BP ends sponsorship of Edinburgh international festival after 34 years

BP is ending its sponsorship of the Edinburgh international festival after 34 years, a move welcomed by campaigners who want the oil company’s relationships with other big arts organisations to end quickly.

The termination of the deal emerged as EIF launched its summer programme on Wednesday without BP’s name in the list of sponsors.

An EIF statement said: “BP has not renewed its support of the international festival this year. We are grateful to them for their long-term support of the festival, but all sponsorship arrangements end eventually.”

It comes less than a month after BP said it was ending a 26-year sponsorship deal with Tate Britain.

Jess Worth from the campaign group BP or Not BP? welcomed the news and said it appeared to have been the festival’s decision.

“The dominoes are clearly starting to fall,” she said. “The EIF has walked away from a 34-year partnership because being associated with BP was doing too much damage to its reputation. Big oil has been embedded in our museums and festivals for too long, but now the shift to a fossil-free culture is taking off.”

BP said the decision was its own. “In what is an extremely challenging business environment, we are reducing spending and taking many difficult decisions across BP,” the company said.

“We are delighted to have supported the Edinburgh international festival for a number of years. However, as a result of the current business environment, we have reluctantly decided not to renew our sponsorship this year. We wish the festival all the best in its preparations.”

EIF came under particular pressure last year, with the theatre director Simon McBurney joining those urging it to sever ties with BP.

Nearly 100 figures from the arts, science and politics signed a letter to the Guardian this week calling for the British Museum, under its new director Hartwig Fischer, to end its 20-year partnership with BP.

The signatories included the actors Mark Ruffalo and Emma Thompson, and the writers Caryl Churchill, Naomi Klein and Margaret Atwood.

BP signed a £10m, five-year deal with the British Museum, the Tate, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery in 2011. The agreement comes to an end next year and campaigners hope that the Tate and EIF announcements will be followed by similar ones concerning the remaining deals.

Ric Lander from Friends of the Earth Scotland said: “Edinburgh international festival should be congratulated on freeing itself from fossil fuel sponsorship.

“We know that most fossil fuels reserves must be kept in the ground if we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. We need to urgently move away from extracting and burning fossil fuels, and companies such as BP who continue to profit from the destruction of our environment have no place in our treasured cultural events or institutions.”

Daniel Bye, whose Edinburgh show won a Fringe First award last year and who joined McBurney and others in a protest against BP outside Usher Hall last summer, said: “Whether or not it’s down to the vociferous campaigns, I’m delighted that EIF have ended their association with massive corporate criminal BP. I look forward to the day when arts organisations gladhanding big oil looks as freakishly untenable as tobacco or arms sponsorship. This takes us one step closer.”

Arts organisations have defended their partnerships with BP, not least because the pressure on them to raise money from commercial sources has never been so high.

The British Museum’s former director Neil MacGregor described BP as the museum’s best corporate friend. “What would you want companies to do with their profits?” he asked. “Do you want them to spend them in a way that benefits the public, or not?”