🪩 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
Welcome to the 49th edition of the Culture Minute, a weekly round-up of Edinburgh’s local creative news, events, jobs and opportunities.
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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: