the contribution
that is to be made by the Scottish Government through the economic
development agency, Scottish Enterprise.
Major General Euan Loudon, the chief executive and producer of the Tattoo,
says: “From a project management point of view the cliff edge is the end of
this year, because we need to press the green button to get a whole series
of events under way, to deliver this stand in 2011.”
As the former Chief of Staff to the 7th Armoured Brigade, General Loudon
received an operational OBE after the first Gulf War, and served in Northern
Ireland, Germany, Canada, Poland and the former Yugoslavia. Just a year into
his new job, he faces what he admits is one the toughest tests in the
Tattoo's history, confident that he can secure this “sensible investment in
the future”.
To achieve his goal, the Tattoo itself has arranged to borrow £5 million that
will be repaid over a period of 25 years. Potential sponsors and debenture
schemes should raise another £2.5 million, and Edinburgh City Council has
made an offer of £3 million, conditional on Scottish Government support. And
that is where the hole remains.
When the project was being developed last year, it appeared that Scottish
Enterprise would ride in with a cheque book. Now it appears that the
agency's involvement has been scaled back to the supply of advice and
support.
The stance has baffled staff in both the Tattoo office and Edinburgh city
chambers. Both organisations share a belief that an event on this scale has
an economic impact which is felt well beyond the city limits. Every decade
it is estimated that the Tattoo generates £500 million in revenue for the
Scottish economy. Audience members pay up to £46 each for a ticket and spend
an estimated £300 a head during their visit to Scotland.
Cynics might suggest that the Tattoo should reinvest any money it makes from
this successful sales operation. But that, as General Loudon explains, is
simply not possible. The Tattoo is a charity, whose object is to make grants
and donations to the principal armed services benevolent funds and to arts
and culture in the Edinburgh area. There are no huge trading reserves.
It is, however, a very impressive brand with a remarkable reach. Worldwide,
more than 100 million people a year watch the event on television and in
Edinburgh itself the audience is just as cosmopolitan.
Eight our of ten people who make their way to the Castle Esplanade come from
outside Scotland, mostly overseas visitors and English trippers in search of
something uniquely Scottish; the annual aggregate is 217,000.
Only the Edinburgh Festival Fringe itself is bigger, and that is made up of
2,088 productions spread across 247 venues.
With these figures, no one could doubt the Tattoo's iconic status, and
“iconic” is a word which General Loudon uses often. Perhaps the difficulty
for some sceptics is iconic of what? Massed pipe and drums are indubitably
Scottish - six of the home-grown bands this year are from the Scottish army
units - and the castle ramparts could only be Edinburgh.
Yet for those on the wilder fringes of nationalism the event itself is an
expression of English military power.
“Why should the Scottish Government subsidise a hideous anti-Scottish
caricature whose sole purpose is to demean us?” writes one nameless
fulminator on a Scottish news website.
Such talk is meaningless, according to Steve Cardownie, Edinburgh's depute
Lord Provost and an SNP councillor. He is confident that the Tattoo has
support at the highest level within the Holyrood administration.
“This is a Scottish thing. It might be the British Army, but this is the
massed pipes and drums. Nobody has ever expressed a view to me that the
Tattoo was anything other than Scottish.” Even generals in the army regard
it as Scottish event,” says Mr Cardownie, who sat on the Tattoo board for
four years.
Some believe that the Scottish government's apparent reluctance to offer funds
can be laid at the door of civil servants within Scottish Enterprise. After
indicating that it would back the project, it pulled back from financial
support when it concluded that the event was not “Scottish”, but “regional”
and advised ministers that there was no reason to make a contribution.
The Scottish government, however, insists that it is still engaging with the
project, and emphasises that Scottish Enterprise is contributing to the
costs of a design feasibility study. Full funding could yet be the next step
- but there are no promises.
After the completion of the design consultancy, Scottish Enterprise “would be
willing to consider whether there might be a case for it to provide capital
support,” a Scottish government spokesman said.
“That possibility will have to take into account other competing priorities
for their capital budget, and they would want to be satisfied that the
Tattoo's private sector funding options had been fully explored.”
The future of its arena is far from being the only financial challenge facing
the Tattoo. A review of regulations agreed with the Performing Right Society
(PRS) is likely to see a rise in the contribution made from Tattoo ticket
sales. Worse still, Home Office changes to visa legislation may have a
dramatic impact. While lobbyists in the arts have been successful in
maintaining the “permit-free” status of the Fringe, the Tattoo is vulnerable
to rule changes affecting work permits for overseas performers.
New regulations mean that performers from some non-visa national countries,
usually those from outside North America, Australia and the European
Economic Area, will require certificates for performers. Bands and dance
troupes from South East Asia or South America are faced with significant
additional costs and a bureaucratic nightmare. Inevitably, these factors
will be enough to dissuade some groups from coming, ironically from those
countries which would make the Tattoo more cosmopolitan.
The policy simply doesn't make sense, General Loudon says.
“We need to be encouraging novelty and innovation, bringing in people from the
broadest spectrum, rather than the obvious places. If you want 200 people to
come, say, from China, I think we should make as much effort to bring them
here and see them safely home with the minimum amount of bureaucracy and
inconvenience, rather than the maximum amount.”
But it is the future of the stand which casts the longest shadow over the
future of the Tattoo. General Loudon, though, remains cheerful and
forthright.
He served 32 years in the Army before he took his current post. He did not
rise to the rank of Major General without the smiling air of competence and
assertiveness that he brings to his latest campaigns on the fundraising
front.
The stand will be built, he says. “When we manage to pull this off, on 5
August, 2011, the opening night of the Tattoo in the new stand, it will be
one of the most significant moments in the history of the event.”
That's fighting talk. Time for the Scottish Government to fall in line.
Seating problem can be sorted but there can be no other backdrop
Since 1950, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo has consistently drawn one of the
biggest audiences in the city's festival season, but seating thousands of
spectators has always presented a challenge.
The first Tattoo drew 6,000 people, who were seated on benches and simple
scaffolding structures placed around the north, south and east sides of the
Castle Esplanade, but it was soon obvious that a more ambitious solution was
required.
In 1952, the capacity of the stands was increased to accommodate a nightly
audience of 7,700, allowing 160,000 to watch live performances.
In 1975, new stands based on a system used for the Munich Olympic Stadium were
commissioned and immediately acclaimed as a triumph for structural
engineering. The design has worked well for a generation, but costs have
risen as the stands have aged and changes in health and safety legislation,
along with the European Work Time Directive, and other factors have
increased the time required for construction to well beyond the original two
months, while the costs have climbed to around £1 million. The new structure
will enable construction within a month and, ideally, could be installed on
a smaller scale within a week - offering the opportunity to showcase other
events.
Officials accept the need for planning constraints, yet supporters believe
that there can be only one site for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo - against
the brooding backdrop of the Castle.
2008 Edinburgh Military Tattoo, August 1 to August 23
