Fringe mustn’t price itself out of the market - Karen Koren

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has come to an end and it feels like it’s been the longest month ever.

Grace Campbell performs at the Gilded Balloon

It started with a glorious heatwave and wonderful optimism that the biggest arts festival in the world had returned and ended up with Edinburgh being knee deep in overflowing, stinking rubbish all over the city, due to a bin strike.

The big clean-up has started too late for the mass exodus of the city. It’s embarrassing that the rubbish was allowed to build up, especially when there were so many artists, audiences and tourists in the city.

We all tried very hard to ignore it but it was nearly impossible as more and more waste began to spread out of the over-stuffed bins.

There was sympathy for the strikers as they deserve their pay rise – but with the rising cost of accommodation in the city and other rising costs, we run the risk of the performers and tourists alike abandoning Edinburgh for other more affordable destinations in future.

It is imperative that we make it affordable for visitors to come to Edinburgh and especially for the wonderful performers that bring their work to Edinburgh in August. On top of these issues there are the challenges of not being able to find experienced staff capable of running all the temporary venues that exist during August.

Skilled production and technical workers are in short supply and we need to look at retraining workers to keep our venues running smoothly. This year was going to be a difficult year, we knew that because ithas been almost three years since the last full festival in August 2019 and the fact that many experienced staff retrained in different fields and we had all new teams taking on the unknown.

This year we did have some of the most amazing shows ever. The talent that came to Edinburgh was some of the best it’s ever been and proved that our Festival is unique.

We have to be incredibly careful that we do not price ourselves out of the market and lose what the Fringe has achieved over the past 75 years.

Many had a great time and we got through the highs and lows and I believe we will come back stronger in August 2023 invigorated and ready to take on the world’s biggest arts festival once again.