What Works: Success in Stressful Times. Hamish McRae
fringe of the main festival-and so coined that expression to describe them.17
Since then, the Fringe has gradually acquired a modest infrastructure. The first programme to bring the various independent acts under one loose umbrella, rather than have them compete against each other for spectators,18 was put together on the initiative of a local printer in 1954. A box office run by Edinburgh students followed in 1955 and the Festival Fringe Society in 1958.19 One of the key aims of the society was to help would-be performers put on shows, a theme that continues to today. The event became famous across the UK in 1960 after the success of the comedy show Beyond the Fringe20 (ironically part of the main festival, not the Fringe), but the first full-time paid employee was not appointed until 1969.
The Fringe raced on, getting into the Guinness Book of Records as the globe’s largest arts festival in 1992 and becoming the first arts organization in the world to sell tickets online in real time in 2000. In 2009 an estimated 19,000 performers took part in more than 34,000 performances at more than 2,000 shows in 265 venues. Nearly 1.9 million tickets were sold and the event generated £75 million for the economy. Those figures beat all records by a huge margin. Indeed the Fringe had doubled in size over the previous six years.21
Then finally there are the shows that are literally ‘Beyond the Fringe’. The Fringe is an enabling organization that aims to help would-be performers. No one needs to use its services to put on a show, though, in practice, it makes life easier to go through the central ticket office and benefit from the publicity associated with the Fringe programme. But lots of performers simply turn up. Most busk in the High Street or on the Mound, the public space by the National Gallery of Scotland, but some simply put on a show in friends’ flats. You may not get noticed by the critics, but if you want the experience of performing before a huge and interested audience, Edinburgh provides the ultimate opportunity. Edinburgh in August is the world’s stage and anyone, but anyone, can be a player.
But how? How has one medium-sized city managed to achieve this position?22 To relate the chronology helps explain a little, for the burst of energy that the Fringe brought from day one has been the catalyst driving the growth of the other elements of the festival. Critical mass matters. Once the Fringe was established as the premier showcase for British, later world, theatrical talent, it was natural that Edinburgh in August should attract other festivals too. The market was largely ready-made, for people who are interested in new experimental theatre are probably also interested in more conventional drama, in classical music and jazz, in new books-in all the other experiences that Edinburgh offers. But Edinburgh is not just a retail show for interested individuals; it is a wholesale show for the different artistic trades. For a young performer to get noticed at Edinburgh can be a life-changing experience. Win one of the top awards and nothing will ever be the same again.
So for the (mostly) youthful performers and producers at the Fringe, it is a career tool. ‘I am here,’ a friend who put on a show there explained, ‘to invest in my future.’ And for the more mature critics and impresarios, as well as the ordinary punters, it is ‘the chance to see it before it happens’.
2. WHAT ARE THE LESSONS?
Edinburgh has long had a lot of things going for it-things that would naturally make it the ideal backdrop for an arts and entertainment festival. It is, physically, the most beautiful city in Britain, with its castle, its gardens, its medieval Old Town and its Georgian squares. It is a capital city and-important in the entertainment world-an English-speaking one. But none of this, of course, would have been enough. There are at least three special features about the Edinburgh Festival that carry a message for other cities seeking to develop their own special face to the world.
Lesson one is the willingness to create and permit a completely open marketplace. This means accepting that what happens cannot be controlled. Edinburgh has tended this marketplace wisely, not by piling in huge amounts of money or building infrastructure, but rather by clearing bureaucratic blockages that might stifle it. For example, one of the keys to the Fringe’s success is the use of unconventional performance spaces, often in old buildings designed for another purpose.23 That means applying sensitive fire and access regulations-to make sure audiences really are safe-rather than insisting that venues fit box-ticking requirements.
It also means accepting that the city will, for one month, be a quite different place from what it is during the rest of the year. Residents and businesses alike in effect lose control of the centre of their city. It is business, of course, but it is also disruption. Were it badly managed, the disruption could damage the core activities that drive the city through the rest of the year. All tourist centres have to cope to some extent with surges of visitors with different values to the locals, but this is extreme stuff. The lesson therefore is not just to permit the creation of a market but also to relish it.
Lesson two is to blend top-down and bottom-up. There is no single mind planning what happens in Edinburgh; there are and always have been lots of minds, which work in different ways. Some of these, such as the director and governing body of the International Festival, have to exert a top-down discipline. The companies performing have to be invited. Funding has to be found, venues secured and the events publicized. To get the right mix, there has to be some artistic direction.
At the Fringe, by contrast, the minds have to focus almost exclusively on logistics. They do not concern themselves about the artistic merit of the performers; all they have to do is make sure that anyone who fills the basic requirements is able to set up a show, for this is entirely a bottom-up exercise. There is, however, one crucial function that the Fringe performs beyond logistics. This is teaching.
Every year it holds a series of seminars to show would-be performers and promoters how to put on a show. These include: how much the different venues will cost; how to manage publicity; the timescale for decisions; the need to go for as long a run as possible to cover costs, and so on. It is in the interests of everyone that people go into the project aware of the costs and how to budget for them. Even performers have to eat.
The trick, which the various organizers of the Edinburgh festivals have managed to pull off, is to achieve balance-to plan but not to over-plan, to lead but also to follow the demands of the market.
That leads to the third lesson: the need to listen. This has been central to Edinburgh’s development at three stages.
First, what started as a conventional arts festival, and might have remained so, was swiftly transformed by the demands of the market into something much bigger. Had there been no uninvited guests at the first party, the Fringe might never have taken off.
Second, in the middle years, Edinburgh allowed market forces to develop the Fringe, rather than trying to stifle it. Technically, the Fringe has become extremely innovative, from the first comprehensive programme to the centralized ticket office and, later, to internet booking.
Third, whenever a new festival wanted to tag along, it was welcomed. So films and TV, jazz and books were all grafted onto the official and Fringe core. This tradition continued into 2004 with the formal addition of the art festival-though as I noted earlier, the visual arts had been represented at Edinburgh for many years in an informal way.
By chance, on a visit to the festival in 2007, I met the key person in bringing modern visual arts to Edinburgh-a man called Richard Demarco,24 who grabbed me by the arm and taught me something else. A tiny, mercurial Italian Scot in his late seventies, he had gone as a 17-year-old to the very first festival-and been so enchanted that he decided to devote his life to bringing art to Edinburgh.
And so over the years a string of European and Scottish artists had their works exhibited in Edinburgh at Richard Demarco’s gallery,