Created in 1958, the Fringe Society’s function has developed over the years to ensure our focus and support reflect the needs of the entire festival ecosystem. Our three core objectives are to:
- provide support, advice and encouragement to all participants
- assist audiences to navigate what’s on offer
- celebrate the Fringe and what it stands for all over the world.
With artists at the heart of our work, we offer year-round services to performers, venues, industry and audiences, helping them navigate the festival and supporting them all in any way we can. We also work to break down barriers to participation in the festival and undertake year-round audience development. We do that in various ways, with some recent highlights below:
- Since 2018 we’ve distributed over £6Mn of new funding to the Fringe community via Box Office rebate, COVID funding support and projects such as Made in Scotland.
- Registration fees for artists have been frozen for 18 years, to try to keep the cost of participation as low as possible for artists.
- We built on a 2023 pilot year and announced £1Mn of funding for the Keep it Fringe fund in 2024/2025, with 180 grants of £2,500 available to artists to break down barriers to participating in the Fringe.
- In 2024 we supported nearly 2,700 arts industry (agents, producers, programmers and presenters) and media in their attendance at the Fringe.
- We supported more than 420 performers to perform across the street events programme in 2024, which is often seen as an entry point to the arts for families across Edinburgh.
Our operational framework
As a registered charity, the work of the Fringe Society is split between delivering core charitable services to the Fringe, and additional activity which is not paid for by income generated from the festival but via successful fundraising efforts through public, private and donated sources. Indeed, income generated from core festival services to the Fringe (eg frozen registration fees and commission) have, for a number of years, created a shortfall between cost and income due to a significant increase in operational costs to deliver.
The graph below showcases how this income has been broadly static for a long time, including prior to the pandemic. In order to keep artist access to the festival as manageable as possible, we have not passed on increases in costs; this has resulted in expenditure exceeding income since the pandemic.
This will enable us to deliver on our core objectives:
- A central Box Office with integrated customer services including registration of all shows, information management and maintenance, ticketing and customer services (around 55,000 enquiries in 2024).
- Marketing and promotion of the Fringe (including campaign, advertising, website, app, promotion, comms, media office and industry services for August).
- Artist support (around 30,000 enquiries annually), delivery of the August Fringe Central artist hub and year-round Fringe Connect platform, arts industry support, music licensing, welcome letters and visa issue support for artists and international showcase support.
- Premises and overhead costs for the running of the charity, including audit, trustees, banking, insurance, IT, security, data and other legal compliance.
The graph below demonstrates how these costs are distributed across the work of the Fringe Society, and have been broadly consistent over time, or with some increased incrementally due to inflationary measures.
Our charitable / added-value work costs around £2.2Mn and includes projects such as:
- Made in Scotland
- community and school engagement projects
- work to make the Fringe more accessible
- the Keep it Fringe fund
- Fringe street events
- a year-round Fringe Central.
The income against this work is raised by the Fringe Society and includes public sector contributions through EXPO funding (and formerly PLaCE), EventScotland, the City of Edinburgh Council, sponsors, donors, trusts and foundations. In 2024 and 2025 this has also included DCMS, with core roles ‘seconded’ to the project to draw investment into core staffing and operational costs.
It is no longer 2013...
As with the wider cultural sector, high inflation and increases in operational costs have impacted our expenditure, with no significant increase in income to offset this.
|
2013 |
2024 |
% change |
Shows |
2,402 |
3,743 |
+56% |
% tickets issued by the Fringe Box Office |
54% |
72% |
+18% |
Tickets issued overall |
1,943,493 |
2,560,961 |
+32% |
Fringe Society services budget |
£2.5Mn |
£3.4Mn |
+36% |
Core services staff |
22 |
26 |
+18% |
Allowing for inflation, £2.5Mn in 2013 equates to approximately £3.4Mn in 2024 – this means the Fringe Society has grown in line with inflation. This does not, however, take into account the growth in the size of the festival, the changes in technology requirements and scale, or the increased service demands of the sector.
We hope this update was helpful – do get in touch with the team if you have any questions.
Get in touch
For any artists considering bringing a show to the Fringe this year – we’re running a series of online webinars where you can meet the Artist Services team and ask any questions you may have. Keep an eye on our social channels for updates, or email [email protected] for more information.