Roy Luxford, Edinburgh International Festival: “Festivals are places of connection”

As Creative Director of the Edinburgh International Festival, Roy Luxford oversees one of the world's leading multidisciplinary arts festivals. With a career spanning major institutions including the Barbican, Sadler's Wells, the Young Vic, BAM New York and the Venice Biennale, Luxford has spent decades shaping international cultural exchange. Speaking at SIPAM 2026, he reflects on culture as diplomacy, the role of festivals in an increasingly fragmented world, audience accessibility, sustainability, and why live performance may become even more valuable in the years ahead.

This year's festival theme is Soul. In your own terms, what is the soul of culture?

Roy Luxford: The soul of culture? Goodness. I think one of the fundamental things about arts and culture is that they are an exchange of ideas. They are a meeting point. So, whether that is expressed through theatre, dance or music, it is about conveying a feeling, an expression or an artistic enterprise to an audience. So, for me, festivals, arts and culture are about meeting someone or something from somewhere else.

Arts and culture have always been used as soft power, as we would call it. So, whether that is through an artistic exchange, a way of reaching out to territories in conflict, or simply one of those incredible moments of artistic expression, cultural diplomacy can bring different people together.

In fact, the Edinburgh International Festival was formed in the post-World War II period, in 1947, expressly as a platform for the flowering of the human spirit. In that, it was about peace and reconciliation expressed through arts and culture. So, it is fundamental to our festival's very being.

Well, I think we call it soft power in those kinds of diplomatic terms. I think it has a very direct relationship to the world we live in. It is a very instrumental way of putting forward different perspectives, looking at the other side of a discussion or an argument, or at what is right or wrong.

It enables us all to celebrate our differences rather than be antagonised by them. On the whole, we probably have more in common than what really divides us, and I think arts and culture are one way of expressing that.

I think that, in terms of festivals, we are very similar. We try to do a similar thing. Festivals are these meeting points. They are very much about place, and that specificity of place is really important to the strength of a festival.

Then there is the artistic curation and programming that actually brings a festival alive. The Sibiu International Theatre Festival is not so different from the Edinburgh International Festival. It is made up of a rich mix of both visiting and local artists, and it spans art forms.

That is where there is a really interesting dynamic between what you see on a week-to-week basis as an audience member and what you can see within a festival context. Again, I really believe in this notion that festivals are places of connection: places to see something you might not see regularly and to consider how that informs, changes or challenges your perspective on the world.

We see lots of work presented: new works, reinterpretations of classics or devised works. Quite often, they carry a very particular point of view on the state of the world. That is really interesting, and that is the dialogue we want to have between artists and audiences.

Completely. As I said, festivals are about places. So, it is about this city and the inhabitants of this city, but it is also about the visitors and where that connection is made on a day-to-day basis. Of course, artists need audiences, so there needs to be an offer that is generous and stimulating. It is part of a local society.

There is a lot to that, depending on your interpretation. One thing is simply making sure that everybody who wants to attend a performance can do so. There is something about ticket prices in that, and that is particularly current in our conversation in Edinburgh.

Another thing is whether audience members need any support to be able to access a venue, physically or otherwise. It is not part of everybody's daily life, so what are the barriers to enabling different audience members to engage with the festival?

There are many different ways to approach that. There is also something about how and where our performances are presented. We need to be outside the usual venues because attending a certain venue can itself be a barrier for some audiences.

There are lots. One very strong strand at the moment is climate change and sustainability. This is both offstage and onstage. We have been presenting a lot of work in which artists have developed pieces that speak very directly to climate change, and I think that is something festivals can do as a way of advocating for that message to be heard in many different ways and on different platforms.

Festivals also need to think about the presenting model because one of our biggest contributing factors is emissions from flights. We are thinking about longer stays for companies: for example, having a visiting orchestra perform several concerts rather than the standard one concert and then move on.

There are other ways too, such as co-productions and revivals, so that we are not travelling with large numbers of trucks or freighting big sets around the world.

I think fundamentally that festivals which prioritise artists and artists' voices are those that will endure and have longevity.

Our investment and our body of work are centred around artistic endeavour. We need artists to, in a way, illuminate where we go next. So rather than necessarily trying to set an agenda, I think it is always useful to look back and see which developments happened when. More often than not, artists are leading that charge.

It is my first time in Sibiu, although I was supposed to come last year. I would say it is an international festival that has crafted this very interesting and engaging arts market within the centre of the festival. I think it is a really strong platform for dialogue and debate and for this essential exchange.

Usually, it is at these sorts of meeting points that we discover an artist, a company or an interesting conversation that we can continue when we return to our own festivals.

We have been around for a very long time. I think the place of arts and culture in society will grow. Fundamentally, it is a live experience, and in many aspects of our lives we are moving further away from that and focusing more on a screen.

So, this sense of connection to something that is physically created only in that moment, when you are in a space, in a collective, communal experience, is something that I think will become even more treasured over the next few years.