@gembo, part of the job description for an impresario.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
Edinburgh without the Festival
(66 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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Has the fringe homogenised? It's so much bigger now than it ever was before? Sure there's a big bulk of cookie cutter comedians but they only drown out the rest of the fringe if you don't bother to look very hard.
I've seen a collosal diversity of shows in the last few years.
I'm still definitely in the scorning of complainers group...
Posted 4 years ago # -
@toomanybikes, good to know you have found diversity. The fringe big players like underbelly have a generic homogenized offer of stand up lasts 50 mins. ALternative comedy bathe new norm.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@toomanybike - fair enough and if there's a Festival next year I will look to you for tips.
I go to stuff at the main Festival. It costs about the same as the comedians, for which you get 35 opera singers, scenery, and it lasts over 2 hours.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@rosie main festival better value. It used to go on for a week after fringe then the bargains were to be had. Traverse usually has something good.
Changed days when the idea in the paST WAS TOO see loads of wee zany half baked things that added up to a grand day out
Posted 4 years ago # -
loads of wee zany half baked things that added up to a grand day out
Yes, that's it. Reduced Shakespeare Company's King Lear abides man.
I think a year off to re-think is a good idea.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Down the Wireworks behind the ticket office
Group called Stutz Bear Cats , I am going to google
Same day as 18 year old Gemboid discovered that the Cockney rhyming slang for a pint of cider was a lemon.
We could play a coronavirus guess why but think too tricky also not true
L1 L2 CC3 JF4 PF 5 ER6 (film which does actually rhyme with Pint of Cider)
Posted 4 years ago # -
Past few years been mostly to Official Festival stuff - usually a very interesting programme, and as gembo says good value. Fringe too bamboozling with massive array of things to wade through, often cannot be bothered. Last year was not very inspired by EIF programme and didn't go to see anything.
Hope EIF regains its mojo in future years and puts on more challenging work. As for Fringe, needs a diet anyway, should be about half its current size. Less stand-up, more quirky acts would be more in the true Fringe spirit.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@crowriver - agree it's way too big, but how could it possibly be cut back? Anyone can put on anything they like if they can find a venue.
Posted 4 years ago # -
It will be nice to see the castle without the ridiculous grandstand, and also to be able to see from the esplanade this year. I stopped off theretowards the end of my cycle today to enjoy the view. There was one other person on a bicycle, two people jogging, and one person walking a big dog.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@Rosie, well for a start the temporary marquee venues can be banned - Spiegeltent, Underbelly, Book festival, Lady Boys of Bangkok, Chinese State Circus, etc. No tents on the Meadows, in George Square, or Charlotte Square. This is not Glastonbury, we're not in the middle of a field.
Book festival can move to an indoor venue where the environmental impact will be minimal. Enough of this faux English village fete charade. If all other aspects of the Fringe are required to be held indoors it will change the character, but is a relatively simple way of constraining the size of the event. There could potentially be exemptions for genuine street performers (though personally I'm not a fan). And whatever else happens, GET RID OF THE SILENT DISCOS.
Posted 4 years ago # -
how could it possibly be cut back?
By limiting the programme and website listings?
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS - there is no actual quality control is there? No filtering? No-one says, "This group is rubbish so we won't put them on the website?" I don't actually know how it works. I assume that you pay for your own listing, and that's you in, with your Waiting for God-route where Vlaidimir and Estragon fill in loads of consultancy submissions and TROs.*
I have seen dire things in the past and yet I'm glad that hopefuls had a chance of being dire.
So I wonder how you cut quantity unless by (a) first come first served; (b) lottery; (c) some kind of panel which decides whether you can come or not.
Lottery would be fairest, I'd guess, but that of course wouldn't stop The Deaf Toners putting on their musical version of Wolf Hall in an old warehouse. without advertising on the website.
*Feel free to steal this idea.
Posted 4 years ago # -
"Lottery would be fairest, I'd guess, but that of course wouldn't stop The Deaf Toners putting on their musical version of Wolf Hall in an old warehouse. without advertising on the website."
