{"id":2036,"date":"2012-08-19T09:10:28","date_gmt":"2012-08-19T14:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/?p=2036"},"modified":"2016-08-12T22:41:35","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T03:41:35","slug":"world-fringe-congress-report-3-retaining-the-fringe-edge-or-show-me-the-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/optative.net\/blog\/world-fringe-congress-report-3-retaining-the-fringe-edge-or-show-me-the-money\/","title":{"rendered":"World Fringe Congress Report #3: Retaining the Fringe Edge or Show me the Money!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second day of the World Fringe Congress, Friday August 17, had a jam-packed schedule<\/a> of panel discussions, break-out sessions, and a reception chez the Lord Provost (Edinburgh\u2019s mayor), leaving absolutely no time to attend any shows at the Fringe, Forest Fringe or Free Fringes. The themes I narrowed in on were seemingly contradictory. Fringe producers expressed both a desire to “retain the edge” of their festivals and an obsession to\u00a0find money – and lots of it!<\/p>\n

Following a continental breakfast,\u00a0delegates were invited to a\u00a0\u00a0panel on the theme of expansion called\u00a0Growth and International Aspirations – is bigger better?\u00a0<\/em>The Chair, Graham Sheffield, is a musician cum-arts administrator with a great sense off humour who works for the British Council, a funding body for artists. He described the Fringe as \u201coppositional, subversive, [and] other of the mainstream,\u201d and took delight in teasing the panelists who strayed from his ideas about the Fringe. For example, when panelist Robin Gillette of the Minnesota Fringe described the system she uses of quotas, a $400 fee, training programs and putting a cap on the number of shows to \u201cdevelop audiences\u201d, he cracked in his impeccable British deadpan: \u201cIt sounds rather Stalinist to me\u2026Risk is one of the thrills at the fringe. It seems you have removed a lot of that. I don\u2019t mean to be pejorative, but it doesn\u2019t sound very American to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

We also heard from people like Greg Clarke, Chief Executive of the Adelaide Fringe, who was happy to report that almost all of the corporate media in his city, plus a bank,\u00a0were sponsors of the long-running event which has now\u00a0reached gigantic proprtions. Adam J.K. Potrykus, an organizer with STOFF (Stockholm’s young Fringe), was also interested in finding larger corporate sponsors for his event, while Sanjoy Roy, a producer from Fringe-less\u00a0India, mulled over the idea of establishing\u00a0a Fringe\u00a0festival in his home country. “Everything is a Fringe in India,” he noted, adding “Arts are part of the bloodstream.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What struck me the most about the panel were the complex formulae each Fringe Festival had regarding marketing budgets, quotas on the numbers and types of artists, pay-to-play fees, percentages of sales being split between artists and festivals, and other mathematical equations designed to create what Potrykus called “an intimate setting” and a “Fringe community”.\u00a0He was eager to know how long it takes\u00a0to get “established”, saying\u00a0“We want to get bigger sponsors,” while conceding “we are still building the Fringe brand”. On the question of government sponsorship, all agreed that it was highly desirable, prompting Roy to\u00a0inject: “Fringes are seen as anarchic spaces. Should\u00a0governments fund anarchy?”\u00a0Towards the end of the discussion the wise-cracking Chair asked “Is your festival a mirror of yourself?” There was denial all around from the Fringe\u00a0administrators.<\/p>\n

My impression, which would be repeated throughout the day, was how very un-Fringe-like it\u00a0seemed to concoct and maintain Fringe Festivals using such blatant corporate methodology. \u00a0Thinking back to 1947 when pissed off artists played on the fringe of the Edinburgh International Festival after being snubbed, I wondered what they would have thought about artist quotas, cross-branding, and paying fees to play in their artistic protest against the establishment.<\/p>\n

