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The Edinburgh International Festival
Jonathan Mills, the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, is seeking entrepreneurial links with the 2012 games Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Jonathan Mills, the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, is seeking entrepreneurial links with the 2012 games Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Edinburgh festival organisers plan VIP tie-up with Olympics

This article is more than 12 years old
Hopes are high that when the 2012 Games end in London, visiting dignitaries will head north of the border to soak up the cultural and intellectual delights in the Scottish capital

When the Olympic Games end on 12 August 2012, all eyes will be on London. But the organisers of Edinburgh's festivals hope that, when the spectacle of the closing ceremony has faded, the gaze will travel to Scotland's capital.

Ambitious plans are under way to tempt overseas dignitaries, including heads of state, to travel to the city's festival on 13 August next year.

On the weekend that Edinburgh's international festival and international book festival open, it is hoped that the city will host a cultural forum involving the world's political leaders, and the greatest artists and writers performing at the festivals and the fringe.

Invitations are expected to be extended to overseas delegations jointly by the British and Scottish governments – an unusual act of collaboration between Westminster and Holyrood.

Jonathan Mills, the international festival's director, said: "It would be a missed opportunity for the UK if an organisation like my own were not out in front looking in a very ambitious and entrepreneurial way for links with the Olympics. Not simply because of the glory it might bring us in 2012, but much more because when the Games leave town we will still be going."

Mills declined to comment on plans for the event in detail, but a source close to the Edinburgh international festival said: "The idea is to create a truly international forum for discussing cultural difference and cultural change. The challenges that the world faces are not going to be resolved by the siloed thinking of our political classes. We want to introduce forms of engagement we aren't having at the moment."

Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh international book festival, whose 2011 edition opens tomorrow said: "We would like politicians to encounter world-leading actors, directors, and authors who are here in Edinburgh. In a festival where we have 800 authors from around the world, inevitably we have some world-leading figures. Not just Nobel and Man Booker prize-winners but great thinkers from across the spectrum. There's an extraordinary concentration of intellectual talent – and not just at the book festival but at the fringe and international festivals, too. What is really great about this project, if we can pull it off, is that if it works it will be the most collaborative festivals event that has been attempted in a generation."

He added: "For the first time in a lifetime the biggest cultural event and the biggest sporting event in the world are taking place in the same country – and we would be fools if we didn't try to take advantage of that, and the fact that senior figures from around the world are going to be present for the closing ceremony of the Olympics, the day before our festival opens."

The idea of a cultural forum draws on an acknowledgement that culture is already seen as a powerful tool in so-called "soft diplomacy". Barley said: "Culture is every bit as important as an expression of soft power as winning gold medals."

While around 200 nations are expected to compete in the Olympics, the book festival this year hosts writers from 40 countries, the international festival artists from 38, and the fringe, performers from 43.

According to Barley: "It's not simply that we have authors here this year who were involved in the Arab spring or who are living through enormous changes in Pakistan, it is also important that their experiences can refract what's happening in this country. A book festival can provide a way of getting perspective – changing immediate news events into reflected, understood stories."

The increasing importance of culture as a diplomatic tool is also underlined by this year's international festival, which also opens this weekend. Its focus is the far east, presenting work by companies from China, Vietnam and Korea, among others.

"It's an area of the world we should be falling over ourselves to engage with: our futures are enmeshed with this part of the world," said Mills. Despite the detention for over 80 days of artist Ai Weiwei, Mills has worked with the Chinese government and will host visitors from its embassy and culture ministry. "I think it is important to take the long view," he said. "Personally, I think it is much more important to engage with China than not."For Scotland, culture is also regarded as an important tool of soft diplomacy and signifier of national cultural values. The Scottish Government is promoting, to the tune of £1.2m over three years, a programme of work under the banner of Made in Scotland marketing Scottish theatre and performance to overseas producers. Fiona Hyslop MSP, cabinet secretary for culture, said: "People know about our rich heritage, but it is also important people see modern, contemporary Scotland." It tied into a desire, she said, to portray the country as "an international, outward-looking country" that was about "invention and creativity".

More on this story

More on this story

  • Art on the fringe: intimate performances at the Edinburgh festival

  • Edinburgh festival: week one roundup

  • New Edinburgh act of the day: DeAnne Smith

  • Edinburgh comedy notebook: What counts as comedy?

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