🪩 Edinburgh Culture Minute: 12 - 18 June 2024
Fringe programme revealed, new arena approved, funding debate moves towards people-powered campaigns + a pint with Ian Rankin
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🆕 News & happenings this week
🏟️ Breaking news: Edinburgh will soon have its first ever large indoor concert arena, after councillors voted this morning to approve the build of a new 8,500 capacity venue at Edinburgh Park. - Kevin Quinn, Evening News.
🎭 The official 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme is now available.
⮑ You can view the brochure online here.
⮑ There’s a map of distribution points here.
⮑ And you can browse all the shows and get tickets online here.
Most of the shows had already been announced, but the final tranche revealed today includes Macbeth for Bairns (Scottish Storytelling Centre), Cyrano (Traverse Theatre) and, at the recently-rescued Jazz Bar: ‘...and Jazz was born in Scotland...’, a world premiere, celebrating the shared history between jazz and Scottish folk music.
Another new announcement is the Made in Scotland Gigs series presented by Wide Days at La Belle Angele.
Running from 2 to 26 August, there are 51,446 performances planned across 3,317 shows at 262 venues. There are 354 free shows and 577 Pay What You Can/Want shows.
⮑ This year’s Fringe programme has 10% rise compared to last year, making this its fourth largest program ever. This is despite a lot of artists speaking out about the cost of performing in Edinburgh, and some ‘notable’ missing venues. - Brian Ferguson explores why in today’s Scotsman, speaking to Fringe organisers, who said the event has had a ‘show of confidence’ from artists and performers.
“We’ve never really been interested in growth and scale, but there is a critical mass that makes this festival quite magical.” - Lyndsey Jackson, deputy chief executive of the Fringe Society.
By complete coincidence, but perhaps as a reflection of the current cultural funding landscape, the next three links are about people-powered fundraising efforts:
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