Various break-out sessions followed, and I attended one\u00a0callled\u00a0It\u2019s NOT All About The Money: Engaging with local funding bodies and authorities without talking about cash<\/em>. Anita Clarke,\u00a0an arts administrator with Creative Scotland<\/a>, recommended schmoozing with government funding bodies (“build a relationship”)\u00a0until they decide to fund Fringe Festivals, suggesting they be\u00a0branded as “arts markets” that give “international profile” to host countries by providing a “platform”. She mentioned a British\u00a0Arts Minister who once claimed “I’ll take money from anyone, even the mafia!”, and suggested\u00a0the best way to sell the Fringes to officials is to\u00a0portray a “sense of endeavour.” When the circle was opened up for discussion most other producers lamented that there was never enough funding from government bodies and expressed a great desire for more. When I pointed out that at the infringement festival we try to operate on as little money as possible (in Montreal we just produced over 50 performances on less than $1000),\u00a0 shocked eyebrows\u00a0shot up\u00a0across the room.<\/p>\n

The next break-our session was the one I was looking forward to the most. Entitled Growing Pains. How do you retain your \u2018Fringe\u2019 edge as your festival grows?<\/em>, this session was facilitated by Holly Payton-Lombardo, the main organizer of the World Fringe Congress, with Greg Germain, President\u00a0of the\u00a0Festival OFF d\u2019Avignon<\/em>\u00a0as a featured expert.\u00a0Germain suggested that his festival maintains its edge because artists can play for 23 days, meet the public, get media exposure and see the work of other artists.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recalling the older days of the Montreal Fringe before it was trademarked, I tended to agree with him that these are the main reasons we created the Fringe in our city. What\u00a0made the Fringe edgy was that it was our own event where we could do as we please artistically and then showcase our\u00a0often-edgy work to what was then a very conservative theatre scene. Our message was that we didn’t need the entrenched system of auditions, producers, money and hierarchy\u00a0and\u00a0\u00a0to create theatre – we could do it ourselves, in our own way, on a shoestring budget, and then invite others to share in our controversial and unconventional artistic utopia.<\/p>\n

However, those were the days before the Fringe was trademarked<\/a> in Canada and taken over by corporate interests and “professional” arts adiministrators. Having never been to the Festival OFF d\u2019Avignon<\/em>, I could not comment on what sounded like a very similar festival to the pre-corporate Fringe.<\/p>\n

Once the floor was opened up for discussion, I readily proposed my own theory: the more corporate a Fringe becomes, the more it loses its edge and the more extinguished its spirit becomes. I explained how\u00a0Canadian arts journalists have concluded that “the edge isn’t there any more”<\/a> at the Fringe, and then, to put things in a local perspective,\u00a0quoted The Guardian<\/a>: “Edinburgh performers bid to reclaim the ‘true spirit’ of the fringe: The Edinburgh fringe opens to a backdrop of rising discontent at its costs and criticism that it has lost its edge.”<\/p>\n

I then launched into my own story about helping establish the Montreal Fringe, living abroad for several years, and then returning to see it\u00a0 under new management and trademarked. I described how my show, Car Stories<\/a>, was kicked out of the Fringe Festival <\/a>after we criticized a corporate media sponsor who posed a conflict of interest (because they were both funding the festival and reporting on it).<\/p>\n

I argued that it wasn’t so much a case of “retaining the edge,” but rather trying to restore any semblance of an edge when many of the now-corporate Fringes are about as sharp as a butter knife. I recommended not only creating safeguards to protect the Fringe from excessive corporate manipulation, but also to curtail overzealous “professional” arts adminstrators who act as cultural gatekeepers and to actually connect with what is edgy in the society, such as the Occupy Movement or\u00a0controversial activist\u00a0arts such as the Pussy Riot scandal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The question was put out there: when does a Fringe lose its edge? Ironically, it was Mike Marinaccio, Producer of the\u00a0 Disney-sponsored Orlando Fringe <\/a>Festival, who said: “When corporations or governments call the shots, the edge is lost.” While I agree wholeheartedly, I think it is only half of the equation. The other way the edge can be dulled is by administrators acting a cultural gatekeepers, deciding who can play, how much it costs, which sponsors will be prominent and how much visual pollution\/corporate spam will be tolerated, amongst other issues.<\/p>\n

