Arts diary: The Fringe is coming - and I can't wait to love/live it

The festivals venues are popping up around the city (they like to call the creation of these places a build, or a bump in, depending on how permanent the structure is, so you can too, if you want to look like you’re in the know) and Edinburgh is bracing itself for a month of either excitement or horror, depending on how you view the Fringe.

I have to admit, like most people who live here, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the Fringe over the years.

I’ve had summers where I’ve taken a week off work to play tourist - going to multiple shows a day and soaking up the sun in George Square Gardens - and loved it. I’ve had years when I was a politics reporter when I wanted to take the flyers being stuffed into my hands as I attempted to walk down the Royal Mile to work in Holyrood and stuff them somewhere else.

I’ve had years where I have gone to nothing but kids’ shows and forgotten that there is a Fringe world beyond Julia Donaldson adaptations, men with giant bubble machines and anything happening after 6pm.

I’ve endured noisy festival goers partying in my tenement and I’ve had more people coincidentally sleeping on my sofa bed in August than I can count: “Oh we wanted to come and see you, it’s been too long. Yes, in August. Oh is that when the FRINGE is on? I didn’t realise...”

Now, as arts correspondent, like the thousands of performers and visitors who flock to Edinburgh in August, I love the festivals, but I also live them. They are all consuming for a month. I return home occasionally to sleep and check my teenager has eaten a vegetable that week. I can’t wait.

You’ll spot me running around town with a giant microphone searching for news stories and filming a host of bizarre things for our daily Fringe video show. Come and say hi.

Traitorous behaviour in Perthshire

While all this is going on, two hours away, in the Perthshire countryside, Alan Cumming will be secretly traitoring away in his apparent bid to create a rival Fringe event at Pitlochry Festival Theatre.

Edinlochry (see what he did there), which aims to “bring the spirit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to the Highlands”, will run from 4 to 8 August - just overlapping with the OG Fringe - with a programme of comedy, theatre and music.

To counter Cummings’ traitorous behaviour, the theatre is also continuing its 75th birthday celebrations with a wonderfully wholesome series of picnics.

Fifties Picnics in the Park, a series of free outdoor community events on 5, 6 and 7 August, will celebrate the very best of the fifties taking place in Aberfeldy, Birnam and Pitlochry. Each event will bring people together through live performance, music and shared food and oral histories focusing on Pitlochry Festival Theatre, which was founded in 1951.

Fundraising target smashed

Good news from Aberdeen, where a campaign to save an arts centre has smashed its fundraising target. Aberdeen Arts Centre has raised £87,966.15 over the last six weeks, far exceeding the organisation’s target of £60,000.

The Save Aberdeen Arts Centre campaign was launched in May 2025, when the venue was at serious risk of closing its doors. The three-year campaign seeks to stabilise the organisation as it prepares to apply for multi-year funding from national bodies.