It is now 15 years since the BBC programme “Burns the Brand” attempted to quantify in hard cash terms what our national bard contributes to Scotland’s contemporary economy. The producer, David Stenhouse, commissioned a World Bank economist, who calculated that Burns made us £157 million per annum in year-round tourism and merchandising, including the bonanza of the supper season, with all the spending that takes place on hospitality, whisky, haggis, kilt hire and even paying the piper. That was a tidy sum back in 2003, and it would have left the impoverished poet uncharacteristically lost for words, but it did not include activity outwith Scotland, and it was calculated long before the opening of the Burns birthplace museum, which receives 300,000 visitors a year, and Scotland’s £390,000 winter festival programme, of which Burns night is the keystane.
The figure of £157 million was also calculated before the watershed year of homecoming in 2009 for Burns’s 250th anniversary, which itself resulted in an additional £360 million of visitor spend and reached out to Scotland’s diaspora as never before. Moreover, the £157 million figure did not include the free advertising and promotion that our country and its businesses get via Burnsian good will, not just on the bard’s birthday but through things such as “Auld Lang Syne”, the song with which the whole world welcomes in the new year in Scots and which has been recorded by hundreds of stars from Jimi Hendrix to Mariah Carey.
Any economic study that was conducted today would surely find that Burns’s capital had increased exponentially. If—God forbid—he was a listed company, his share price would be through the roof of his auld clay biggin. The purpose of the debate is to make the point that it is high time that we looked seriously at the value of Burns the brand and updated the 2003 study.
Of course, we cannot put a price on the cultural value of Burns. In my view, he is the most significant Scotsman of his millennium. He cemented our national identity and self-confidence. He represents democracy, equality, the importance of universal education, the lyrical power of the Scots language and so much more, including—to use his words—peace, enjoyment, love and pleasure.
However, there is no contradiction between honouring Burns as an artist and recognising his commercial worth. I am indebted to the centre for Robert Burns studies at the University of Glasgow and Professor Murray Pittock, pro-vice principal of the university and Bradley chair of English literature, for advising me on the debate. I welcome Professor Pittock and his colleagues to the gallery and should say that they are not responsible for the content of my speech.
Since it was founded in 2007, the centre for Robert Burns studies has been an income generator and job creator, as befits the track record of our world-class universities. Students from all over the world come to the centre to study Burns and other writers of his period, such as John Galt and Allan Ramsay. The centre secured an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant of £1.1 million towards the editing Robert Burns for the 21st century project. The new multivolume edition, which is being published by the Oxford University Press, is edited by the centre’s Professor Gerry Carruthers, and the accompanying website and social media mean that everyone can engage with and benefit from the centre’s expertise.
The centre also provides strategic support to the national Burns collection, which is housed across 26 sites in Glasgow, Ayrshire, Edinburgh and Dumfries and Galloway. The website burnsscotland.com brings the collection together in a way that serves the general public, the tourist and the scholar. I recommend its interactive maps, which allow us to see all the different locations and what is there.
Other members will talk about other parts of Scotland—I know that members from Ayrshire, in particular, are here. I do not have time to mention everything, so I will talk about Dumfries and Galloway, where many of the collection sites are. We have the Burns House museum in Dumfries, Ellisland Farm, on the banks of the Nith, and the Globe Inn in Dumfries, where Burns enjoyed a dram and romanced the barmaid Anna Park.
The Globe is a piece of living history, where people can view—as the cabinet secretary has done—stanzas scratched on the window panes and sit “fast by an ingle” in the poet’s own chair. The Globe is a major venue in Dumfries’s big Burns supper festival, which runs from 18 to 28 January this year and is the biggest Burns event in the winter festivals programme. Audiences at the festival grow every year: last year there was a 16 per cent increase in ticketed events. The festival is an important aspect of town-centre regeneration.
The proliferation of Burns festivals is a relatively recent development, but Burns suppers, which began after the poet’s death, continue to multiply exponentially, even in the 21st century. Many are run by volunteers, such as those who are part of the Robert Burns World Federation, which has 250 members clubs worldwide, but all sorts of other people around the world are having Burns suppers. Business organisations, hotels, restaurants and loose networks of friends will all raise their glasses and sharpen their dirks this month, because Burns is fashionable. Members need only look on the booking service, Eventbrite, to see that, in London alone, Jamie Oliver is hosting a Burns night celebration at £50 per person, which includes Glenfiddich cocktails, Fortnum & Mason is hosting an event that comes in somewhat pricier at £75 a head, and Anta, the design and textile interiors company, is offering haggis canapés and 20 per cent off in its showrooms.
From Washington DC to Kuala Lumpur, such events are increasing demand for Scottish produce. The premier butcher Simon Howie says that a third of the haggis that is sold in the United Kingdom is sold in the three weeks around 25 January and that year-round sales are £8 million in the UK. Indeed, slightly more haggis is sold in England than in Scotland during the Burns period.
We all know that whisky sales are booming, with exports worth £125 every second. Around the world, many people get their first taste of malt whisky and haggis at a Burns supper, and of course they come back for more. Increasingly, people come back to sample other Scottish produce, such as oatcakes, craft beers and gins.
Many international events are held by chambers of commerce and sell themselves quite openly as networking opportunities. It is not possible to see all those disparate events on a single site, but perhaps there is the potential to explore such an approach, so that exporting companies can take advantage of an amazing network.
As much as we consider the deals that are struck and the sales of our produce, we must also consider the soft power of the poet. Ireland has St Patrick’s day, of course, which is great fun, but the mythical, snake-killing saint does not quite have Rabbie’s contemporary resonance.
Burns celebrates universalism and is now everyone’s national poet for a day—he is embraced by Scotland’s own diverse communities. I note with pleasure the briefing that members had from BEMIS, the organisation for Scotland’s ethnic and cultural minority communities, whose community Burns events this year include those of the Giffnock Hebrew community, Glasgow Afghan United and the African Caribbean Women’s Association. At the 25th anniversary of Celtic Connections this year, BEMIS will celebrate Burns at a grand, multicultural ceilidh at Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket.
Burns is for everyone all year round, not just on Burns night. Camperdown in Victoria, Australia will hold a Robert Burns festival this May that will showcase a lot of Scottish talent. Robert Burns’s native Ayrshire, of course, will have Burnsfest in the same month.
Burns continues to inspire other artists and makers and manufacturers of original merchandise. Some of that will find its way into the WeeBox, which is an amazing initiative. The WeeBox subscription home-delivery hamper, which was highlighted in Vogue magazine last month, is aimed at all who identify with or admire our culture. Each month, it arrives with quirky, original gifts of a high quality—or “mindings of home”. This month, the WeeBox contains Clark McGinn’s “The Ultimate Burns Supper Book”, by Luath Press, with a foreword by Professor Pittock, which is a do-it-yourself guide that allows even more people around the world to join in the world’s biggest party of poetry.
Burns the brand is inseparable from Scotland the brand. The Anholt-GfK Roper nation brands index, which ranks the reputation of countries, puts Scotland in 15th place out of 50 countries, which is quite an astonishing performance. Burns contributes to that success quite considerably by enhancing the way that others see us. First and foremost, of course, he enriches our culture. However, by investing in his cultural legacy, we also enrich our country and the prosperity of the Scottish people, who keep his immortal memory alive.