EDINBURGH Festival performers joined a group of environmental campaigners yesterday to protest against the event’s most controversial sponsor, oil company BP.

The Theory of Everything actor Simon McBurney and writer Daniel Bye were joined by Alison Johnstone MSP in the re-enactment of BP’s Gulf of Mexico spill outside Usher Hall.

The protest piece, named Gross Negligence, was directed by performance activism group BP or not BP? with the help of Friends of the Earth Scotland and Edinburgh University People & Planet.

Mr Bye, who recently bagged a Fringe First award with his show Going Viral, said: “For me, art is a way of asking questions about this world and imagining a better one.

“It doesn’t help for the greatest arts festival in the world to be sponsored by an organisation actively committed to making the world worse.”

The protest later marched onto the Edinburgh International Festival headquarters singing songs and ripping the BP logo out of programmes.

BP or not BP? spokesman Chris Garrard said the action marked the “beginning of the end” of BP’s 34 year sponsorship of Edinburgh Festival.

“With leading artists speaking out against the sponsors of their own shows, the festival has to listen,” he added.

“If the festival is genuinely committed to sustainability, that has to apply to its sponsors too.

“BP is just one of many. There’s no reason why it can’t be replaced.”

The group was also responsible for the performance protest inside the British Museum in July, where they targeted the oil company’s sponsorship of the controversial Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation exhibition.