Edinburgh book festival: No Baillie Gifford funds puts community work 'at risk' - including school tickets

Jenny Niven told The Scotsman work was ongoing to secure funding for the festival. She said work such as recorded events being beamed to libraries around Scotland - as well as the children's books programme at the festival itself - could not be funded indefinitely without more financial support.

Ms Niven also warned of a “literacy crisis” among Scottish school children and said without more funding, some initiatives to help get children into reading could have to be halted.

Last year, the festival was forced to end its partnership with Baillie Gifford, warning it was no longer able to deliver a “safe and successful” event amid “threats of disruption”. Climate activist Greta Thunberg had cancelled an event a year earlier over the Edinburgh-based financial firm’s fossil fuel investments.

Notable celebrities at the book festival

Ms Niven’s comments come as the EIBF launched its programme for this year’s festival at its new home at the Futures Institute. Scottish authors Irvine Welsh and Maggie O'Farrell are to join Heartstopper writer Alice Oseman, as well as former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, at this year’s festival.

Outlander star Sam Heughan will also give a cocktail class to promote his new book of cocktail recipes, while actors Brian Cox, Viggo Mortensen and Vanessa Redgrave will take part in events.

The festival today unveils its full programme, which is based around the theme of Repair, seeking to explore things which feel broken, and looking at how they could be fixed – from the physical to the political, the emotional to the environmental, and beyond.

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Why community work is important

Ms Niven said: “Our community work is so powerful - the stuff we do for children and young people, but particularly those elements, they don't generate income. The community [work] runs at a high cost, and if you look at the amount of cuts going into other third-sector organisations, the operational costs are high.

“Because if organisations like the Streetreads Library [organisation to support book access for homeless people] are on their knees, then for us to just to be able to run the same same type of programme is difficult. Even to maintain a standstill - it is not a standstill when there's all so many other cuts going on, particularly in the third sector.”

When asked if that work was at risk if more funding was not found to replace the money lost from Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship, Ms Niven said simply: “Yes.”

She added: “It’s a question of ambition. You can see in the programme all of the different directions that we would like to go and what we could do, and the many more people that we could reach.”

Author Ian Rankin’s John Rebus Ltd company is understood to be funding a small part of the Communities Programme this year in a deal which is expected to last five years.

The Book Festival supports year-round access to reading through its communities programme, which connects authors and artists with places across Scotland who might not otherwise have access to cultural experiences. Meanwhile, organisers said they would this year livestream over 100 festival events to libraries across 12 Scottish local authorities.

Ms Niven pointed to the “heavily subsidised” programme for children and young people. A typical paid-for ticket for a children’s show costs just £6, while many tickets and books are given away free to school groups, after Scottish schools return in mid-August.

“That work is really important to us, but it gets more and more expensive every day - that's not covered in our costs,” she said.

“So it depends on what type of festival people want to have. If it's only designed for people who can afford to pay top dollar, high-price tickets, then you're presenting a very different offer than if it is inclusive and reaching all these different communities. I know what sort of organisation I want to run.”

A literacy crisis

Ms Niven warned a crisis among young people was resulting in not only falling literacy rates, but a change in how children see the world.

She said: “Significantly, it is not just about literacy, but it's about empathy. It's about looking out the way. It's about engaging with people's lives who are not like your own. It's about reading books from other countries and expanding your horizons and all of that, I think, is a really important set of benefits you get from reading.”

Earlier this year, US president Donald Trump criticised his State Department’s “radical” sponsorship of the book festival, attacking the event for its promotion of discussion on “gender identity and racial equality”. Funding of $39,652 (£31,000) granted under the Joe Biden administration supported the Transatlantic Conversations programme at the 2023 festival, which featured nine American authors.

No funding has been forthcoming from the US State Department this year.

Ms Niven said she had been “a bit taken aback” over the surprise the festival had received support from the US government. This year’s festival features authors from Norway, Korea, France, Germany and Spain, all sponsored by their respective embassies and consulates.

She said: “Now, we are now no longer in receipt of US support, which makes a difference and that's to the detriment. There are amazing US artists and writers who it's vital that we hear from, and not being able to work with them directly would be a travesty. So we will, of course, look for other funding to replace that US government money, but it won’t stop us.”

Funding sources for the festival

The People’s Postcode Lottery has a long-term partnership to support elements of the festival’s communities programme, which Ms Niven said “we could not work without”.

The festival was given a multi-year funding package from Creative Scotland earlier this year. However, Ms Niven said it was “not 100 per cent of what we asked for”, forcing the festival to continue to fundraise “from a range of sources”.

“We're really pleased to have their partnership, but we need to keep looking at corporate sponsorship,” she said. “That's obviously undergone a huge amount of change in the last ten years, specifically with us, so we’ve got continued work to do there.

“For funding at the moment, it’s the same ones we've always looked at: philanthropic, corporate, public funding, ticketing. It's a heady mix of all those different things, and each one of them, for different reasons, are under pressure one way or another.”

The full Edinburgh International Book Festival programme will be available here from 10am.