An Edinburgh Festivals Advent Calendar
As we count down to Christmas, here's a bit of festive(al) fun in the form of 24 fascinating facts about Edinburgh's amazing festivals!
DID YOU KNOW...?
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo is attended by an audience of 220,000 every year... with a further 100 million watching the show on television across the world!
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DID YOU KNOW...?
In 1948, an Edinburgh International Festival production of Sir David Lyndsey's The Thrie Estaites was the first in centuries to make use of the 'thrust' or 'apron' stage, putting the audience around the actors rather than simply in front of them.
Tyrone Guthrie's staging innovation transformed the actors' freedom of movement and, soon after, led the director to a position at a specially-built thrust stage theatre in Canada. The new approach inspired many other artists and variations on the thrust stage are now used in theatres, concerts and stadiums all over the world.
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DID YOU KNOW...?
In 2013, artist Jason Hackenwerth created the sculpture Pisces to help celebrate the 25th Edinburgh International Science Festival. Pisces was made up of over 10,000 coloured balloons and hung over 40 feet tall from the Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland!
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DID YOU KNOW...?
The world’s first ever publically demonstrated and commercially available mobile phone app was demonstrated on the streets of Edinburgh in 1999, as a way to search shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
DID YOU KNOW...?
Among the major movies to have received premieres at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, are ET: The Extra Terrestrial, The Hurt Locker, Blade Runner, Finding Dory, Moon, Aliens, Let the Right One In, An Inconvenient Truth, Brave, Billy Elliot, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Man on Wire, Ratatouille and many more!
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DID YOU KNOW...?
The Edinburgh International Book Festival is the largest of its kind in the world and hosts around 900 participants from over 50 different countries.
Launched in 1983, it was the UK's third book festival (there are now over 300) and was originally intended to be a one-off event - until the first 2-week run saw 30,000 people cram into Charlotte Square Gardens! The festival then became a biennial celebration until 1997, when it was made an annual fixture in the festivals calendar.
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DID YOU KNOW...?
A number of Edinburgh Art Festival commissions are now permanent parts of the city landscape, and are seen and used every day by thousands of visitors and local people.
These include:
• Alison Watt's huge painting, Still (2004) which hangs in Old Saint Paul's Scottish Episcopal Church;
• Richard Wright's dizzying The Stairwell Project (2010) at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art;
• Martin Creed's Work no.1059 (2011) more usually known as the Scotsman Steps, a beautifully decorated staircase with 104 different colours of marble, one for every step;
• The Regent Bridge (2012, above) by Callum Innes which adds stunning splashes of colour to the previously dark underside of an iconic Edinburgh arch.
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DID YOU KNOW...?
The Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival (as it's now known) was set up in 1978 by Edinburgh banjo-player, guitarist and jazz fan Mike Hart.
The original Edinburgh Jazz Festival included only traditional jazz performances, taking place for free in local pubs, but soon began to include a far wider range of jazz styles to suit all tastes.
A blues weekend was added in the 1980s, eventually expanding enough to warrant a change of name for the festival. And the festival itself grew and grew, expanding to include over 170 different gigs, ranging from the biggest names on the scene to hot new talent, and plenty in between.
DID YOU KNOW...?
The first ever Edinburgh International Children's Festival, the UK’s international festival of the performing arts for children and young people,opens its doors (well, tent flaps) in Edinburgh’s Inverleith park! A village of white tents hosted a bounty of treasures, from world-class puppeteers to gritty, coming-of-age dramas. Records show that some 20,476 children and their accompanying adults watched 75 performances of 12 main-stage shows, with theatre companies travelling from Zimbabwe, Canada and the Netherlands.
DID YOU KNOW...?
The first officially-organised Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations took place in 1994, with the inspoiration for the event being the programme of public events staged in Edinburgh during December 1992 to coincide with the European Union summit - described as “A Unique Event for the City of Edinburgh”. The first festival in 1994 saw Gaelic folk-rock group Capercaillie, the Scottish Fiddle Orchestra and the cast of stage musical Les Miserables perform below Edinburgh Castle, while 70,000 revellers turned up for the unticketed party on Princes Street. Since then over 3 million partygoers from across the world have enjoyed the annual Street Party and Concert in the Gardens.
DID YOU KNOW...?
