Friday, 11 July 2008
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It's not over till its over - WIN FREE TICKETS FOR NEXT YEAR!
So, we got to the end of it, not without a few mishaps on the way (but most of them nothing really do with the festival); we’ve got some sleep, done the counting-the-money bit, i’ve been to Glastonbury, it’s time to get out and go see what our other favourite festivals are like this time round, who’s new, and start thinking about next year. It’s the second burst of big fun in this job, really, after the excitement of the Fringe itself.
We’ve paid the bills, pretty much - we’re still chasing some people who owe US money - and it looks as though we’ve done OK: in fact we’d have been in profit if the council hadn’t cut our core funding completely; so instead we’re having to spend a chunk of our reserves, our shoebox under the bed of ‘rainy day’ money that would ensure the continuity of the festival and that people who’d be really clobbered got paid if we went down badly (failing green-field festivals please note!). Yes, the Council are still making it more difficult for us to survive, not content with wasting time before the festival (time that should have been spent promoting events) in, um, “discussions” with them, and associated bureaucracy... and still no money. Can you believe they called an important ‘Future of the Fringe’ meeting the day the festival opened? How useful is that going to be, really? We always said that the funding cut was going to put future festivals, not this year’s, into jeopardy and that’s the way it’s still looking.
Well if you looked, you could already see the squeeze on our money and our time this year. The thing this year’s festival fell down on most was marketing, as it happens: no-one gives us much money to spend on that, and we have to compensate with time (which was squeezed), volunteers (a bit thin on the ground) and clever ideas (where?). Some great shows (Sweet Billy Pilgrim; the Birdman The Baron & The Bat; Doreen Thobekile; plenty more) had pathetic audiences, whilst the people with all the marketing budget, staff and time, they were getting crowds for frankly unimaginative fare packaged as something exciting.
It all comes round to the biggest of all Fringe problems: how do you get (enough) people to come and see something they haven’t heard of that they have no good way of knowing whether they’d like it? I say ‘enough’ people ‘cos some people are just up for it anyway, but they’re quite a small number in a small city and a small festival like ours. OK it’s what we’re going to have to spend some more time and more thoughts on... any ideas, join in the discussion. Go on, start the discussion, i dare you...
But anyway, to end on an up, here are my favourite shows of Fringe ‘08. Any comments welcome as ever.
• Kilter: On a beautiful sunny day, pedalling off down that lovely cycle track chatting with the characters as you go... and then the steam train pulls out at the end. A dream...
• Thomas Truax: A star. A-mazing.
• Barry Cryer: Making us laugh to jokes that are older than even he is.
• Boom Stage: Stunning quality of young local bands; lovely vibe (and Adele’s lovely garden)
• Bedlam Sunday, three of the classiest street acts out
• Top Cats: Doing ‘Lollipop’
• Martin Newell: I would say “he should be on telly,” but i don’t watch telly and it’d probably spoil him. But he should be paid the sort of money that people who are on telly get for being so much worse than he is. That ‘House in France’ poem, Bath needs that kind of cutting wit more often
• The Birdman The Baron & The Bat: utterly enchanting in a non-cosy sort of way
• Sweet Billy Pilgrim: I love ‘em anyway. One day a few more of you will. They’re headlining something at the Royal Opera House, fer fuxxake; isn’t the Spiegeltent more fun than that?
• In fact, the Spiegeltent anyway: best one we’ve had by a country mile.
Wanna help the Fringe and win free tickets for next year?
In order to help us look at modifications for Fringe 2009 (we change a little every year), in order to fully assess what just happened in ’08, we need your feedback (and, just as importantly, some of the organisations who give us money would like to know a bit more about who you all are). We’ve put up a little questionnaire on surveymonkey.com; it’s only about 20 questions so it won’t take you very long (unless you want to write us an epistle in the comments box) and it can be utterly anonymous, of course.
We’re going to put all the names of people who haven’t been anonymous completing the questionnaire into a suitably fringey hat to select three winners of free Fringe ticket packages (eg. Spiegeltent passes or tickets): we don’t know exactly what yet because we haven’t planned the events yet...
And it really really helps us: so if you enjoyed the Fringe – or even if you didn’t, or not as much as you thought you should – get onto that website and tell us about it. It’s an easy way for you, the audience, to help shape your festival, and that’s not an offer you get every day.
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