Where to for Fringe after 70 years?

Commemorating 70 years of Fringe Festivals, World Fringe Day takes place on 11 July. But is the Fringe model still working?

Publicity image for the Darwin Fringe production, Los Elementos del Alma, presented by Jazmine Productions.

The world’s first ever Fringe Festival took place in Edinburgh in 1947, when eight companies – six Scottish and two English – effectively gate-crashed the inaugural Edinburgh Festival, itself established to ‘provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit’ following the recent ravages of the Second World War.  

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts