Summary
ALTHOUGH it is an entirely made-up word and therefore aroused my instinctive scholarly suspicion, I have grown fond of the rebranding of Edinburgh's Children's International Theatre Festival as Imaginate. Director Tony Reekie and his team have done this stealthily, first trying out the name for size on the organisation that runs the event, before this year deciding it might fi t the festival itself. There are simple, practical reasons why it works for us newspaper types. With the addition of its title sponsor, the event had become the Bank of Scotland Children's International Theatre Festival, useless in terms of columns of print . Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival is at least a step in the right direction. It also frees the programme from words of common, if debatable, definition. There have been shows that were really dance rather than theatre, for example, and others in which the musical content was at least as important as the drama.
As for "international", it is probably one of the most unnecessary words regularly used in arts nomenclature. Reekie's event has long embraced work from elsewhere, which Scottish companies have learned from. Just as importantly, homegrown work has blazed a trail for Scottish theatre abroad. It was one of the benefits of Glasgow's concert hall being given the Queen's seal of approval that the "Royal" replaced "International" in its name, because at least it was comparatively clear what the inclusion of the word in the building's title meant. The Glasgow Jazz Festival has also recently dropped "International" from its title, recognising, presumably, that setting itself up as distinct from the Glasgow Parochial Jazz Festival wasn't a great selling point. To be frank, I'm none too convinced by the ubiquity of the word "festival" either. It seems that it is unthinkingly tacked on to seasons and programmes of varying duration and thematic cohesiveness for want of any alternative. Names such as T in the Park, Big in Falkirk or Le Weekend resonate because they are distinctive, as any brand- conscious marketing guru would surely confirm.See the full content of this document
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The brand to blame here is clearly Scotland's cultural flagship, the E...
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