With Beltane Fire Festival's Demise on Calton Hill, What has the Festival lost
h.m. | 17.03.2003 18:29 | Culture | Education
Beltane celebrations on Calton Hill are cancelled this year- due to spiralling costs and bureaucracy
Helen Moore, Beltane Fire Society organiser, shows there’s more to this loss than Edinburgh may realise.
Last week the Beltane Fire Society (BFS) announced the cancellation of 2003s Beltane Fire Festival on Edinburgh's Calton Hill. This was blamed on the festival's spiralling costs and a lack of support from the Council's Culture and Leisure Department. Thus ironically on the eve of Council elections, April 30th will go unmarked by the characteristic procession and bonfire to celebrate the ancient Celtic festival. Initial reactions to this news have focussed on the loss to Edinburgh. But as Helen Moore, a Beltane organiser, shows, it runs deeper than many realise.
That Edinburgh has lost a festival with tourist-appeal is evident in Edinburgh and Lothians Tourist Board's comment (quoted on March 8th in the Evening News’ exclusive): "It's sad and disappointing that it's been cancelled this year and we hope it will be resurrected in the future. The event is one of the few in Edinburgh's eclectic calendar which celebrates our Celtic roots and heritage. It provides fantastic pictures which are beamed around the world."
And indeed the festival is visually stunning, attracting photographers like bees to honey. The torch-lit procession, accompanied by powerful drumming, opened with fire sculptures suspended between the Acropolis's pillars. Then, led by a flower-bedecked May Queen, with woaded warriors to smooth its path, the procession would wind its way around the hill, passing through elemental points where performers made offerings to the Earth's renewed fertility. At the Fire Point, performers had spectators swarming.
From humble origins, the Festival grew rapidly. Started 15 years ago by visionary artists, it’s since become the largest fire festival in Europe. Comparable with Shetland's "Uphellyar" and Valencia's "Fallas" festival in scale and community participation, Beltane is an internationally acclaimed event, receiving coverage by media including the BBC and Channel Four. Also featured in numerous magazine and web articles, including "National Geographic", Germany's "Marie Claire", British Airways, as well as international tourist guides, including France's "Guide Michelin", it's described as a major and exciting event worth visiting Edinburgh for.
Fusing the Roman "Flower Festival", which bequeathed Britain the medieval traditions of May Queens and May Poles, with the Celtic tradition of celebrating Spring, the contemporary festival rekindled part of Scotland's cultural heritage. Historically Beltane rites had dwindled since the Reformation's attempts to obliterate so-called "superstitious practices" of Catholicism. By the late twentieth-century all but a shred of the formerly widespread festivities remained in remote corners of folk memory.
Traditionally Scotland's beacon hills would have been ablaze at Beltane. Since fire was sacred to the Celts, as the School for Scottish and Celtic Studies' Dr. Emily Lyle explained at a BFS conference, ritual "Neid Fires" were created at in each village. This involved the extinguishing of all hearth-fires and the making of new fire by rubbing two special sticks together. From this sacred fire, "clavies" (embers) then re-lit the community's hearth-fires.
In keeping with this tradition, at Beltane 2002 a single flame produced in this way lit processional torches and the bonfire ending the ritual performance. Although this bonfire had safety barriers placed around it, in an urban environment it's still had importance, reminding revellers remaining on Beltane night to watch the city's eastern horizon for the restoration of Beltane's "Big Sun".
Fortunately, for coming generations, images of this Celtic revival will remain in the impressive archive of the Beltane festivals. However, today Edinburgh people are denied the chance to be moved by a unique event celebrating their cultural heritage. For regular participants, the festival's disappearance from the city has struck hard. Pete Renwick, a fire performer, said: "The loss will be felt most by the 2-300 performers who gather and rehearse for up to two months putting in their own time and money to produce one of the most spectacular events of the year."
Having always striven to be as inclusive as possible, Beltane has over time nurtured the creativity of thousands of participants like Mr. Renwick, through performance and craft workshops. BFS members come from a wide range of backgrounds from bank workers to students to lone parents. Time and again they have explained how participation has developed their confidence, personal creativity, team-work skills, as well as experience of project management or craft and workshop development.
