Edinburgh's Fringe is on a financial knife-edge – Shona McCarthy

A month has come and gone since we announced that the Fringe will no longer go ahead as planned, and it’s been a month filled with so many physical, social and emotional challenges. As a community, we’re all experiencing a unique anxiety around keeping our loved ones safe, whilst trying to navigate the new abnormal.

At the Fringe Society, we’ve been making rapid adjustments. Many of the charity’s core team are on furlough, and our remaining team is working hard to process refunds for artists and audiences, as well as offering support to those who make the Fringe magic happen every year. We’re getting there, day by day, and would like to thank everyone for their patience and support.

At the moment, the Fringe and the Society are on a financial knife-edge. We’re still trying to find our way through which of the government schemes might make Covid survivable for those of us in the non-publicly-funded side of culture, and we’re determined to keep advocating for artists, producers and everyone who has lost income as a result of this pandemic.

It’s been challenging, but we’ve been working hard to embrace this moment as a time for reflection and re-imagining. We’re trying our hardest to build the life raft and ensure the Fringe can come out the other side of this, in the best form of itself. It’s not been easy to step into the dreaming space when survival is not assured, but it’s in times like these when creativity and imagination are needed most.

We have been in all kinds of conversations about what a digital Fringe might look like and what will be possible online this August. We’ll be revealing more in the coming months, but our priority is to represent the interests of the artists and companies that make up the Fringe, without devaluing work or undermining artists’ ability to make a living from their own creativity.

There is a lot of creative brainpower going into making sure people will be able to have Fringe experiences this year, even if it is within the confines of their own homes. In the longer term, our eyes will be firmly fixed on that moment when the doors start to open again.

No amount of streaming or virtual offerings will ever be able to replace the pure joy of seeing a performance for real with friends and complete strangers. And there is no better place for this than Edinburgh. The city is vital to the Fringe and the Fringe is vital to the city.

So, to the future. We want to work together – with the Edinburgh-based artists that brought over 750 shows to last year’s festival, with the 32 community groups we’ve been collaborating with for a number of years, and with all of you reading this column.

This is a chance for voices from across Edinburgh to influence shape the future of their festivals. We’re here, we’re listening and we want to build a Fringe for the future with all of you.

Shona McCarthy is chief executive at Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society

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