Closing date: 10:00am Monday 06 July 2026
Interview date: Tuesday 14 July 2026
Start date: Wednesday 05 August 2026
End date: Monday 31 August 2026
Location: Office based, central Edinburgh
Background
The idea at the heart of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is simple: anyone with a desire to perform and a venue willing to host them is welcome. No individual or committee determines who can or cannot perform at the Fringe.
It all began in 1947 with eight companies – six of them from Scotland – taking a risk, turning up uninvited and performing on the ‘fringe’ of the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival. Over 75 years later, the Fringe has grown to become one of the greatest platforms for creative freedom in the world, second only to the Olympics in terms of global ticketed events. In 2025, 3,352 shows took place in 265 venues across Edinburgh.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society was founded by artists to nurture and uphold the Fringe's values of inclusivity, experimentation and imagination. We exist to support, advise and encourage everyone who wants to participate in the Fringe, provide information and assistance to audiences, and celebrate the Fringe and what it stands for all over the world.
Role and responsibilities
The successful candidate will perform a wide range of duties, including but not limited to:
- Fringe Central reception desk – being the first point of contact for artists visiting Fringe Central, responding to enquiries and directing to appropriate services and teams.
- Providing administrative support to the Artist Services department, including:
- Responding to email enquiries from artists
- Supporting the delivery of administrative processes such as customer data requests and visa ‘Welcome Letter’ provision
- Supporting administrative processes related to systems and resources used such as Fringe Connect
- Supporting the delivery of performances at events hosted by the Fringe Society, including:
- Artist liaison responsibilities
- Event and green room set up
- Liaising with event and tech teams
- Preparing running orders and event signage
Person specification
Essential
- Good working knowledge of MS Office (Word, Excel)
- Strong communication skills with demonstrable experience and confidence delivering support to external service users/stakeholders/customers in person, over the phone and by email.
- Experience, or a strong interest, in the arts, festivals, events and/or the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
- Excellent problem solving and decision-making skills, with a proactive approach to work delivery.
- A flexible and responsive approach to a fast-paced working environment.
- Experience working in a role which required the balancing of a number of responsibilities.
Desirable
- Experience working with professional artists.
- Experience working in a role with an arts venue, in a role at the Fringe, or with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society.
- Experience in an event-delivery role with knowledge of risk assessment/management, stage management or equivalent.
- Experience setting up and operating audio equipment, including PA systems, microphones, amplifiers etc.
Salary and Benefits
The rate of pay for this post is £13.45 per hour.
Normal working hours 35 hours a week, worked from 10:00 to 18:00, Tuesday to Saturday with a one-hour unpaid lunch break, (with the exception of working Monday 17 instead of Tuesday August 18). In the run up to and during the festival you may be required to work additional days and hours.
We are a flexible working employer and therefore are happy to discuss flexible working at any stage of the application process. We are unable to offer remote working for this position. We can offer varied start and finish times and core hours with flexibility around them.
We use positive action under section 159 of the Equality Act in relation to disability or race. This means that if we have two candidates of equal merit in our process, we will seek to take forward the D/deaf, disabled, Black, Asian or ethnically diverse candidate in order to diversify our staff team.
The Fringe are active members of the Festivals Edinburgh Sustainability Working group and include climate action as one of the headline targets in the Fringe development goals. As part of the commitments of this work, all Fringe staff members are expected to assist with the Fringe Society’s environmental goals and consider these in all elements of your work.
We are also committed to maintaining the open-access policy of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from all sectors of the community. We are also proud to be a Disability Confident Employer and aim to successfully employ and retain disabled people and those with health conditions. We expect employees to support these commitments and to assist in their realisation.