I argued that to have an edge, the Fringe must resemble the original version in 1947 when artists took charge and challenged the status quo with their artistic brilliance. When administrators decide what a “Fringe” is, it creates an ersatz version, a marketed PR version of what a real, edgy\u00a0Fringe actually is. A real Fringe empowers artists and community because it is created and run by them, whereas a branded Fringe run by “professional” administrators benefits mostly those administrators, who can now collect salaries and be associated with the cool-factor that comes from the original Fringe. Simply put, it’s fairly insidious a form of co-opting. That being said, administrators whose sole objective is to ensure artists on the Fringe are supported, as the\u00a0Festival Fringe Society\u00a0employees\u00a0in Edinburgh claim, strike me as being more legitimate.<\/p>\n

The best way to do it, in my opinion, is by using the infringement model whereby not only do administrators support the artists, but they also ensure the artists are not compromised in any way, unlike the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society<\/a> that associates them with unethical sponsors, charges then hundreds of pounds to appear in their program, insists on selling 25% of their tickets, and sells off public space to corporate sponsors, creating visual pollution\u00a0and a very un-Fringe like and\u00a0corporate-looking environment, not unlike a shopping mall.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The next event was another panel\u00a0called How do you promote your Fringe and ensure its reputation when you don\u2019t control quality?\u00a0<\/em>I found this one odd because the Fringe was never meant to be about “quality” but rather about open-access. What was most interesting about this panel was a\u00a0freelance journalist\u00a0named Mark Fisher who wrote a book called The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide<\/a>: How to Make Your Show a Success<\/em>, and was also doing a play at the Fringe of a similar nature. I picked up a copy of his book for a tenner and gave him some information about the infringement. I informed him that no journalist in Europe had covered it yet, despite the levels of media saturation seen in places like Buffalo, New York, or to a lesser extent, in Montreal (infringement is still blacklisted by many arts journalists there). Glancing at the book, I could see that it confirmed what most artists were reporting on the street – it is almost impossible to play at the Edinburgh Fringe without going into serious debt.<\/p>\n

The final break-out session I attended was called:<\/p>\n

It IS all About the Money<\/strong>:\u00a0Sponsorship and investment for your Fringe<\/strong><\/p>\n

* How to attract major sponsors and how to keep them.<\/p>\n

* How to get funding when you don\u2019t make the work.<\/p>\n

* How to calculate your financial value.<\/p>\n

* Fundraising & other sources of income, such as business, local authorities, arts funding bodies, crowd funding.<\/p>\n

This one was jam-packed with Fringe producers lining up. I almost expected them to start yelling: “Show me the money!”, like some cheesy American infomercial. The man behind this workshop\u00a0even had a name that sounded like a bank:\u00a0Barclay Price. He’s\u00a0the Director of Arts & Business Scotland<\/a>, an organization that matches artists with sponsors (for a fee, of course). Barclay was a slick, PR-type who smoothly sold\u00a0the crowd\u00a0on the idea of seeking as much sponsorship as possible from a wide\u00a0variety of sources.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When the floor opened, I pointed out that both the Fringe and the Edinburgh International Festival it originally protested against for elitism shared the same sponsor, Virgin Money<\/a>. When I suggested that this corporate arrangement\u00a0damaged the Fringe’s brand, he was dismissive. He suggested Virgin Money was actually a very\u00a0good brand, that nobody cared about the branding, but rather the arts, and wrapped up with: “Don’t put your political views on others.” Feeling brushed away like a fly, I watched the other producers ask numerous questions about the best ways to approach corporations (it seems that beyond the Marketing Department, there is now a “Corporate Social Responsibility” Department in many corporations that essentially tries to do PR to make them look good, much like Greenwashing<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Annoyed,\u00a0I concocted the type of question that I thought would surely put Barclay between a rock and a hard place: “Mr. Price,” I asked, “Do you think that it is acceptable that the Saskatoon Fringe has been renamed the PotashCorp Fringe<\/a>, and if so, what do you think the best corporation would be to name the Edinburgh Fringe after?” There was an audible gasp in the room at the thought of re-naming the grand-daddy of Fringes after a corporation, but Barclay didn’t bat an eyelash. He suggested that Edinburgh Fringe and Pepsi<\/a> would be a good match, claiming “It’s an adult approach.” Following the session I gave him my infringement materials and suggested he at least be aware of the opposing point-of-view. He graciously accepted them, thanking me with a polished Scottish brogue. As I left the hall\u00a0I thought how\u00a0he would be a perfect actor for\u00a0selling a bank or some financial “services” on television.<\/p>\n

