Jenny Niven Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival speaks to The Scotsman
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CreativityTranscript
00:00I'm Jenny Niven, I'm the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival
00:04and we're here on site this morning as you can see building the site ready for
00:09our opening on Saturday the 10th of August. Where exactly are we in Edinburgh and
00:14Jenny for maybe people who've not been to this part of the city before? So we
00:18are on our brand new site which is on in front of me is Middle Meadow Walk so
00:24we're right next to the Meadows which is the huge big park right in the middle of
00:27the city and the building round about is the Edinburgh Futures Institute where the
00:32festival is based is the former Royal Infirmary so we're just up from
00:36Chambers Street Museum we're just kind of opposite George Herriot School so a
00:40new location for the Book Festival but right in the thick of it where the other festivals are.
00:44So people will have been in the building over here before but not for a long time?
00:49That's right the building has been closed for I think more than a decade
00:55The Royal Infirmary played a massive part in so many people's lives in
01:00Edinburgh and it's just absolutely wonderful to see it transformed as this
01:05new development as part of the University of Edinburgh. It's lovely to see a new lease of life for such an iconic building.
01:12So the festival feels as if it's got a very new incarnation here you're going to have
01:16events inside the building but also outside in some of the pop-up venues
01:21that we can see in the background here. Just tell us a wee bit about the
01:24festival experience people will get this year?
01:26Yeah so we're really excited about being able to offer this new festival experience.
01:30You can hear the clunking in the background as the tents and all of our
01:34outdoor structures get built. You might be able to see in the back of the shot
01:37is the festival bookshop, the beautiful Spiegel tent which is right behind me
01:42where we'll be doing lots of fun and late-night programming and there's bars
01:46there's great food offer then there's a couple of outdoor venues for our
01:50standard Book Festival programming and then we're using the inside of the
01:54beautiful Futures Institute as well for some of our larger venues and also some
01:59of the more intimate and more workshop space type work that we're presenting as
02:04well. So wherever you are we're not quite there yet you can see we're halfway
02:08through the build but once the festival is open wherever you are in this
02:12courtyard site or within the Futures Institute you should feel that you're
02:15part of one holistic Book Festival experience.
02:18And you've also got some events happening at the Macune Hall which is a couple of minutes walk away isn't it?
02:23Yeah so that's right we're working in the Macune Hall as well in a brilliant
02:27partnership with Underbelly and as you say it's just a couple of minutes walk
02:31from here to George Square so that you can go to the events there and then
02:34or Bristol Square and then come back to here at the Futures Institute but
02:38we're running a program there of ten kind of headline events as part of the
02:42festival program called The Front List and you can see writers there like
02:46Salman Rushdie or Dolly Alderton or Richard Oseman or the amazing Jackie Kay
02:52is interviewing Alan Cumming and folks Massa just on Saturday night so looking
02:56forward to that all kicking off. So it feels like the site here is a bit more
03:01kind of plugged into the rest of Edinburgh's festivals in terms of what's
03:05happening around the site is that something you'd like to see develop in
03:09terms of new collaborations in future years? That's right we're absolutely
03:13delighted to be able to bring the festival closer in to some of the other
03:18festivals because I think that's reflective of how a lot of audiences
03:21behave in August you go and you pick and choose you go and see things that all
03:25the different amazing programs that are happening and also I think it helps to
03:29create that sense of atmosphere and for us it's also great because this is sort
03:34of reclaimed land this you know we're not displacing anything by holding the
03:38festival here because actually there's been nothing on this site for such a
03:41long time so it's an excellent way to bring more festival activity into this
03:45key festival area without creating any more pressure on the city and but it's
03:50also great because a lot of the venues are where we are and is really
03:54accessible on foot and we'd like to encourage as many people as possible to
03:57come to the festival on foot or by public transport and that's really quite
04:01viable here where we are now. What would you say to anyone who's never been to the
04:05book festival in particular before but has been to the other Edinburgh festivals?
04:09I think we would like to inspire curiosity in people basically publishing
04:14is so exciting and wide-ranging that anything that you're interested in
04:20there's somebody writing a fabulous book about it and our job as programmers I
04:24think is to bring that together but also maybe have an eye on where things are
04:27going so we're really an exciting place for insights and well our whole program
04:32this year is themed around future tense so what's coming next in politics or
04:37economics or society or even the imagination what are some of the really
04:41pioneering ways that writers are working just now and I think you might
04:45if you've not been before you might open the program and see one or two names
04:48that you recognize and loads that you don't and we'd love people to pick up on
04:52that sense of discovery and maybe try something new that they haven't thought
04:55of before and also if you have been to the festival before but you know
05:00somebody that hasn't that's a good challenge to bring them in with you this
05:04year because I do think that there's something in the program for a really
05:07broad range of interests and once you're here you'll find something else.
05:11Give us a couple of examples of maybe stars of the future to watch out for
05:15who've got events on in the next couple of weeks here. That's a good question
05:20we've got loads of stars of the present and so we've got an amazing I think
05:24there's 13 people in the booker shortlist or long list sorry and seven
05:28of them are appearing in the festival so we're definitely where it's at for
05:31publishing of the moment and there's a couple of writers on there that you
05:34maybe wouldn't expect which is very exciting but we've also got a lovely
05:38strand at lunch times and partnerships with the Scottish Book Trust where we're
05:43platforming brand new writers who've never been published before and there's
05:47some really great work in there so that might be where you see the next Irvine
05:50Welsh or Jenny Fagan and those events are free or pay what you can so we're
05:55hoping that lots of people will come and try something new with us there.