University warns Fringe must be kept affordable as its Fringe Village enters its third year

Professor David Stevenson, from Queen Margaret University (QMU), said the city must ensure artists are not priced out of the event by soaring accommodation and production costs.

His comments come as the university transforms its halls of residence into a "Fringe Village" for the third consecutive year, offering affordable housing to around 640 performers.

He said: “I think everyone is, in general, proud of Edinburgh as a festival city, proud of the Fringe and I don’t find anyone who thinks you can’t have the Fringe here.

“We need to have an open discussion and dialogue about how we ensure that everybody in the space is being treated fairly but that collectively we are producing an environment that the Fringe and the Fringe performers can thrive in and one that is not curated and doesn’t have gatekeepers in it.”

Staging a show can set performers back thousands of pounds in venue hire, marketing and production, while last-minute accommodation in the city centre often tops £80 a night.

With rooms starting from £350 a week, the university believes their “Fringe Village” represents an affordable option in the face of the rising costs required to put on a show at the festival.

Alexa Belli was forced to launch a GoFundMe to help bring their show, Make Yourself at Home, to Edinburgh and said anyone hoping to do the same need to “comfortably have about £10,000 ready”.

The New Yorker, who is staying in the “Fringe Village” for their second time, explained that artists have to find a way of paying the fees for whatever venue chooses to host their show.

“Luckily with this housing this was definitely the cheapest I could find where we weren't all crowded in a room with 10 other people. I didn't want to put the people in my cast in that situation, I didn't want them to have to be around people they don't know,” they added.

“All the hotels and Airbnbs and stuff feel like they’re for a certain level of budget that most people that work in the arts certainly don’t have,” Kellie Gamble, star of Waiting for Elvis said.

The show’s writer and creative producer Clara Nel Haddon has a long history with the festival having been blown away when she first came as an audience member 40 years ago.

She has since put on shows at the festival for the last 10 years and said asking the crew to fund themselves was “a big ask” but there is still “something magical” about the event.

Mrs Gamble added: “You sort of go back needing a holiday from your holiday but it’s a different kind of holiday.

It’s a cultural holiday, it’s fun, it’s busy, it’s tiring especially if you’re performing but I think there’s always lots of laughter, there’s always silly moments like bumping into crazy people.

“It’s moments like that that you can’t put a price on, that you wouldn’t get if you were on a sunlounger in a hotel in Ibiza.”

Newcomer Lucy Idil Jordan was similarly spellbound by the festival when she finally experienced it last year.

She has since quit her job as an English teacher and piled her savings into pursuing a career in acting and putting on her one-woman Fringe show, Chameleon; Mirage,

She works as a private tutoring during the day to help fund the show.

Miss Jordan said: “I heard a lot before coming here how sometimes you’ll have one audience member or zero even, flyering can be so mentally draining and then if you come home and don’t have your family and friends with you.

“I thought I’d prepared myself for it until I had that one day where zero people show up and then I felt crushed. It’s something that you can’t really prepare yourself for until you experience it.”

The freshers' week energy of the repurposed student accommodation helped her cope with the setbacks and loneliness of putting on a show on her own.

Professor Stevenson said that rising prices could put artists off taking similar risks, saying:

“The Fringe was set up very explicitly as something that wasn’t curated, as something for people who were excluded from the original international festival.”

“Underneath that is the assumption that there’s a kind of level playing field that if nobody’s curating it then anyone can come and for a long time that may have been the case.”

While accepting that increased funding has a part in keeping the festival accessible, he worried that everyone should be able to perform rather than just those selected by a panel.

The dean said: “We have to recognise that in terms of ensuring the fringe can continue it has to be a collective effort in which each of us ensure that there are multiple routes for multiple different people to be able to come here.

“I don’t think it’s identifying that there’s one particular challenge to this and it's hotels, or it’s the Fringe Society, or it’s the City of Edinburgh Council.”

He added that the collaboration between the Fringe Society and QMU to create the village shows that “there’s more that we can all do together to recognise that the Fringe is something we all benefit from”.