We finally left SummerHall, en route to a reception with the Lord Provost (mayor) of Edinburgh. On the way we passed a giant tent sponsored by the BBC, where I imagine they were running their own version of a corporate Fringe inside.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Arriving at the City Chambers, the sort of governmental place\u00a0I am rarely invited to,\u00a0 I breathed in all\u00a0the pomp and\u00a0dreamed what it would be like to receive the keys to the magnificent city. Then, suddenly,\u00a0they appeared! En route<\/em> to the reception, the giant set of keys\u00a0were found practically\u00a0glowing in a glass case in a hallway!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I met the Lord Provost, the Right Honourable Donald Wilson, I shook his hand, introduced myself, and told him about the infringement festival,\u00a0joking that\u00a0maybe it would appear in Edinburgh one day. He\u00a0chuckled and directed me to the free glasses of wine. Speeches were soon delivered by the Lord Provost and the Culture Minister, Fiona Hyslop, MSP Cabinet secretary for Culture and External Affairs. This was standard fare, welcoming us to the city, encouraging our work, and advising us to return again and again in the future.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I gave the Culture Minister the infringement information on\u00a0her way out to another function. I thought how\u00a0cool it was that I was able to access all the high-level officials to inform them directly about our cultural movement of infringement. In Quebec and Canada it is very difficult to access politicians, and from my own experience, most of the time they don’t listen<\/a> anyways.<\/p>\n

We had a break after the reception, so I dined with the edgy Amy Wragg \u2013 director of the SWITCH (Ipswitch) Fringe. I tasted the traditional Scottish haggis, paprika chicken, and profiteoles, washing it down with more red wine. The evening ended at the Underbelly, a part of uber-corporate\u00a0Bristo Square\u2019s Abattoir Bar.\u00a0This\u00a0private, invitation-only bar catered to “Industry insiders”\u00a0for the “Big Four” venues that have been highly criticized for damaging the equal nature of the Fringe and ruining its equilibrium. Why we were invited there was anyone’s guess, versus, say, an authentic Fringe venue. In any case, after a few more drinks in the packed establishment, it was time to go home.<\/p>\n

After walking\u00a0back to our quarter\u00a0we decided to drop in for a nightcap at a nearby pub called the Blue Blazer. The delicious Scottish whiskey tasted somewhat like a campfire. I slept like a log.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Read more from this series:<\/p>\n

Preview: World Fringe Congress to welcome infringement festival<\/a><\/p>\n

World Fringe Congress Report #1: First Impressions<\/a><\/p>\n

World Fringe Congress Report #2: The word on the street and Congress opening<\/a><\/p>\n

World Fringe Congress Report #3: Retaining the Fringe Edge or Show me the Money!<\/a><\/p>\n

World Fringe Congress Report #4: World Fringe Fair, Open Spaces and Members Only Clubs<\/a><\/p>\n

World Fringe Congress Report #5: Searching for the Fringe and Reflections<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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