Lyndsey Jackson joined the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society in 2013 as Head of Operations; Deputy Chief Executive since 2018, she has witnessed
Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society
For further details click here.
Comments from me: Italics
Lyndsey Jackson: bold
So, how would you sum up your philosophy as an organisation?
So, I mean, that’s a 20-minute question, but there are 3 key principles that inform all our work.
Our first job is to support artists, and people want to take part in the festivals. So that is ultimately about making sure that people know, and understand what bringing their work to their Fringe looks like; what producing at a venue looks like, and the options they have they have if they’re industry or media. It’s about advice, guidance and support to help people make sure that they’re coming to the Fringe in the right mindset, and they have a clear picture of what to expect and that they’re free to make their own choices within that.
The second principle is really that there’s no point to making work if audiences don’t see it. So, it’s about helping audiences and artists find one another. So, that’s information, it’s ticketing, it’s your maps, your showcases, and customer support, all of those sorts of things that help audiences discover all the excellent and incredible things that are available at the Fringe.
Finally, we take on the responsibility to showcase the Fringe in its entirety to the whole world. Yeah. So really our job is to to remind people about the wonder that is the Fringe, and to bring everybody to the city for the Fringe, and then let them make their choices about what they want to see within that.
So, in the final reckoning our philosophy is artist-centred.
There’s no Fringe without artists
When everything boils down, there’s no Fringe without artists? There’s no venues without artists; there’s no work without those creative people telling us their stories. So, we try to centre them at the middle of everything that we do and try and make sure that we’re giving them the best advice and support and service to make the most of the opportunity.
How would you distinguish the Fringe Society’s role from the promoters e.g. ‘The Big Four’, when Fringe season hits in August?
To be honest, there’s not much difference. So, our summer is focused on artists and helping them navigate the city and their experience, supporting them through things like Fringe Central and supporting the venues and any challenges or issues or concerns or areas that they might need: the Fringe is as much a professional development platform as it is anything else after all.
Our job is to make sure that, irrespective of the venue that you’re in, you have access to high quality, professional development opportunity; opportunities to network; opportunities to meet people and to engage with industry media.
Then we are, alongside venues and the promoters, ensuring that the media and the industry can find the sorts of work they want to see.
That’s everything from sort of emerging amateur work. all the way up to internationally renowned, sort of spectacular stuff in circus tents, and everything in between. So, our job is, I guess it’s the facilitation thing in the middle.
So, in the final reckoning our philosophy is artist-centred.
Lyndsey Jackson
The Society is for audiences too
Another huge amount of our work as well, which is also replicated in the venues because it’s a mammoth task, is making sure that audiences find something to see, and know where they’re going: they’re interested, they’re having a good time, they’ve been playing around with the programme, they’re finding new things. So, it doesn’t really change, our role just becomes a delivery mechanism, and actually from an audience point of view, everybody misunderstands what the Fringe Society are, but it doesn’t really matter.
It only matters that artists can showcase their work to audiences, that can find it, and want to see it. Everything else is sort of background noise, and politic, I suppose.
Are there any other organisations/operators in the Festivals space that you particular admire, or have admired?
That’s a tricky question as that organization where one is impartial. I mean, personally speaking a little bit, they all bring different things. So, you have the sort of creativity and the new disruptive models coming from things like Monkey Barrell. Then there’s Gilded Balloon with that hugely Scottish presence, and the amazing work they did last year to revive performances with Zoo, Dance Base and The Traverse at the Multi-story.
Then you have Assembly who’ve been doing this for 40 years, The Pleasance for 30, who know what they’re doing and have a well-established model.
You’ve also got trailblazers like Greenside, Sweet and The Space who are offering that more emerging talent the space to have a go. Then you’ve got the absolute darlings at the Quaker Meeting House who are just good people with this amazing little space for their own community. You’ve got the American high school theatre school kids…they’re all bringing something true to what they think the Fringe should be.
It only matters that artists can showcase their work to audiences, that can find it, and want to see it. Everything else is sort of background noise, and politic, I suppose.
Lyndsey Jackson
The Magic of the Fringe
They’re bringing something that is true to what they believe the Fringe should be. There’s no singular truth to the Fringe: there’s no way to define it as a singular thing! What I like about the whole range of our producers, whether they they’ve been there for many years, or they’ve never been before and they’ve bought a bus to turn to into a venue is that they want to Fringe the way they think the Fringe should be. The magic of our Fringe is that that’s possible for each of them.
