Gm and congrats to all the Scottish activists who targeted sponsors and corporate funding over the last 4 years. You have your moral victory.... but the corporations will survive. They’ll continue to grow and put their money elsewhere.
What won’t survive so easily is the cultural ecosystem left behind: festivals, programmes, opportunities, jobs, young artists, writers, musicians, technicians, students and small creative spaces already fighting to stay alive.
It’s the artists, not the CEOs, who are paying the real price for all this beautiful virtue signalling. Ideology without pragmatism doesn’t build culture. It dismantles it.
The damage and fallout so far across Scottish arts and culture:
1. Edinburgh International Book Festival
2. Borders Book Festival
3. Aye Write
4. Wee Write
5. Short Circuit
6. MAP Magazine
7. Edinburgh festivals cuts
8. Creative Scotland funding freezes
9. Scottish Ballet sponsorship collapse
10. Festival Fringe sponsorship crisis
11. Edinburgh International Festival boycotts