Edinburgh Festival Fringe success is 'taken for granted'

The Herald Scotland

26-04-2025

Mr Lankester has set a new three million ticket sales target for the 78-year-old festival, which boasted more than 3700 shows in its programme last year.
He suggested the event should expand its footprint across Edinburgh to ease pressure on the city centre, but highlighted the high costs involved in creating 'pop-up venues".
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Mr Lankester suggested the new tram link to Edinburgh's waterfront, which was launched nearly two years ago, could help spread the Fringe out more.
He also called for trains to run throughout the night to Glasgow in August to make it easier to attend shows and offer an alternative to staying in Edinburgh during the festival.
The Fringe broke the two million ticket sales barrier in 2014 and three million tickets were sold for the first time in 2019, when 3841 shows were staged, before the event fell victim to the pandemic in 2020.
The Fringe Society has been under mounting pressure to address the increased costs faced by artists, performers, producers and venues in recent years.
The festival has been valued at more than £200m for the city's economy but currently gets less than £2m in public funding from the Scottish and UK governments, and the city council.
The Fringe Society is expected to lobby for more backing through an event through a recently-created taskforce involving the Scottish Government, the council and the city's main arts festivals.
It was announced weeks after the Fringe Society received new core funding from the government for the first time in seven years.
At the time the £300,000 funding deal was announced, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes suggested the festival 'does not neatly fit into funding streams available to other cultural organisations".
The Fringe Society said it had been in talks with the government to develop a 'long-term sustainable funding model' for the Fringe.
A Keep It Fringe Fund, which has provided bursaries worth £2500 to 180 artists to help them meet the cost of taking part in this year's Fringe, is running for a second year after being backed by the UK Government, although the future of the funding pot is uncertain.
The Fringe Society, which oversees a £550,000 Made in Scotland programme paid for by the Scottish Government, receives just £75,000 in funding from the city council to help meet some of the costs involved in running street entertainment.
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However, the charity was left furious last year when it failed to make the final stage of Creative Scotland's three-year funding programme. The quango has since been put under review by the Scottish Government.
Mr Lankester said: 'Public entities and governments sometimes take for granted events like this.
"In certain quarters, there is an assumption that the Fringe will just carry on and that it will always be there, regardless of how many slings and arrows get thrown in its direction.
'My message to the governments and the city council would be that I want them all to keep using the Fringe as an example of a success story, but I want them to back that up by looking for ways to invest in the broader eco-system.
'It's not about writing out cheques to the Fringe Society. It's about investing in the kind of things that keep our team awake at night and keep the venue operators awake at night.
'I would say to them: 'Don't throttle the golden goose – invest in it. Don't take us for granted, engage with us and find out how you can make a tangible difference and get rid of the speed bumps to staging this event and the issues which constrain the Fringe.
'I'm wary of going down too far down the growth road. I don't want the Fringe to sell six million tickets. I think three million is a great number to aim for, which would get us back to where we were before.'
Mr Lankester recalled his experiences of 'disruption and chaos' when he had visited the Fringe while the city's tram network was being built.
He said: 'I would love to see venue operators and entrepreneurs taking advantage of the fact that that corridor is now open. It would definitely take the pressure off a particular part of the city.
It would need to happen organically. The Fringe Society can't dictate anything on venues. I have huge sympathy with their business models as they are taking a financial risk every year.
'I can see why there is a particular centre of gravity at the Fringe.A lot of it is to do with the availability of venues from Edinburgh University. They have fit-for-purpose spaces. It's hard to turn something else into a pop-up.
'But Fringe audiences are adventurous. They need to be to navigate this festival.'
Mr Lankester said he believed an all-night rail service between Edinburgh Glasgow was a 'really viable alternative' to staying in the city during the Fringe.
He added: 'It's a 45-minute journey. If you live and work in London you will be travelling between 30 and 60 minutes between your work and your home.
'If you are an artist, you would perhaps lose out slightly by now being in the energy of the city during the Fringe. But I also know from speaking to a lot of artists that they like escaping the bubble.'
Mr Lankester insisted he was 'way more interested' in the experiences of an 'average Fringe-goer' than the scale or growth of the event.
He added: 'The size of the Fringe can be a bit of a red herring sometimes. I realise why it is important to talk about the size of the event. Its impact is important and that needs to be managed. But I am way more interested in the individual experience.
'We can shout from the rooftops about the fact we have got more than 3000 shows, but your average Fringe-goer is only going to see about 10 of them.
'I really want to understand their experiences. What made them decide to come here, what was their experience of booking tickets, how did they make their accommodation choices, what was their experience on the ground, did they feel it was value for money or did they feel ripped off, not just from the Fringe but from the wider hospitality sector?
'Did they leave with a promise to themselves to come back and have they become advocates for the Fringe? That obviously what we would want.'