The Covid effect, a lasting one do you think?
Yeah, it definitely is. There’s positives and negatives us, you can imagine, but the reality is that the artists and producers and venues in our Fringe haven’t received any subsidies, and so, as a result, they haven’t earned anything from their work since the 2019 festival.
By this point they’re all very broken physically, mentally, emotionally, and there’s very little left in the tank to draw on for this year, which means that there’s very little space to try new things, or be risky or do something a bit different. They are still trying, but the big worry, I think across the Fringe is that automatically means that some people aren’t able to participate, and that’s not what we want.
Open Access, a virtue not to take for granted
The whole point is for the Fringe to be for everybody, not just those who can afford it. So, there’s a lot of work going into understanding that it can’t continue to be a entirely relied on the revenue you generate, and ticket sales: now is certainly not the time to start shoving the cost of having not earned any money for three years, and the cost of living crisis, onto audience members. They’re equally damaged and disrupted by COVID and more.
It’s going to take no less than three years, or longer, I would say, for the Fringe’s constituent parts to really start to recover in a meaningful way. It’s been very, very badly beaten over the past couple of years.
From Pandemic to more sustainable practice?
But there’s some really positive things that I have found. We’ve had a real re-think across, not just the Fringe, but the arts sector about how we engage with each other in the face to face space, particularly international delegations and how we can use digital to have interesting conversations: we don’t have to cram everything into four weeks of Fringe. We still want folks to come and show us their lovely faces, that we haven’t seen for years; we can have really interesting conversations, and deliver professional development sessions in November, when people have the space and the brain capacity to engage in a different way.
Most of us have become very literate in digital communication. It’s much easier to say, “Hey, we could do that session online!” which means we’re cutting down on travel, impact on the world, and time that we’re all spending away from our homes.
Hopes for this year spring eternal, though? What do you expect from this year?
That’s a hard one! I think, from the Fringe Society and the Board and the Fringe collective, I’m hoping for a Fringe happening on a scale that allows everybody to balance the different operating models…
So there needs to be a certain number of the biggest shows that are, in turn, supporting the smaller stages. There needs to be a certain level of income generated that allows businesses, not for profit organizations and even the volunteer organizations to survive.
But the hope is that it feels like the Fringe again.
That’s anywhere between 50 and 50% plus from the scale of 2019. So last year we had just under a thousand shows, and it definitely didn’t feel like the Fringe. I think he would want to at least double that in order to have that sense of dashing between shows, and running into people; that social element that COVID took from us.
I don’t think any of us are really working in terms of stretch goals, because we (The Fringe Society) try not to measure success of the Fringe by how big it is, or how many tickets we sell, or how much money is generated. What we want is for the people that come to have a really, really valuable and really useful experience.
It’s going to take no less than three years, or longer, I would say, for the Fringe’s constituent parts to really start to recover in a meaningful way. It’s been very, very badly beaten over the past couple of years.
Lyndsey Jackson
There’s a buzz around Fringe 2022
So, the things that are giving us lots of positive sort of feels at the moment are…there’s a lot of the international and national art industry, the big guns from stage and screen, the buyers, people screening for talent, looking to mount tours, talking in real terms about how they’re going to come this year, how long they’re coming for and what they want to see.
There’s lots and lots of artists, as soon as we opened registration there were loads banging the door down to take part.
What we really need this year is first, just to happen…and be a celebration of the energy, the work, the creativity and the sort of magic that all of these tens of thousands of individuals contribute to this remarkable event. Whilst everyone has budgets, I don’t think anybody is tied too much to how big this year is, or how many people come. It’s more about setting the mood, tone, and magic, we’ve been missing for the past few years.
Working together towards the future in Edinburgh?
The Fringe doesn’t belong to any single entity, it’s a collective effort from a large, diverse, and often contrary bunch of people. There are lots of best working guides, but what we’ve been doing, for a while now, and we should see results in early Summer, is a series of consultations, or supporting other organisations to do research and consultations. So these consultations are asking what they think the Fringe should be, and we think of this as a values exercise.
What we’re hoping will come out the other side of that is a set of shared values that are co-designed and co-created by performers, by workers, by technical staff, by venue mangers, by promoters, by The Fringe Society, by our board, by the citizens and residents of Edinburgh. To find a vision for the Fringe that is healthy, supportive, that is enabling people to do the best they can in the Fringe and move us past some of those conversations about how it might have been in the past. We don’t want to be the ones that say, “Hey, this is what we think you should all do’, we are trying to lead the conversation and the end of this, we need to agree together, what our values and our principles are, for this incredible thing that we all part of.
