How the Fringe turns Edinburgh into a nightmare for residents

Telegraph

a day ago

By the time August rolls around, most people who live in central Edinburgh have activated their personal survival strategy. It might involve noise-cancelling headphones, a tactical escape to the west coast or even a self-imposed lockdown.
Because, while the rest of us can enjoy an uncomplicated relationship with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it's not quite so straightforward for those who call Scotland's capital home. How would you feel if the largest arts festival in the world, described by its former chief executive Shona McCarthy as being comparable to the Olympics in scale, took over your city for the best part of a month?
'It's like living in Disneyland – the tourists seem to forget that people actually live and work here,' says Julie, an Edinburgh resident who doesn't want to give her last name. She has watched the festival swell from what she recalls as being a fairly contained, grassroots affair in her youth to a sprawling 3,352-show extravaganza that last year sold 2.6m tickets.
With a population of just 523,250, Edinburgh is relatively compact – it's not even the largest city in Scotland – so even accounting for a proportion of those tickets being bought by locals (and punters attending more than one show), it's clear the festival floods the city with crowds it isn't equipped to absorb.
'In the last 20 years it has become a money-making racket. It's horrendous. And it just feels like it's getting bigger and longer, because it runs alongside other events like the book festival and the film festival,' says Julie.
'Every day you're just getting up and going to work because you can't live your normal life. There's no joy. I can't take a walk in Holyrood Park when it's hoaching with people,' she adds, using the Scottish word for 'swarming'.
'Tourists walk about outside with a drink in their hand. You see people urinating behind bins, and not just the men. I try to visit a friend in Fife as much as possible during August to avoid it all. I just want to live a quiet life.'
This year, peace may prove even more elusive than usual as the city's already bloated schedule expands to incorporate three sold-out Oasis concerts at Murrayfield Stadium on August 8, 9 and 12. Edinburgh council officials anticipate the events will attract 'rowdy' crowds of 'medium to high intoxication' to Scotland's largest stadium, but the venue has nevertheless been granted permission to temporarily boost its capacity from 67,130 to 69,990 people.
'Whoever authorised those gigs is crazy – why would you allow it in August? Any time a big name comes to Murrayfield, the city centre is guaranteed to be mental,' says Claire Campbell, 45, head of operations of a local business, who lives in Edinburgh's Marchmont area.
When Taylor Swift played at the stadium last June, fans swamped the buses and trams, leaving many locals unable to use public transport. And that was without the extra layer of chaos the festival brings.
'I did actually suggest to my husband that we get out of Edinburgh when Oasis are here, because it's going to be a nightmare,' adds Campbell, who works on the other side of the city and already endures a commute that takes twice as long during the festival without factoring in more time to wade through a sea of parkas. 'All it takes is for one bus to get stuck and everything grinds to a halt.'
'Gardens being used as toilets'
Campbell's home is a few minutes' walk from the Meadows, a public park that every year becomes the colourful site of the Underbelly's Circus Hub, a cluster of big top and Spiegel tents that host cabaret acts, circus performers and wrestlers.
Arguably, the real circus is found en plein air amid the litter-strewn grass. 'It's incredibly noisy and busy, the bins overflow, and I've heard that the people who live in the street right next to the Meadows have experienced their gardens being used as toilets,' says Campbell.
Oh, and then there's the ear-splitting fireworks display that erupts at around 10.30pm every night to close the Military Tattoo show at nearby Edinburgh Castle. 'I'll be in bed reading, then I'll turn the light out to go to sleep… and that's when the fireworks will start.'
Campbell concedes it is her choice to live in this area, which she loves in spite of its drawbacks. But for others in the city centre, it is a decision they have little say in. 'I can't afford rent or get a deposit together to move away from where I am; I'm here because I'm on an extremely low income,' says a female resident of the Lister Housing Co-operative, who wishes to remain anonymous.
We are chatting in early July, and festivities have already kicked off a few streets away at the castle, where a string of open-air concerts take place in the weeks leading up to the festival. 'For the people who live here, it's at least two months of blaring noise. I'm half-deaf and find it incredibly loud, so I don't know what it must be like for someone with normal hearing,' she says.
'It feels like the festival is growing and crawling closer to where I stay every year. There are more venues. Tour guides stop on my street now, which never used to happen. You go out in your slippers and there's a big group just standing there. It's embarrassing.'
The Fringe has indeed ballooned over the past two decades. In 2005, the festival had what was then a record-breaking year of 1,799 shows and 335,000 ticket sales – figures that have since risen almost two- and eight-fold, respectively.
Tourism has rocketed, too. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that Edinburgh receives one million more international visitors a year than it did 10 years ago, no doubt fuelled in part by a surge in short-term rentals, which have, in turn, compounded the capital's housing crisis. 'A few years ago I was flat hunting and spotted a great, reasonably priced place to rent on Easter Road,' recalls 42-year-old filmmaker Richie Morgan. 'When I went to view it, I discovered that it came with a caveat: I'd have to move out every August for a month so that the landlord could put it on Airbnb.' Unsurprisingly, he declined.
Even areas once sheltered from the festival's reach, such as Dumbiedykes, are suffering. Andrea Meneghini, 56, a web designer, has lived in the area, which is located midway between Holyrood Park and the Pleasance, just outside the Old Town, for 26 years. 'For the first 15 years, I wouldn't have noticed when the festival was on. Although we are in the city centre, we felt very separate from it – it's essentially a council estate and is extremely quiet for the rest of the year,' he says.
'But the festival now dramatically changes the character of the area. Partly because some people in the estate are renting their places out on Airbnb, but mostly because the Pleasance [Theatre Trust] has been extending over the years and [some venues are] now only 30 metres away from our homes.'
'It's destroying our sanity'
Meneghini says the Pleasance Courtyard, one of the festival's liveliest hubs of bars and venues, has grown significantly since he first moved to the area, and so too has the noise pollution it generates. Though it only operates during the Fringe, its presence is felt as early as June, when the boom lifts and lorries arrive to spend six weeks transforming ordinary spaces such as gyms into functional performance venues.
'I work from home, so I'm here all day, every day listening to the trucks beeping as they reverse,' says Meneghini. 'It drives me insane. By the time the festival starts, I'm already knackered.'
Naturally, the volume turns up a few notches in August. The venue – which contains one of the Fringe's largest theatres, the 750-capacity Grand – is open until 3am every night.
Objections from locals to its past two years' planning applications speak of 'a constant roaring of people talking', 'glass being smashed' and the noise 'keeping us awake and destroying our sanity'. One of Meneghini's neighbours suffers from debilitating migraines and says it takes her months to recover after a festival.
Despite the complaints, the council hasn't requested a noise impact assessment to be conducted, so Meneghini is now working with environmental protection to arrange it himself. The goal isn't to shut the Pleasance down. He and his neighbours would just appreciate it if the venue could call it a night at a more reasonable hour, say 11pm. 'I'm not against the festival,' he says. 'All we're asking is to be able to sleep.'
It's a modest request, and one that recognises the reality of the situation: the Fringe isn't going anywhere. Nor would many Edinburgh residents want it to. It is as much a part of the city's DNA as Arthur's Seat and Greyfriars Bobby. 'And I have to say, when I see all the posters going up at the end of July, I do get excited,' says Claire Campbell. 'It makes the city feel so vibrant, even if I am completely over it by week three.'
The irony, of course, is that the Fringe started life on the sidelines. A bunch of theatre groups showed up uninvited to the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and performed despite not being on the programme.
The idea was to open the doors to everyone and make the arts accessible to all. But somewhere along the way, the people who live there were written out of the script.