Unsurprisingly, such experience has fostered numerous career paths in the arts. Angus Farquar, the festival's founder, is now artistic director of the nva arts organisation, staging spectacular outdoor events. Former Beltane May Queen, Liz Rankin, is now choreographer at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And long-term performer, Chloe Dear, is producer of innovative shows with the Edinburgh-based "Boilerhouse". She said: "I attribute this success entirely to the experience I gained working with the BFS."
But although Beltane has been shown to contribute a great deal to Edinburgh, this hasn’t been sufficient to satisfy the Council that it’s worth funding. Outraged at this, Angus Farquar said: "Their failure to place one of Scotland's most popular grassroots festivals at the centre of their Festivals' Strategy is a total disgrace." But what might be the reasons for this lack of support?
Some suspect that in a culture encouraging rigorously controlled public events, despite its excellent safety record, the festival's too anarchic, with no explicit start and finish time. Certainly local residents haven't tolerated drumming for one long night each year. And the festival's pagan overtones have disturbed some Kirk members, with fundamentalists staging protests at each festival. But in an era of multiculturalism, with Edinburgh's Hindu community supported with their "Dushera" festival on the same site, this isn't an attitude the Council could publicly avow.
Personally I suspect that the reasons lie more with money. Having always refused to be drawn down the route of obtaining corporate sponsorship, the BFS, a non-profit-making community arts organisation, has long struggled to find alternative ways of meeting the festival's costs. In 1997 a Council grant was axed and since then, costs created by public safety requirements and insurance have spiralled, with the budget reaching £14,000 last year, a sum that ironically is very small in the scale of outdoor festivals.
Despite offers from companies including breweries, the BFS has resolutely rejected such corporate sponsors. Feeling their inevitable result to be fetters on authentic celebration, Beltane's vibrancy bears testimony to the practice of artistic freedom.
This isn’t an attitude the Council shares. In fact all its festivals bed-fellow with business. And thus, although Hogmanay and the Fringe Festival are popular, criticism has been voiced at their over-regulation, resulting in increasingly exclusive and soulless events sponsored by banks. Furthermore, with mostly imported performers, they become rather more economic extravaganzas than the cultural expression of Edinburgh's community.
Nonetheless, in naming what the Beltane Fire Festival has achieved and what Edinburgh will lose in choosing not to support it, I hope to raise people's consciousness that an authentic festival is about much more than hard economics. Many people appreciate the Venice and Rio Carnivals, the "Fallas" festival and "Uphellyar", precisely because they’re of the people, for the people. And it's primarily for this reason that the Festival City shouldn't turn its back on Beltane.
Last week the Beltane Fire Society (BFS) announced the cancellation of 2003s Beltane Fire Festival on Edinburgh's Calton Hill. This was blamed on the festival's spiralling costs and a lack of support from the Council's Culture and Leisure Department. Thus ironically on the eve of Council elections, April 30th will go unmarked by the characteristic procession and bonfire to celebrate the ancient Celtic festival. Initial reactions to this news have focussed on the loss to Edinburgh. But as Helen Moore, a Beltane organiser, shows, it runs deeper than many realise.
That Edinburgh has lost a festival with tourist-appeal is evident in Edinburgh and Lothians Tourist Board's comment (quoted on March 8th in the Evening News’ exclusive): "It's sad and disappointing that it's been cancelled this year and we hope it will be resurrected in the future. The event is one of the few in Edinburgh's eclectic calendar which celebrates our Celtic roots and heritage. It provides fantastic pictures which are beamed around the world."
And indeed the festival is visually stunning, attracting photographers like bees to honey. The torch-lit procession, accompanied by powerful drumming, opened with fire sculptures suspended between the Acropolis's pillars. Then, led by a flower-bedecked May Queen, with woaded warriors to smooth its path, the procession would wind its way around the hill, passing through elemental points where performers made offerings to the Earth's renewed fertility. At the Fire Point, performers had spectators swarming.