Listening to residents
We’ve got some specific research done around residents because they are often an unheard voice in this discourse. We get very positive feedback from residents, but of course, also plenty of criticism.
I’m sure it frustrates everybody at points, but it’s about making sure that we’re setting up a Fringe for the future, rather than something which is broadly tolerable for this year or next year. If we can all subscribe to a set of values that could last, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, which are about fairness and equity of access…maintaining the ability that the Fringe is for everyone.
Risk as well…the ability to take risks and see things you wouldn’t see anywhere else, which is a thing everybody loves about the Fringe experience.
And your vision for the Fringe?
I think it’s not for us at the Fringe Society to dictate the shape and form of the Fringe, that’s for the Fringe to dictate. But what I would like to see and what I would like to see maintained is what we call the open access principle. This is the thing that I would fight tooth and nail for as long as they work here for is that the stages of the Fringe belong to everybody who wants to play.
There’s nobody who decides that you are, or aren’t good enough and your when your work is ready to go? Because that, to me is the true magic of the Fringe, which inevitably means that there’s a really wide range of work available to see. It doesn’t everybody can, or should succeed. The principle the Fringe must always hold onto the idea that no-one should be telling anyone else they can’t come to the Fringe.
Over-tourism? Thoughts?
This is one of those misconceptions…you see The Fringe isn’t a tourist attraction.
Our largest audience is Edinburgh, and after that, Scotland; then there is domestic tourism in there, but actually you’ve got an English audience that are coming, including industry and professionals and that leaves only 7% of your audience with this Fringe as international.
The issue with over-tourism, is that The Fringe is a lightning rod for what is a larger problem in the city. Now, we work from the Royal Mile, and Edinburgh is busy from March through to November, including December. So, the tourism challenge is one for Edinburgh, not the Festival, but the Festival does have a part to play in that…
We, for example, don’t do much in the way of international marketing. We really focus on trying to engage our existing audiences, to see more work, rather than bringing in new audiences.
We talk of this concept of ‘One More Show not Two More Feet’, we want to deepen engagement, and keep it local, within a day-tripper radius. The flip side of this, is many businesses in the city, hotels included, overnight accommodations do very well out of the Fringe, and the people who do visit.
Over-tourism, a problem for the city, not just the Fringe
So really, it’s a challenge for the city, not just for the Fringe. I think the incredible backdrop of the Fringe, this city, is driving the huge numbers of tourists. But…it’s a very tangible thing, when you try and walk down the Royal Mile in August and you can’t because there’s so many people that it feels like a tourism problem, but actually as a Festival we do need to think about better distribution across the city.
That’s hard because you’ve got un-subsidized models of venue, so it’s difficult for them to take the risk of moving into a less populate, less well-trodden part of the city. So, it’s complicated.
So, again, it’s a collective responsibility, but the Fringe is a lightning rod for a much trickier conversation about Edinburgh generally, and over-tourism is our actually really tiny city.
I observe hyper-concentration, not over-tourism is the real issue for most complainants. What about Leith? Will the tram work some magic?
Well, yes, you can’t move your operation to different parts of the city without transport links, if there’s a lack of nice spaces to get a bite to eat or drink or if there’s nothing but derelict wasteland between town and where you’re trying to get to. Maybe an area’s not safe, maybe there’s no local audience, and maybe the local people don’t want that level of disruption.
That said re-distribution is very possible, and there’s lots of work being done at the moment about how communities across the city can co-create the festivals. That work needs to be rooted in those places, or it feels too flown in, and no one wants that: it’s the least sustainable form of production.
So, again, it’s a collective responsibility, but the Fringe is a lightning rod for a much trickier conversation about Edinburgh generally, and over-tourism is our actually really tiny city.
Lyndsey Jackson
So, how do we respond to rising accommodation costs for performers?
Honestly, I don’t think any of us have an answer to this question because it’s a real concern. There are alternatives, you know, we’ve been doing a lot of work with Theatre Digs Booker and with sorting good rates within those spaces for artists and participants…the idea that you give your spare room out, only for folks working in the industry.
A sustainable accommodation solution is needed
We also have a portal for artists to find accommodation, but the city is subject to the market forces like anywhere else. There are some hoteliers that want to help, but hotels aren’t really a solution for those artists. There’s also going to be changes with the new regulations regarding short-term lets, but don’t yet know what that will mean for Fringe artists.
