Hello!
It’s that time of year again when I start to crunch numbers. An email from Borders Book Festival landed in my inbox on Wednesday announcing that tickets are on sale for their 2026 festival, which will be held in Melrose from the 11th to 14th of June this year, so I, as invited to, had a read of their programme…
*I’ve read the programme and counted up the number of men, women, non-binary and trans folks (the reason non-binary or trans is not in the chart is because there never seem to be any…) and then the number of white people, and people of colour. I don’t include the children’s programme, or the theatre / music / yoga and similar events. I do a quick online search on each person in the programme, unless they’re someone very well-known, and base my numbers on the info I find through that. I know I am probably biased, occasionally prone to assumptions, and may not always get it right. I am more than happy to be corrected if you think I might have mistakenly made an assumption about somebody. Please do let me know if you think this might have happened, I aim for accuracy!
The numbers:
This year, 103 people will be onstage for the festival. 55 are men and 48 are women. Since 2021, BBF have never managed to have women outnumbering men.
In a record low, the number of People of Colour in the line-up, as I count it, is 1. One. that’s less than one percent of the people on stage.
Here I guess I have to go into a little explanation about why this failure to produce a diverse programme is important, as clearly the Borders Book Festival programming team haven’t been paying attention (not just to me, to, like, culture and society?). Actually, do I? It’s ridiculous that an arts festival in 2026 in the UK has programmed a lineup of people for their event that only features one person of colour. BBF have got markedly worse at programming a diverse programme, and it makes me wonder what on earth they report back to their funders, Creative Scotland, Scottish Borders Council, Hawthornden Foundation, and Event Scotland?
From my own point of view (As a white British writer and artist, living in the Borders)… Diversity in a festival programme brings perspectives. You know the wonderful thing about picking up a book? It doesn’t have to have been written by someone who looks like you, or comes from the same place you do. It might have been translated from a language you’ll never be able to learn. We learn through reading, and when the Borders are being presented with a wall of white faces, all we’re doing is holding up a mirror to check out ourselves and congratulate ourselves on our literary brilliance, ignoring the fact that us white folks aren’t even the majority, globally. We become better people by learning from people from different places and different cultures. We broaden our minds and we become more empathetic for people who live in other parts of the world (especially at times like these). Sure, sure, there’s plenty interesting stuff in the programme that I am actually thinking about going to see, but there’s an obvious lack of diversity of ethnicity, and it doesn’t even reflect the basic reality of the number of people of colour that live in the Borders.
Jessie x
p.s.
please believe me, that I don’t actually hate Borders Book Festival. Every time I’ve attended, I’ve had a great (if expensive) day out. I just want them to do better, for the Borders, and for each individual reader and writer that lives here. I’m not actually sure if they know I exist, or if they know about my counting exercises, but I do tag them in posts when I write about them on social media. They’ve never got in touch with me. They’re welcome to, through my contact form, of course, and maybe I can direct them towards some folks that could help them provide us with the book festival programme we deserve.
You can see the BBF 2026 programme here: https://bordersbookfestival.org/programme-2026/
p.p.s
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p.p.p.s
If you’d like to support my next project, I’m running a Kickstarter to help fund the printing of my next book, Instant Photos from an Ancient Woodland: Spring. You can back the project before the 6th of May here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jgrowden/instant-photos-from-an-ancient-woodland-spring
Jessie Growden 