International connections are the key to the enduring success of Scotland's leading arts festival, explains Jenny Howard-Coombes, Edinburgh International Festival's Head of Partnerships.

The Edinburgh International Festival was created to bring performances from the world's leading artists to the widest possible audience. Every August, we are proud to offer affordable international culture to audiences from Scotland, the rest of the UK and the world. International collaboration is at the very heart of what we do, as it has been since the festival was founded in 1947 by the renowned opera impresario, Sir Rudolf Bing, who fled Nazi Germany in 1934. He was inspired to create The Festival in the hope that bringing world cultures together would help them heal through cultural collaboration after the horrors of WWII.

We've stayed true to this principle every year since. This August, we celebrate our 76th anniversary of bringing world cultures together and recognise that this would not be possible without cross sector collaboration with our corporate partners, who all fail from multiple sectors. We work with our partners all year-round to ensure that Edinburgh remains a vital international platform for the world's most innovative artistic work. We know that through collaboration we can harness the innovation that we strive for and increase our positive contribution to the social, cultural and economic well-being of both people and place.discovery, democratisation, monetisation and commercialisation of data. This promotes ethical data exchange between entities while maintaining compliance with the privacy, trust, risk, legal, and technical aspects of enterprise data, and can also improve transparency by providing access to data for public and private bodies.

An example of this for 2023 is our partnership with The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Republic of Korea; which has been named Focus on Korea. This partnership was created to present some of the country's finest artists to audiences in Edinburgh. These artists include the award-winning KBS Symphony Orchestra, the classical pianist, Yeol Eum Son and the National Changgeuk Company of Korea, who seamlessly blend Greek tragedy with Pansori, an ancient Korean form of musical storytelling in Trojan Women, directed by renowned Korean director, Ong Keng Sen. We are so excited to debut this partnership and are looking forward to their performances in August.

A Home for International Artists

Every year, thousands of performers come to Scotland's capital to take part in the festivals across August. In 2022, the Edinburgh International Festival was home to over 2,400 artists of over 45 nationalities; and 650 of those were Scottish artists. This is fantastic achievement and is only made possible by ongoing collaboration and co-working relationships with people around the UK and the world. It's by creating and nurturing these relationships that we can continue to create such a far-reaching programme every year.

The 2022 Festival also featured a special one-off performance from the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra. The concert comprised all-Ukrainian musicians and included recent refugees and musicians still based in Ukraine who had been allowed special exemption from military activities to perform. The concert was free to attend, and audiences were invited to donate to the Scottish Refugee Council as they continue to play a leading role in welcoming displaced Ukrainians to Scotland. We are grateful to the Scottish Government for providing the necessary support to allow us to the present this incredibly important orchestra in our programme. Edinburgh is twinned with Kyiv, Ukraine's capital city, and this concert, represented a powerful moment of solidarity with all those impacted by the invasion of Ukraine.

Driving Forward Edinburgh's Economy

The Edinburgh International Festival is also a major contributor to the Edinburgh economy and cultural network, as well as being a huge asset to the people of Edinburgh because of the wide array of performances we bring to the city.

In 2022, we spent over £650k on programming performers, artists and speakers from Edinburgh and over £1.2m on businesses and providers within the city to help us stage the festival. The economic benefits also apply to visitors for the festival, too, as those who attend our events spent an estimated £6.7m in the Edinburgh economy.

In terms of employment, Festival FTE jobs last year totalled 393, and for this year's festival, we will spend nearly £1m (£934,176) on venue hire in the city. When it comes to ticketing in 2022, we also gave away more than 34,000 free tickets to the people of Edinburgh, schools, young people and key workers, making the festival more accessible to all.

Our impact also extends beyond the annual Festival programme: our learning and engagement and professional development programmes take place all year-round ensuring that the work of our artists reaches the widest possible audiences and contributes to the cultural and social life of Edinburgh and Scotland.

In 2022, we worked in all 17 council wards in the city, and held over 16,000 engagements with children, families and communities.

We couldn't be an international Festival without collaboration and international connections. It's been the backbone of our work for over 70 years and because of this, we will continue our unparalleled celebration of the performing arts and an annual meeting point for people of all nations.

To find out more about the Edinburgh International Festival, please visit: www.eif.co.uk

Picture Credit: Ryan Buchanan