The solutions are in the hands of the people who choose to set their prices at a the current level. I don’t really know what we do about that, because there’s no real space or regulation or control on this, the city doesn’t really control this.
It’s one of the things that genuinely could genuinely break the Fringe and make it unaffordable, not just to those starting their career or working, or that don’t have a huge amount of cash, but also established, well-known relatively well-funded producers and artists. They’re looking at accommodation and saying, “This is a real worry for us.”
So we are, we’re flagging it with everybody that will listen: The Council, The Government and. We’ve got opportunity with the upcoming election to make sure the issues are being heard loud and clear, and that potentially people would pick that up. But it’s a real concern because it’s outwith anyone in the festivals environment’s control. We do what we can, but there are landlords in the city, up to, and including some of the university providers, who’s prices are bordering on the exploitative. The challenges from their point of view or whether they’re hoteliers or a student accommodation provider, the market is what the market is.
We’ve always understood that what is needed, is not to control the market, but for the market is to grow: a little flooding in that market would help because we just need to increase the stock. But sadly, that’s challenging in a city with the geography of Edinburgh.
That said, this year we’ve got a great price with QME out in Musselburgh, which is also beautiful, with lots of green space, there’s a gym, and they allow you to use the drama studio, and other spaces for free. It’s a half hour bus ride away – 8 minutes on the train – but there’s a mental barrier with some participants about not being within walking distance of their venue.
Some see behavioural change and we will be able to encourage people out into further parts of the city, beyond a 10 minute walk from their venue.
That, though, will take leadership from some key players saying, ‘Hey look, we’re staying out in Musselburgh, or out in the camp sites out by the Airport. It’s nice out here!‘
It’s one of the things that genuinely could genuinely break the Fringe and make it unaffordable…
Lyndsey Jackson
Maintaining the Fringe as the world’s largest arts festival, is it a given?
I don’t think, and this might be a Fringe Society, or a personal opinion, and the venues might have a very different perspective, but I don’t care if it’s the biggest arts festival in the world.
I care that the Fringe leads to artist success, or is the most open access or the greatest expression of cultural freedom, or it’s the place that has the most opportunities for a young unfunded artist, or even an older unfunded artist who’s emerging onto the scene to find their feet and make connections.
Being the best, not necessarily the biggest
I care about a Fringe where people meet their lifelong collaborators, sometimes even their actual life partners. I care that the Fringe is a place you can come and have a really good time, and see some really good work, but that speaks to you in a way that nothing else does. So, I don’t think we as an organization care, if the Fringe is the largest in the world, we just want it to be the greatest, whether you’re an artist, audience member, or industry. If great means big, great, but if it means small, that’s also great. That’s a different set of metrics that we set for ourselves.
And can you call to mind any memorable performers from the past?
Not so much individuals as stories come to mind. I remember seeing Police Cops for the very first time in tiny room at the Brighton Fringe, to maybe 12 people. The guy I was with what laughing so hard, I thought he might have a heart attack.
Now I’m thinking of Bernie Dieter, and Victoria Falconer, they had a joint thing in cabaret, but now gone two different directions. But again you’re watching them in a tiny little room, and no idea about its potential
Then more recently, SIX, the musical, back in 2017…the guys in the admin team went back to see that so many times! (I’ve still never seen it to this day) To look at this show which hadn’t been heard of before, then everybody’s talking about it, and suddenly it’s West End, then Broadway!
I remember seeing Desiree Burch the first time in a show called Tar Baby, at Gilded Balloon. Just a phenomenal piece of theatre about race, essentially. Then she played Bob Slayer’s Blunderbus, to maybe 25 people, and now she’s just a phenom! It’s just the soaring of some of these people, and there are hundred and hundreds of these stories.
One of my favourite ever Fringe moments, was a beautiful show at The Storytelling Centre, called “The Secret Life of Suitcases.” It was a one-woman children’s show, part of the “Made in Scotland” strand in 2015. There was puppetry, and it was absolutely magical. Now I don’t get starstruck really, but then we went to an event about ‘Made in Scotland,’ and then I had a moment when I as like, ‘Oh My God, you’re the suitcase lady!‘
I couldn’t speak! I was just so flabbergasted. You know, there’s A to Z list celebrities floating about, but it’s the suitcase lady that has me dazzled!
It’s these moments when you realise that status, and success of the Fringe is one thing, but it’s these moment of magic that stick with me, those are the people I remember.
By
By