From humble origins, the Festival grew rapidly. Started 15 years ago by visionary artists, it’s since become the largest fire festival in Europe. Comparable with Shetland's "Uphellyar" and Valencia's "Fallas" festival in scale and community participation, Beltane is an internationally acclaimed event, receiving coverage by media including the BBC and Channel Four. Also featured in numerous magazine and web articles, including "National Geographic", Germany's "Marie Claire", British Airways, as well as international tourist guides, including France's "Guide Michelin", it's described as a major and exciting event worth visiting Edinburgh for.
Fusing the Roman "Flower Festival", which bequeathed Britain the medieval traditions of May Queens and May Poles, with the Celtic tradition of celebrating Spring, the contemporary festival rekindled part of Scotland's cultural heritage. Historically Beltane rites had dwindled since the Reformation's attempts to obliterate so-called "superstitious practices" of Catholicism. By the late twentieth-century all but a shred of the formerly widespread festivities remained in remote corners of folk memory.
Traditionally Scotland's beacon hills would have been ablaze at Beltane. Since fire was sacred to the Celts, as the School for Scottish and Celtic Studies' Dr. Emily Lyle explained at a BFS conference, ritual "Neid Fires" were created at in each village. This involved the extinguishing of all hearth-fires and the making of new fire by rubbing two special sticks together. From this sacred fire, "clavies" (embers) then re-lit the community's hearth-fires.
In keeping with this tradition, at Beltane 2002 a single flame produced in this way lit processional torches and the bonfire ending the ritual performance. Although this bonfire had safety barriers placed around it, in an urban environment it's still had importance, reminding revellers remaining on Beltane night to watch the city's eastern horizon for the restoration of Beltane's "Big Sun".
Fortunately, for coming generations, images of this Celtic revival will remain in the impressive archive of the Beltane festivals. However, today Edinburgh people are denied the chance to be moved by a unique event celebrating their cultural heritage. For regular participants, the festival's disappearance from the city has struck hard. Pete Renwick, a fire performer, said: "The loss will be felt most by the 2-300 performers who gather and rehearse for up to two months putting in their own time and money to produce one of the most spectacular events of the year."
Having always striven to be as inclusive as possible, Beltane has over time nurtured the creativity of thousands of participants like Mr. Renwick, through performance and craft workshops. BFS members come from a wide range of backgrounds from bank workers to students to lone parents. Time and again they have explained how participation has developed their confidence, personal creativity, team-work skills, as well as experience of project management or craft and workshop development.
Unsurprisingly, such experience has fostered numerous career paths in the arts. Angus Farquar, the festival's founder, is now artistic director of the nva arts organisation, staging spectacular outdoor events. Former Beltane May Queen, Liz Rankin, is now choreographer at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And long-term performer, Chloe Dear, is producer of innovative shows with the Edinburgh-based "Boilerhouse". She said: "I attribute this success entirely to the experience I gained working with the BFS."
But although Beltane has been shown to contribute a great deal to Edinburgh, this hasn’t been sufficient to satisfy the Council that it’s worth funding. Outraged at this, Angus Farquar said: "Their failure to place one of Scotland's most popular grassroots festivals at the centre of their Festivals' Strategy is a total disgrace." But what might be the reasons for this lack of support?
Some suspect that in a culture encouraging rigorously controlled public events, despite its excellent safety record, the festival's too anarchic, with no explicit start and finish time. Certainly local residents haven't tolerated drumming for one long night each year. And the festival's pagan overtones have disturbed some Kirk members, with fundamentalists staging protests at each festival. But in an era of multiculturalism, with Edinburgh's Hindu community supported with their "Dushera" festival on the same site, this isn't an attitude the Council could publicly avow.
Personally I suspect that the reasons lie more with money. Having always refused to be drawn down the route of obtaining corporate sponsorship, the BFS, a non-profit-making community arts organisation, has long struggled to find alternative ways of meeting the festival's costs. In 1997 a Council grant was axed and since then, costs created by public safety requirements and insurance have spiralled, with the budget reaching £14,000 last year, a sum that ironically is very small in the scale of outdoor festivals.
Despite offers from companies including breweries, the BFS has resolutely rejected such corporate sponsors. Feeling their inevitable result to be fetters on authentic celebration, Beltane's vibrancy bears testimony to the practice of artistic freedom.