Edinburgh's Festivals are an important part in the city's economy - in 2022, they generated over £367 million for the Scottish economy as a whole, and supported over 5000 full time equivalent jobs.
Speaking of which, those interested in working at one of the festivals should check out our jobs page for the latest opportunities.
DID YOU KNOW...?
The Edinburgh International Science Festival was the world’s first science festival, and was opened in 1989 by the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. This is her on a Hungarian stamp!
DID YOU KNOW...?
The stands of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo use 6799 pieces of steel, hold 8800 seats and take 40 days to build. Which sounds a long time until you consider that the old stands, which were used until 2010, took twice as long to construct each year!
DID YOU KNOW...?
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is legendary for its huge variety of strange and wonderful venues. In recent years Fringe spots have included a garden shed, a wrecked car and even a working hair salon (shown above, with the show Foiled, staged in Edinburgh's Ruby Rouge Hairdressing Salon. Image by David Monteith-Hodge)
DID YOU KNOW...?
The Scottish International Storytelling Festival has been running since 1989 - and veteran storytellers David Campbell (above) and Seoras Macpherson have performed in every single one of them!
DID YOU KNOW...?
The Edinburgh International Festival was established in 1947, as a return to culture and art following the horrors of the Second World War.
As well as money from the City Council and the Arts Council, part of the festival's funding came from private citizens - including Lady Roseberry, owner of the racehorse Ocean Swell, whose Derby win provided a significant portion of the cash!
DID YOU KNOW...?
Established in 1947, the Edinburgh International Film Festival is the longest continuously running film festival in the world.
It was also the first international film festival in the UK, and was initially focused (!) on documentaries, before feature films were added and Hollywood stars like Gene Kelly (above centre, with hands raised) became a regular sight each year in the capital.
DID YOU KNOW...?
To complete Ciara Philips' transformation of the Dazzle Ship for the 2016 Edinburgh Art Festival, 200 litres of paint were used by 15 painters who were involved for a total of over 1400 hours!
DID YOU KNOW...?
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo toured to Australia and New Zealand in February 2016 - and by May there were no fewer than FOUR Tattoo DVDs in the top 20 of the Australian charts!
And not content with that, while in Melbourne the Tattoo sold a record breaking number of tickets for one act in the city, beating U2, Barbara Streisand, AC/DC... and even One Direction!
DID YOU KNOW...?
Past Edinburgh's Hogmanay headliner, Paolo Nutini, was booked to play the festival in 2006/07, in support of the Pet Shop Boys - but unfortunately, severe weather intervened and the entire event had to be cancelled. Thankfully Paolo returned a decade later, and became the first headliner to play two nights running, appearing on both the 30 and 31 December !
DID YOU KNOW...?
An audience at the 1995 Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival got a bit of a surprise when they attended a gig by jazz pianist, Dick Hyman and singer, Topsy Chapman.
The reason for their surprise? Introducing the musicians was none other than former US President, Jimmy Carter, who had hosted Hyman amongst many others on the South Lawn in what became known as the first White House jazz festival back in 1978.
(Original image: Chester L Roberts, used under CC BY-SA 3.0)
DID YOU KNOW...?
A memorable moment for the Scottish International Storytelling Festival came in 2011 when storytellers delivered the complete Odyssey across a mammoth afternoon and evening session – a fantastic spectacle and one-off opportunity for lovers of Homer’s epic poem.
Throughout the Storytelling Festival week 22 storytellers and musicians, taken from Scotland, Crete, Greece, England, Corsica, Cyprus, Ireland, Sardinia and Malta, had recited individual episodes.
The group then concluded the project with a grand finalé of the entire story and its heroic themes of temptation, separation and journey.
DID YOU KNOW...?
Every year our festivals try to come up with beautiful and eye-catching designs for their posters and brochures, and in 1976 the Edinburgh International Film Festival used something particularly special.
That year, to celebrate their 30th edition, they had their artwork designed by renowned Scottish artist and pop art pioneer, Eduardo Paolozzi, who created the gorgeous illustration above.
And so we reach the end of our Edinburgh Festivals Advent Calendar, and hopefullly you'll agree that, as all of the above show, Edinburgh is truly a city of fun, fascinating and fantastic festivals!
Thanks or reading our Advent Calendar - we hope you enjoyed it, and from all at Edinburgh's Festivals, have a very merry Christmas and a happy Hogmanay [new year]!