Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 130

Shona McCarthy, Chief Executive, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society
This is very personal because of where I come from [Northern Ireland]. I
see myself very much as a political person, sensitized to a wider context and
how artists and curators respond to that. I see the arts as a place of sanity, a
place of conversation beyond the political dichotomies. The reason I wanted
to come to the Fringe was that I saw this as a massive space, an enormous
frame of expression that the arts can offer in challenging times. This was the
biggest landscape possible.
To be honest, from a distance the Fringe felt to me a bit middle-class cabaret,
slightly divorced from society’s realities but of course, when you take a closer
look there is this huge, angry response to the time and you can pull out
serious and nonserious work addressing issues, and on a huge scale.
When we did the Fringe World Congress in Montreal with hundreds of
Fringes from around the world, I had a light bulb moment. Was there a
way we could harness the collective power that we have? Could we create
something that celebrates Fringe—a World Fringe Day, where we think
about the work we support and the platform for freedom of expression we
offer. This is now a framework for a new digital space that has a Fringe
consciousness.
The Fringe is the greatest platform in the world for freedom of expression.
The Fringe is about the collective power that the arts community doesn’t
understand it has. Fringe is the space where risk can happen where the
unpopular as well as the popular can happen. We all want to find a space
where challenging things can be said.
The Fringe was born out of defiance. This ��th anniversary year I wanted to
look back at that idea and ask, have we still got it or have we lost it? It was
uncensored, open access, bold and yes, angry, and I wanted us to think about
that and our role now. This is not a clichéd discussion about commercial
versus art—there is wonderful work like the Requiem for Aleppo piece in
one of the bigger Fringe venue networks, Assembly, then great work from
Palestine in a single specialist art form space, Dancebase. We need to think
about what we can uniquely do now.
I think we do have responsibility to reflect the anxiety and anger of other
places. We didn’t chose to leave Europe but you can’t talk about how unhappy
you are about that then not engage with the wider international experience.
129