This isn’t an attitude the Council shares. In fact all its festivals bed-fellow with business. And thus, although Hogmanay and the Fringe Festival are popular, criticism has been voiced at their over-regulation, resulting in increasingly exclusive and soulless events sponsored by banks. Furthermore, with mostly imported performers, they become rather more economic extravaganzas than the cultural expression of Edinburgh's community.
Nonetheless, in naming what the Beltane Fire Festival has achieved and what Edinburgh will lose in choosing not to support it, I hope to raise people's consciousness that an authentic festival is about much more than hard economics. Many people appreciate the Venice and Rio Carnivals, the "Fallas" festival and "Uphellyar", precisely because they’re of the people, for the people. And it's primarily for this reason that the Festival City shouldn't turn its back on Beltane.
h.m.
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
In Nazi Germany
17.03.2003 19:52
The Demons in control are planning their own fire festival, probably to commence at the Spring Equinox with the full moon in Virgo. The goddess Ostara will rise drenched in the blood of thousands of human sacrifices. The Satanic working will be given the occult title Shock and Awe. You think the bastards are going to want any Pagan people's competition?
dh
Beltane Fire Festival extinguished by bureauc
18.03.2003 14:16
The hugely popular Beltane Fire Festival will not take place on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill as expected on 30th April this year, breaking with a fifteen-year tradition of marking the start of spring in the spirit of the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane in the midst of the city.
Press Release from the Beltane Fire Society (BFS)
(for immediate release on March 7th, 2003)
The hugely popular Beltane Fire Festival will not take place on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill as expected on 30th April this year, breaking with a fifteen-year tradition of marking the start of spring in the spirit of the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane in the midst of the city. Several factors have contributed to its organisers taking this decision, but the main reasons are the absence of support from Edinburgh City Council’s Culture and Leisure department and the spiralling costs of putting on the event.
In its Cultural Strategy Policy, Culture and Leisure claims to offer “partnership” with cultural providers, stating that it is committed to “preserving and interpreting Edinburgh’s heritage” and “enabling Edinburgh’s citizens and visitors to…enjoy… the widest cultural experience….” However, despite the BFS having this last year made an exceptionally concerted effort to establish such a partnership with Culture and Leisure Department, in order to be eligible for grant-aid, initially approaching Councillor Steve Cardownie last August, this support has not been forthcoming.
Due to the growing popularity of the event, with up to 14,000 people enjoying the stunning procession lead by a May Queen, there have been increased pressures on the Society, a non-profit-making community arts organisation, to meet the costs of ensuring that the event remains a safe one. In 2002 80% of the festival’s £14,000 budget was spent on meeting site conservation and safety requirements and the clean-up costs of the Calton Hill, with a significant proportion of the budget being paid directly to the Council, whilst performers paid for their elaborate costumes and props.
This year costs have been estimated as likely to spiral due to the steep rise in public liability insurance for events involving fire and the knock-on effect for hiring professional security firms, whose prices have also had to increase. However, as Angus Farquar, the festival’s founder has pointed out, that the BFS requires what is a relatively small sum in the context of outdoor public events to sustain such a popular festival is a credit to the organisers’ frugality and efforts.
In recent years the BFS has collaborated closely with the highly supportive Public Safety Department at the Council, police, fire brigade, Rock Steady and the Red Cross through the Events Planning and Operations Group (EPOG) to ensure the production of a safe event. However, neither the festival’s excellent safety record, nor the festival’s international profile, attracting visitors as well as locals and families, have proved sufficient to satisfy the Council that the event is worth supporting. No funding for the festival has been made available since a small grant was axed in 1997 and at last year’s festival, bucketing for donations on the hill raised an average of just 18p per audience member. Fundraising to meet such high costs has thus required an enormous amount of energy by BFS members. The BFS would like to thank everyone who has given voluntarily of their time or money to help produce Beltane.
Plans for finding the funds to produce this year’s festival were further hampered in early January 2003 when the BFS received a letter from the Culture and Leisure Department expressing concerns about giving permission for the use of Calton Hill for this year’s festival. These included fears about poor safety, debris left on the hill, damage to historic buildings, and nuisance caused to local residents. Culture and Leisure concluded that the festival did not appear to comply with the Council-approved Conservation Policy for Calton Hill, and that it would be preferable if an alternative venue could be identified.