Unless you needed a council permit to put on a production. And those were only available to acts listed in the Fringe programme...
Most European cities would have controlled the hell out of something like the Fringe, but we seem to have this laissez-faire approach. Time for a rebalancing methinks.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@crowriver - I do like the laissez-faire approach but I agree it does look like Something Must Be Done.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Was at an event where someone made the interesting point that most cities would have leveraged a festival of this scale & age to get year-round venues & infrastructure for the arts for the city. Whereas, Edinburgh...
Posted 4 years ago # -
Zaktly.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Does edinburgh not have year round venues and infrastructure for the arts?
Maybe I would go along with better infra or level of infra in August year round. But we would all be exhausted.
Edinburgh does well as a small city with a douce and sometimes dour populace and some poor and grim areas beyond.
I shall seek sponsorship to guide a cycling tour beyond Douglas to Muirkirk
Posted 4 years ago # -
For its size, Edinburgh has an impressive roster of cultural venues. That is certainly down to the festival making these venues more viable, at least as far as the theatres and performing venues are concerned.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Just had post from old time fringe act Attila The Stockbroker - he says Stay At Home This weekend 17 million of you managed it the last time you were asked to vote.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Attila still got an edge I see.
Posted 4 years ago # -
There won't be an Edinburgh Festival of Cycling this year either, should be back next year, if anyone is interested...
Posted 4 years ago # -
c'mon now Kim lets get with the zeitgeist
Edinburgh Festival of Cycling will be RAMPED UP for 2021
RAMPED UP TO THE MAX
Posted 4 years ago # -
EdFoC on acid? I'm available.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@Kim,
EdFoC setting the trend which other's are now following.
Posted 4 years ago # -
“
Linehan is under no illusions, though, that the festival can simply return to the status quo before the crisis. He’s aware of the tide of criticism and anti-festival feeling – mainly directed at the ever-growing Fringe – that has been rising in Edinburgh during the recent years of hyper-tourism; and he believes that even before the coronavirus crisis, Edinburgh and the world’s other major arts festivals were facing profound questions about their future.
“Over the last 30 years or so, it’s been easy to be drawn into a world in which the arts are framed as part of a wider economic regeneration agenda that’s all about tourism and never-ending growth. But now, I think there is a real change of political mood under way; and we’re recognising that that old approach is no longer sustainable either environmentally, or in terms of the real value of the arts, which are so much more than just a branding exercise. The Edinburgh International Festival has always had an international mission, of course. But it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of man to make it both a festival for the wider world, and a festival for Edinburgh and all its people; and I think that after a year in which, for once, we don’t have to produce a festival on a tight schedule, none of us are going to have any excuse for not coming up with some brilliant new thinking about what an international festival might look like, in those new times.
“
Posted 4 years ago # -
BBC's Douglas Fraser bats for the tourism industry team here, apparently no dissenting voices to the vested interests allowed. Fraser and tourism lobby turned up, other team banned from the field.
Yes, some businesses (especially those with chains of premises) will suffer, others may not survive despite all the help offered. But surely we need to take the opportunity to re-think how our economy functions, not just wait for the return of "business as usual"? Especially Edinburgh, but arguably also the Highlands economy needs a big re-think. Pivot to local, sustainable, and away from global or even rUK tourism...
---
When the tourists don't turn up
Posted 4 years ago # -
I note in the appendices to this council report that consultations on Edinburgh's Winter Festivals and Green Spaces strategy have been "suspended until further notice" due to COVID-19 outbreak...
https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/documents/s23847/7.3%20Consultation%20Planning%20Report.pdf
Posted 4 years ago # -
What I'm seeing in this article is a mix of hubris (tourism is not the biggest industry in city), denial (things will have to change) and dawning realisation (winter festivals may have to be curtailed so restaurants survive). Will winter festivals happen at all this year?
Posted 4 years ago # -
@crowrriver we will all be up the tron again at midnight then find nowhere to go?
Posted 4 years ago #
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