26. The power of an open invitation
Open access is the secret sauce of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
I hope you’ve all had a good summer (at least, those in the northern hemisphere). Jenny and I spent it mostly at home in Edinburgh, where there is no shortage of interesting things to see in August. Alongside the Edinburgh International Festival (a cornucopia of high culture, ballet, classical music, opera and so on) is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Fringe has a very interesting way of organising itself, which is well worth a piece here on Substack where I am investigating how to organise both humanely and effectively.
History of the Fringe
Let’s go back to the very beginning. The Edinburgh Festival started in 1947, from the germ of an idea by Rudolf Bing, long-time general manager of Glyndebourne opera house in rural Sussex. Bing, like many of his colleagues and contemporaries, had escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s and seen many of the great European festival cities like Salzburg and Munich occupied. (For the sight of the Salzburg festival being Nazified, look no further than The Sound of Music!) Bing sought another home for European culture, and Edinburgh was the perfect candidate with its marvellous architecture, many artistic facilities and compact centre.
Bing was not the only person in search of an agreeable and supportive place for cultural performances. Eight theatre companies also arrived in Edinburgh in 1947, without being part of the official Festival. They coined the term ‘Fringe’ and mounted their shows anyway, taking advantage of the visiting audiences and local buzz. More artists joined year after year, until in 1957 the Fringe Society was formed. The Society had a role in helping to promote and organise the Fringe – but with one proviso, which is still on their website:
the Society was to take no part in vetting the festival’s programme.
In other words, there is no curation of the Fringe programme. If you can find a venue and have something to say, show, play or perform, then for a few pounds you can be in the programme with everyone else, have the Fringe sell tickets for your show and be alongside world-famous acts and performers in a huge melange of arts, comedy, music, dance, spoken word – pretty much anything goes.
Edinburgh Fringe 2023
Following some tough years during the Covid pandemic (there was no Festival or Fringe in 2020 and 2021, and 2022 felt like a reduced programme), then I am delighted to report that both the Festival and the Fringe seem like they are getting back towards full strength. There were 3553 shows, many of them performed multiple times (lots of comedians do the whole thing, performing at the same place and time every day for the 24 days), 288 venues were involved ranging from 1000 seat halls to tiny cellars seating 20 at a push (plus the streets) with performers from 170 countries. The Fringe programme is like a telephone book (remember them?), page after page of tiny entries to peruse. Fortunately, 2023 also saw the return of the Fringe App where it was easy to see ‘what’s on next near me’ and other useful search facilities, as well as book tickets direct.
Jenny and I went to more events than ever this year, and we were delighted for the most part with what we saw and heard. When we moved up to Edinburgh in 2016 we started off by going to see people we had heard of, seen on TV or whatever, which is safe but not very adventurous. We’ve learned over the years to both listen to the word on the street (good shows quickly begin to get a buzz about them) and also just take a chance – if something looks intriguing then go along anyway, the tickets are usually £10 or less and many events are free to enter.
To give you a flavour, some of our favourites this year were:
The Rosenberg/Strange Fruit Project, written and performed by John Jiler about the life of Robert Meeropol, the younger son of atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who was adopted by the man who wrote the protest song Strange Fruit, made famous by Billie Holliday.
Communist Dad, Candace Bryan tells the story of her unusual childhood in Memphis, Tennessee-raised by a single dad who loves the banjo and reading Karl Marx.
The Birth of Frankenstein, play by Robert Lloyd George performed by Maverick Theatre Company about teenager Mary Godwin and her new love Percy Bysshe Shelley traveling to Geneva to meet Lord Byron and write ghost stories – but she can’t think of one…
Louise Dodds/Elchin Shirinov, new arrangements of traditional Scottish songs from jazz singer Dodds and Azeri piano ace Shirinov (read my review of the show on London Jazz News here)
Iain Dale All Talk with Humza Yousaf, conservative commentator Iain Dale in an extended interview with First Minister of Scotland and SNP leaders Yousaf
Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare, a return to Edinburgh for the troupe, performing Romeo & Juliet – the catch is that one actor has to drink heavily before the show and through it, with pretty hilarious consequences.
