Showcase

So I’m in Edinburgh for the biannual British Council Showcase which picks 30 of the best shows from a choice of 2,000 for around 250 international promoters to check out and hopefully invite back to their countries. It seems to work: in the eight previous Showcases, 87% of the shows ended up touring overseas. Today was a kind of training session for all us arts managers on how to get the best out of the week ahead. A few years ago the British Council lost its way in the arts. It was a strange period of two or three years punctuated by lack of leadership, confidence and dedicated staff. How times have changed. Today I joined around 60 arts managers from all over the world, many new, others revitalized, but all with a fresh sense of purpose. See also this post, same time two years ago.