ORGANISERS of the Scottish events which came from the Tories’ “Festival of Brexit” said they would pull out if any MP mentioned that term even once.
It has also been revealed that just 238,000 visitors have been recorded across four “Unboxed” events – despite an early “stretch-target” of 66 million for the entire programme.
Theresa May first announced “Festival UK” – which was touted as a post-Brexit celebration of Britain – in 2018. It was soon unofficially dubbed the “Festival of Brexit”, before being reimagined as “Unboxed”.
The £120m Unboxed project, which is still ongoing, took the form of 10 separate events across the UK, each looking to celebrate creativity.
Martin Green, who was brought in to be the chief creative officer, said he had been assured by then culture secretary Oliver Dowden that it was “not a Brexit festival” or “some kind of jingoistic jamboree”.
Donald Shaw, the musical director of the Scotland-wide Dandelion event, said that the Scottish Government had “made clear” to the UK Government that any mention of Brexit would see the plug pulled.
“It was a red-line in our contracts with Unboxed,” Shaw told The House magazine.
“When the festival was announced we said that if literally one MP stood up and said, ‘This is the festival of Brexit’, we were all going to pull out. The Scottish Government made that clear to the UK Government.”
The Dandelion festival saw one event held in Glasgow in June, with another planned for Inverness in early September and nationwide “harvest” events later that month.
The House magazine reported that “everyone” they talked to at the Glasgow event had been “appalled at the very idea they were attending something once known as "The Festival of Brexit”.
People The National has spoken to who attended said there was a feeling they had been “tricked” into joining celebrations of the exit from the EU.
They said they had been unaware of the connection before attending, and that learning of it at the event left a sour taste.
Dandelion’s executive producer Jenny Niven told The House there was a “dirty money” feeling of having taken £8m to run the events despite their connection to Brexit.
Shaw said there had been a deliberate effort to make the events outward looking and pro-European.
“We went the other way,” he said. “Even to the point where some Tory MPs were apparently unhappy with us. They were like, wait a minute, where’s the bunting? That meant we’d succeeded.”
The Dandelion events focused on food sustainability. Their “harvests” in September will bring “people together for community meals made from food grown in that community or sourced locally, live music and long conversations, swapping stories and sharing the produce”.