Luminescence, artist Maria Rud’s painting projected live on the east window of St Giles’ Cathedral accompanied by saxophonist Tommy Smith’s improvisations
Open invitation
That gives an idea of the range of performances on offer. And how do we end up with this staggering smorgasbord? The power of an open invitation. Some of the performers are seasoned professionals, others are there for the very first time. Some are hoping to break into the big time, some just want to get something off their chests. Some have travelled halfway around the world, others have tumbled out of bed round the corner. It’s wide open. I even performed three times with the Sound of Seventeen Big Band and the Origin Big Band (see video below - I take the second sax solo)
To be clear, getting to the Fringe is not a cheap or easy matter. The price of accommodation in the city in August is going up and up, venues are harder to find, some production companies are monopolising some venues, and there’s a huge challenge to get noticed amidst everything that’s going on. But still – if you can find a venue and get yourself here, you can be in. Every year new performers attract international attention, some win prizes, some set themselves up for national tours, and others are never seen again. every year there are stories about folk losing a lot of money to perform here… well, it’s tough. You have to be in it to win it, as they say.
And you can be in it. Ahir Shah, winner of the 2023 Edinburgh Comedy Award for his show Ends, arrived with a work-in-progress show trying out new material and walked away with the top prize. Best Newcomer went to Ooroj Ashfaq from Mumbai, India making her Edinburgh debut. Georgie Grier sold a single ticket for her first show, complained on Twitter and was sold out for the rest of her run. Theatre group Expial Atrocious’s Butchered offered offal-based stomach retching absurdist theatre. You want to do it, you can put it on and see what happens.
(Genuine) open invitations are rarer than you’d think
The open invitation from Edinburgh’s Fringe clearly results in some exciting, innovative, not to say plain bonkers, offerings. Where else does this happen? Well, it’s rarer than you’d think. Most events curate their programmes carefully (and indeed, who can blame them)? There is a potentially similar thing in the world of golf; the Open Championship (known widely as the British Open) was established in 1860. Why is it called ‘the Open’? It’s open to anyone, professional or amateur. That said, you have to be a top professional to gain automatic entry and qualifying for the amateurs is very tough indeed. In order to even start qualifying players need to be playing off a scratch handicap (much better than most amateurs). Trickster Maurice Flitcroft gained a reputation by entering the Open qualifying as a hopeless amateur by simply lying on his entry form; the movie Phantom Of The Open tells the tale with a great central performance from Mark Rylance (poster below).
In the world of football, the English FA Cup is open to all teams participating in the Football Association’s pyramid of leagues. This is much larger than the four professional leagues whose results are published around the world; some 340 teams are involved in ten levels of competition. It takes five preliminary qualifying rounds before English Football League teams enter the competition, with the Premier League teams joining for the third round held in early January.
Handling an open invitation – the SOL 2002 conference
Regular readers will know that I was involved in setting up and hosting the SOLWorld conference series (still going!) for coaches, managers and consultants using the Solution Focused approach. The very first one was held in Bristol in 2002, and presented the organising Bristol Solutions Group with a conundrum. Some of the people applying to speak were not known to us. Should we accept them (trusting them), seek to qualify them in some way, or reject them as unknown?
We took the decision to operate an open system. Not only were all the speakers accepted, they were also given space in one of the plenary sessions. You can still see the programme here. Most of the speakers become firm friends and colleagues, and we co-operated many times in the future. I don’t think that would have happened with a tough qualifying regime and an elitist approach to who took the stage.
Conclusion
Open invitations get to the people who have the energy to respond – and those are the people you need and want to be talking to! So many events only accept the people they like – which may assure a quality programme of some sort, but at what cost in terms of engagement, opportunity and innovation? Next time you’re setting up a conference, a meeting or an event, think about how to balance these factors and make the invitation as open as you can.
Please share this post, like it, leave a comment below. I’d love to hear more examples of open invitations.
I have started to use the Notes feature of Substack, which I am hoping to use instead of the blue bird place which is turning to mush. Watch out for short posts, resource links and more good stuff.
Dates and mates
No particular dates this week. I am a fan of Maria Rud’s art which was glimpsed above being projected onto the cathedral window. She is incredibly prolific. View more of her art at