Assembly director: Edinburgh Festival Fringe needs to 'change gear' and 'reinvent' itself for next 25 years

William Burdett-Coutts, director of Assembly, said at the venue's launch gala that festival bodies need to work together to "try to find a future". And he said talks were underway about synergies between organisations, of which he hoped would progress during this year’s festival.

Mr Burdett-Coutts also highlighted historic “issues” between the Fringe and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, which he said he hoped could be resolved by new chief executive Tony Lankester. Three years ago, Mr Burdett-Coutts warned he had “lost confidence” in the Fringe Society as the festival made its first full comeback after the pandemic.

Speaking at Wednesday night’s gala event at Assembly Hall on the Mound, he said: “We have extraordinary pressures on the finances of this event. Inflationary costs are high. Accommodation is mad, something has to be done about it.

“Council, I love you. We work a lot with you, but putting up council charges for parking just before the festival is such a bad idea. It's not good for the event and it doesn't help us.

“There are issues between the Fringe and the Fringe Society, but I look forward to working with Tony Lankester, who's joined the organisation. And I'm sure between us, we'll find ways to resolve those.”

Mr Burdett-Coutts, who has worked at the Fringe for 46 years, lauded the “efforts” and “risks” artists take to perform at the Fringe.

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Last year, Assembly, Underbelly, Pleasance and Gilded Balloon launched the "Love the Fringe” initiative - a subscription service giving members access to free and discounted tickets.

He said: “Nothing competes with Edinburgh. It is the most extraordinary gathering of live performance work in the world, and it's achieved by lots and lots of different organisations.

“I think it's confusing because of that and I feel like today's a time where, when we're under duress, we've got to make an effort to work together more.

“So I'm very much an advocate for pushing the idea of the Edinburgh festival. I think in the public eye, this is the Edinburgh festival, For those of us that work in it, there's lots of different organisations.

“But I think now is the time where we need to change gear around the festival, move on from a degree of complacency and inertia that exists in public bodies and actually get together as different bits of the festival and make an effort to reinvent ourselves for the next 25 years.

“I think it is an opportunity where we've got to grasp it, and we've got to work together to try and find a future. And I look forward to working with organisations to talk about that. It's at the start of an idea that a number of us have been discussing, and I think during the festival we'll try and move that on.”