Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 31

having been dreamed up in the spirit of European communication and
collaboration will be even more ubiquitous than Fringe jokes about deepfried
Mars bars. Meanwhile, increasing awareness of issues around diversity,
privilege, authenticity, and cultural appropriation makes programming a
more politicized process than ever before.
We cannot escape these issues, and nor should we seek to. They are part of
the active conversation and the conflict that keeps festivals relevant. And
conflict is what lies behind the standard press messaging about vision and
enlightenment: conflict over what to program, how to show it, who’s going
to come, how much it should cost, and who should pay. And ultimately
that’s because festivals, however monolithic they can seem, are made up
of people who are themselves negotiating how much of their insides they
can risk putting outside for others to judge; and audience members whose
inside responses might never be outwardly shared or exposed at all. Turning
�� might be seen as a time to capitulate to self-centerd thinking—we see
copious criticism of the “baby boomers” born in the same post-war period as
the first Edinburgh Festivals, for prioritizing their own comfort over societal
change. But for some people, �� is a time to get more daring, more radical,
and less concerned with convention. The poet May Sarton wrote on turning
��, “Now I wear the inside person outside and I am more comfortable with
myself. In some ways I am younger because I can admit vulnerability, and
more innocent because I do not have to pretend.” That sounds like a good
philosophy for any august body to embrace.
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