Supporting artists

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society was founded by artists to nurture and uphold the Fringe's values of inclusivity, experimentation and imagination.

We exist to support, encourage and inspire artists from all backgrounds to come to the Fringe.

Are you an artist thinking of bringing a show to the Fringe? Check out our guides and resources for artists at the Fringe.

Our teams

We support participants at every stage of their journey, from taking their first steps, to providing advice and guidance during the festival itself at Fringe Central. 

• Our Artist Services team offers guidance and support around the practicalities of bringing a show to the Fringe, from finding a venue and booking accommodation to immigration guidance, music licencing and much more. 
• Our Artist Development team offers one-to-one support for artists to create career goals and navigate the opportunities available for professional development at the Fringe, as well as hosting networking and skill building events for artists.
• Our Arts Industry Office exists year-round to provide services to arts industry professionals from all over the world, maintaining the Fringe's reputation as the world's most significant arts marketplace where Fringe artists can further their careers and achieve success after the festival.
• Our Communications and Marketing team promote the festival as a whole, generating increased attention and ticket sales. Media and marketing advice is also available to registered shows, including one-to-one meetings and feedback on press releases. 
• Our Community Engagement and Learning teams work to provide paid opportunities for Fringe artists to engage with community groups and schools in Edinburgh outside of Fringe time.

Our services

We provide services to support artists during August and throughout the year, and campaign and lobby vigorously on their behalf.

Making the Fringe more affordable

We are working hard to make the festival more affordable for artists:

• Show registration fees have been frozen for nearly two decades. 
• We are seeking to increase the availability of affordable accommodation options through partnerships with accommodation and transport providers, including Queen Margaret University, Lothian Buses and ScotRail. We're also continuing to lobby key decision-makers and policy-makers on behalf of artists.
• We support artists to grow their audience and box office income while exploring affordable ticketing options to help audiences see as much work as possible, irrespective of their budget. We now rebate a percentage of booking fee income directly to venues and artists. 

Spotlight story: 'The Fringe is a pulse for me'

I’m a Nottingham-based writer and performer who’s worked across theatre, comedy and spoken word; my productions usually blend these together into very playful fusion shows.

I first heard about the Fringe as an aspiring comedy maker when I was 16 or 17. It was spoken of as an El Dorado for culture. The first Fringe I got to attend was 2012 through friends I’d made at university. It felt like I’d spent my life breathing with only one of my lungs and now I could fill them. I went right in as a flyerer for a friend’s show in exchange for cheaper rent. It took five years before I got to bring a show of my own to the Fringe: in 2017 I brought The Fall of Byron Montrose; Poet, Gentleman, Lover up with the support of PBH Free Fringe. The rest is history.

Through a mixture of hard work and good luck I have since transitioned to a full-time freelance artist. This puts a financial pressure on the decisions I make without the backup of the day job to rely on any longer. I received Keep it Fringe funding in 2023, which meant that I was able to release some of this pressure, particularly subsidising my accommodation and letting me invest more in promotion. I also used some of the funds to support my wellbeing at the Fringe, most prominently getting a month’s membership at a health club to let me keep up with my swimming – this really helped keep me grounded in the furore of the festival.

In 2023 I was up with a poetry show Serious Nonsense for Terribly Grown-Up People – it’s a performed version of my debut poetry collection with the same name. It was aimed at audiences aged 8+, which was a first for me as I’m usually focussed on comedy for an 18+ crowd – it gave me a really different view of the Fringe this time around. I was performing with the PBH Free Fringe again and as part of the deal, you do not charge ticket price but have a donation bucket at the end. Well this one family had come to see me four days in a row (it’s a very good show) and rather than donate cash on the last day, they brought me £10 worth of brie, from one of the poems in the show, appropriately titled 'Lovely Brie’. It meant I had very classy lunches the whole middle week of the Fringe.

The Fringe is a pulse for me, each year it arrives and fresh creative blood surges around my body. I mentioned earlier how my first visit felt like breathing again. I was able to tie this Fringe visit into my artistic development even more, thanks to Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice programme. I was looking at ways of tying together poetry and theatre for young people, so the chance to see spoken word shows and children’s shows let me think about how I’d combine the two. Having the opportunity to go and do a school visit during the last week of the Fringe and engage in outreach work meant a lot to me too, similar to the work I do with schools outside the summer holidays.

I also started performing cabaret sets, using some of my blue-er poetry (very much not for kids!) for late-night audiences that met with a huge response. I’m still working on some of the opportunities that opened from last August, although this sometimes feels like an uphill struggle as there’s an assumption that ‘free’ means poor quality, when actually the donation shows offer some of the richest and most exciting work in the whole programme.