In the welcoming statement of the 1963 Edinburgh International Festival Official Programme, Duncan Weatherstone, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and chairman of the EFS, declared that ‘the mantle of the Festival is some¬thing which we carry proudly’. By this time it was becoming more widely acknowledged that the arts had a valuable role to play in society, and indeed that year the Conservative government began an expansion to the Arts Council. This followed the publication in 1959 of views on the arts by the Conservative Party (The Challenge of Leisure) and Labour (Leisure for Living) as well as the findings of the Arts Council report Housing the Arts in Britain. In 1963, John Calder and others organised an international drama conference to build on the success of the 1962 International Writers' Conference, during which leading voices in the dramatic arts were invited to ‘discuss the meaning of drama today and the role that it must play, not only in their own lives, but in that of the public on whom it depends’. Participants included Edward Albee, John Arden, Martin Esslin, Jack Gelber, Harold Hobson, Joan Littlewood, Charles Marowitz, Sir Laurence Olivier, Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker. This conference, wrote Calder, would be the ‘most impressive gathering of theatrical personalities who have ever assembled in one place’. He warned: ‘There will be hot arguments, there may be shocks, but once again the public will be treated to a concentrated course in one of the most vital arguments of today.’