However, the letter from Culture and Leisure was largely misinformed, not having paid heed to the Public Safety Department or EPOG debrief reports produced annually after each festival. Becky Plunkett, producer of Beltane 2002, responded by letter to each of Herbert Coutts’ concerns about the Calton Hill site. She outlined the rigorous process in which the BFS has been involved for some years to ensure that the event is produced safely and that the hill and its historic buildings would in no way be damaged. She wrote: “Last year we, we took our responsibilities one step further than previous years by employing an experienced, professional Production Manager to make sure we got things right on the night. We worked hard to address and solve the problems that had been encountered before, and over the years we have put our all into building up a relationship with the CEC Public Safety representatives and other EPOG members…to make the event as damage- free to the hill and as safe for the people as it can be.”
In expressing their concerns, Culture and Leisure was also unaware that BFS had already taken steps to address local residents’ complaints, meeting with their local Councillor, Dougie Kerr, at the beginning of January. And in raising the issue of litter on the hill, Culture and Leisure had failed to realise that since the BFS pays the Council for its clean-up, if the service was inadequately carried out, then it must be an internal matter for the Council to address.
This point was made on 3rd March at the first EPOG meeting to plan Beltane 2003, with many of Culture and Leisure’s concerns and allegations also being refuted by the Public Safety Department and by Lothian and Borders police. As Alan Howse, BFS Health and Safety Officer, who regularly contributed to those meetings said: “The Council’s concerns are our concerns, because we want a fun and safe event.”
Despite Ms. Plunkett’s detailed response to Culture and Leisure and a passionate appeal from Angus Farquar, now director of the successful nva arts organisation, to support Beltane, Culture and Leisure has not apologised for their incorrect statements. The department has also remained unmoved on the subject of grant-aid for the festival. And despite BFS Chair, Helen Moore’s plea to Donald Anderson, leader of the Council, to arbitrate urgently on BFS’ behalf, there has been no response from him either.
Helen Moore has also been personally upset by what has appeared to her to be the deliberate sabotage of a relationship BFS had been developing with Arts Development at the Council. Having asked Cardownie in August last year about grant-aid for Beltane 2003, she was put in touch with Arts Development and advised that raising the festival’s profile to Council members was a way in which this might be achieved. Ms. Moore explained: “In October an initial presentation was made by BFS and work was continuing behind the scenes to build on this. But a day after we received the letter from Culture and Leisure, I heard from Arts Development that they’d been told they were no longer to work with us. This seems extraordinary for a Department espousing partnership with cultural providers and completely unjustifiable. As a result of this, a unique and authentic festival is being prevented from happening in what is supposed to be the Festival City, ”
Nonetheless, on March 4th, just after the first EPOG meeting, Culture and Leisure finally granted permission for the use of Calton Hill, although with the stipulation that this be in accordance with a lease drawn up by the Council’s solicitor. However, with insufficient funds to produce the festival, the BFS committee decided yesterday that it could not go ahead. Angus Farquar said: “The Council’s failure to place one of Scotland’s most popular grassroots festivals at the centre of their Festivals’ Strategy is a total disgrace. The decision must be reconsidered if the Council are to have any credibility.”
And Becky Plunkett added: “I think it’s a shame that we don’t have funds to produce Beltane on Calton Hill this year, as over the years we’ve fostered a fantastic relationship with the Public Safety Department, Lothian and Borders Police, Rock Steady Security, the Red Cross, the fire brigade and members of the Parks Department. We could have definitely produced the event within the conditions stipulated by Herbert Coutts, as we’ve been addressing many of these issues in past years anyway, and had already made the first steps in liaising with the local residents’ association.”
For further information please contact:
Helen Moore, BFS Chair by e-mail
Or by phone: 0131 228 4143
Angus Farquar, the Beltane Fire Festival’s founder:
By mobile: 0777 5537770
BFS
calling all those interested in campaigning for celtic festival to be re instate
22.07.2003 12:46
talez
e-mail:
greshsha2003@yahoo.com.uk