Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 125

Speaking to Their Time:
Reflections on Anger and
Anxiety in ����
Faith Liddell
Faith Liddell is an experienced creative producer, programmer, cultural entrepreneur and adviser
who has worked in key strategic and creative roles across art forms in the UK for the last twenty five
years. She has specialised in the creation and development of high profile national and international
projects, collaborations and festivals and has been instrumental in creating and consulting on the
evolution of organisations, projects and approaches that aspire internationally on a creative level,
while connecting to economic development, innovation, education and community agendas. From
2007 to 2015 she was Director of Festivals Edinburgh, a new organisation designed to take the lead
on the joint strategic development of all 12 of Edinburgh’s major festivals and to sustain Edinburgh’s
pre-eminence as the world’s leading festival destination. In 2015 she won the Creative Edinburgh
Leadership Award, received an OBE for services to the arts and was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre
des Arts et des Lettres. She is now an international cultural advisor and creative producer currently
working on projects across cultural policy, collaboration, creative networks, festivals and cultural
diplomacy. She is a Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Cultural Relations in the
University of Edinburgh and sits on the board of her local area trust, The Leith Trust, Vanishing
Point Theatre Company and the environmental art company NVA.
Author’s Note: Our current cultural politics reveal a mood of widespread anger and anxiety on
a global scale and profound disaffection with existing institutions. This year, the 70th anniversary
of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, impels us to look back,
but forward to our new climate. The role and responsibility of creative and curatorial leadership to
speak to its time needs examination.
I recently sat down with the directors of Edinburgh’s four major August cultural festivals to ask
how they, as cultural leaders in an international festival city, should respond to anger and anxiety
at home and abroad. What is their responsibility to their global times? How do they see the role of
their artists? The following are extracts from our conversations.
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