Editorial: Fringe of Colour returns with a new (and old) mission

Poet Shasta Ali performs at Fringe of Colour Films 2023 in front of artwork by Sophia Bharmal / Photograph: Nico Utuk

The unmistakable online buzz in the run-up to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival* has got us over at Fringe of Colour HQ limbering up for another bold summer of art, community, and pointing a finger at all we would like to see changed in the arts (More funding! Affordable ticket prices! A festival that doesn’t mistake “international” for “multiple London postcodes”!).

It is nice to be back. Despite the strain on the city, the appalling transportation and accommodation fees, and the stink expected to hit the streets if the underpaid, striking bin collectors aren’t given fairer wages (watch out for the rats, they’re on their way), there is still something so tempting about the Fringe. It is an extraordinary time to immerse yourself in the broadest range of performance art, and I take pride in having a relationship with a city that hosts the most famous arts festival in the world.

But the Fringe, as I have gone on about time and time again, is far from perfect. Some argue it is even getting worse (word on the street is the festival organisers are proposing putting performers in tents on temporary camping grounds, to get around the impossible accommodation costs and demonic rental practices of unscrupulous property hoarders, rather than – you know – campaigning for policy change on short-term lets and second and third and fourth homes), with voices as loudly calling for it to be put down as they are calling for it to be saved. Which makes me wonder, if we were to “save” it, what should we keep?

Is it the opportunity to network with other artists and form life-long creative relationships? Is it the once-a-year chance to get late night food in the city? Personally, I like how the Fringe allows me to see so many people I love and admire without having to travel beyond a radius of a few miles. Eclipsed by everything, I think, is the quite genuine sense that people are hoping to make meaningful connections. It is a desire that goes beyond wanting to stand out so that your show gets reviewed and talked about, or making smart career-oriented decisions about who to introduce yourself to.

Rather, I have long felt that artists (NB: I am talking about Artists of Colour, I am pretty much always talking about Artists of Colour) innately feel a deep need to look to each other for support and guidance through what is often a profoundly strained and lonely time in a city bursting with people. Friends and strangers bend over backwards to accommodate each other – some organisations, too. Our long-time loves and collaborators, The Lighthouse Bookshop on West Nicholson Street, are offering up their bricks and mortar for the promotion of shows that centre People of Colour. The team has ring-fenced poster and flyer space, for no reason other than it is a nice thing to do and it will help some people out.

For me, this summer is all about getting back to the roots of Fringe of Colour. Enabled by some lovely funding from the people at Grand Plan, I have been able to put together the most comprehensive Fringe of Colour Database yet, highlighting the work of over 250 Fringe shows by Artists of Colour. I am hoping to cross paths with some of these performers at our Artists of Colour Meet-Up on the 10 August, and their shows will also form the focus of this summer’s Responses project.

For anyone new here – Fringe of Colour Responses is a publishing platform of writing that goes beyond reviews, where Writers of Colour respond to artistic work by Artists of Colour through introspective, subjectivity-first essays. This platform has been running since the first Fringe of Colour Films festival in 2020, but this is the first year that Responses will address Fringe shows, made possible with funding and support from our partners at the Scottish BPOC Writers Network. The expansive programme offers a wonderful opportunity for writers to look inward at their own creativity and expression, bouncing off the work that dares to take on this beast of a festival, and bouncing off the walls if they want to. Our intention is to enable the experimental and to cultivate a mutual relationship between performer and writer, playing with the notion of who is being observed and what is the subject when you step outside of traditional rules of reviewing. It is my absolute honour to edit these Responses and to work closely with so many masterful writers.

Amongst this season’s publications will be intriguing interviews with Fringe performers, kicking things off with a conversation between Arusa Qureshi and comedian Demi Adejuyigbe. We will be putting out more Responses throughout August, so make sure to set an alert or subscribe or whatever it is you usually do to keep up with the best writing in arts journalism.

Also on our website is a new page that acts as a virtual bulletin board of Fringe ticket offers for Audiences of Colour. Every year, artists approach me wanting to give away tickets to encourage attendance of the people their shows are aimed at. It reflects a little of what Fringe of Colour got up to in 2019; our Free Ticket Scheme handed out over 500 free tickets to People of Colour to attend shows by Artists of Colour, co-facilitated by the Fringe Society. Tickets were covered by the venues themselves, some needing more persuading than others, and the whole thing was supposedly a roaring success.

The scheme was incredibly intensive to operate, completely voluntary, and although I was willing to do it again (unfortunately stopped in my tracks by COVID), I could not help shake the feeling that it really was not my job. I am of the opinion that free tickets, given out to help address a serious societal and organisational issue (in this case, the exclusivity and inaccessibility of the Fringe to People of Colour), ought to be the responsibility of the organisations that are failing on access. So, when the Fringe came back again in 2021, and again in 2022 and 2023, I watched closely to see if any of the venues I had worked with were re-enacting similar schemes. The fuck they did.

It is great that artists and production teams want to go out of their way to make their shows more financially accessible, even if just for a few dates. It is, however, not okay that these creatives, who have already paid so much to be there and have to perform with the knowledge that they are likely going home with a net loss, are taking on the burden of cost for the venue’s failing accessibility. To put it plainly – the performers offering discounts or comps are covering the costs, since they will be paying the venues hosting them full ticket fees for each free or reduced ticket. That’s not to say don’t take advantage of these offers if you actually need them – just make sure you actually need them. And if you don’t, go and support a show that will be funny, or sad, or brilliant, or life-affirming, or maybe none of those things, but worthwhile regardless.

And what of our own festival? 2023 was a huge year for Fringe of Colour. For the first time, our festival dared to step out of the virtual world and take on a shiny new hybrid form, with its biggest ideas and biggest team yet. Fringe of Colour Films 2023 was a beautiful, inspiring week of virtual and in-person film screenings and events, and I still have to pinch myself when I think about just how many wonderful filmmakers have trusted us over the years to honour and platform their work. How many creative practitioners around the world have been willing to join the team to create something unique to Scotland and accessible throughout the globe, and how important the programmes were to viewers and listeners from Leith to Montego Bay. This confidence is not something I take lightly and I am proud of what we have all achieved together, making something meaningful despite isolation, weariness, and an uncertainty of what the future holds.

This is more than I could have asked for, so I hold no grief in letting it end there. In the three years of Fringe of Colour Films, I have made connections for life, I have learnt so much about this passionate, albeit unstable festival-making environment, and I have finished with a stronger sense than ever that art is to be fiercely protected with everything we have.

For now, we are writing and we are watching shows. We may also be dancing and staying out late, grateful for the food trucks still open at 3 AM, and the rats that have stayed in the sewers because the council coughed up (fingers crossed). We invite you to read along.

*If Elon Musk is at all surprised by the general population’s adamant refusal to call Twitter anything but Twitter, he need only look at the defiant rejection of the word order “Edinburgh Festival Fringe” by pretty much everyone outside of the Fringe Society.