Festival City Theatres Trust, operator of Edinburgh’s King’s and Festival Theatres is rebranding. From tomorrow, Thu 1 Mar, the organisation will now be known as Capital Theatres.
In this morning’s launch of the new brand, Chief Executive Duncan Hendry stated his hope that the change would increase awareness of the trust as they work on a £25m fundraising effort for renovation of the King’s.
“We feel this name change will simplify the organisational name, will establish a recognisable brand that our customers can relate to and make it easier for us to communicate our charitable and educational ambitions.”
Alongside the name change, new logos have been created for the individual theatres, as well as for the Festival Theatre’s Studio venue on Potterrow, which opened in 2013. The logos draw on the two buildings’ recognisable façades, while the Studio logo hints at the flexibility of the space as a white box where anything is possible. It is expected that the Capital Theatres brand will be used more prominently than the current one, which relies more on the theatre venue identities.
The trust was first established in 1991 as the Empire Theatre Trust, under the Festival Theatre’s old name. It was renamed in 1998 when it took over management of the council-owned King’s. Across the venues, the trust accommodates more than 580 performances each year and over 460,000 customers. In 2016-17, 26% of their programme was exclusive to the three venues within Scotland.