First look at the new home of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society

The Scotsman

Arts correspondent Brian Ferguson speaks to Lyndsey Jackson, deputy chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, on the new home it is creating in a former school building.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Brian Ferguson, Arts Correspondent at the Scotsman. I'm here with Lindsay Jackson,

00:07Deputy Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, and we are in your new headquarters,

00:12Lindsay. This must be a big moment.

00:14Yeah, it is. It's delightful to be in what is going to be the new Fringe Central, and

00:20actually at this point in time, the future potential of this project is amazing, so it's

00:24very exciting to be here, if not a little chilly.

00:26So you're in the building today for an open day. Tell us a bit about what's going to be

00:32happening in the building between now and you've been fully operational and open to

00:36the public.

00:37Yeah, so over the next year, a year-ish, we're going to take away all of the things in the

00:43building that have been put in temporarily. For those of you who've never been, it's an

00:47old school, so it's a beautiful square building cut up into lots of other lovely little squares,

00:53and our plan is to modernise and future-proof the building, so we've got two key pillars.

00:58One is around sustainability and one is around accessibility, so we will be restoring this

01:03former school back to its former glory, so we'll be taking out fossil fuels, installing

01:09a heat pump, new lights, new heat, new windows that are heritage-appropriate but fit for

01:13the future. We'll be installing a lift, changing places, toilet. There's going to be a lot

01:17of very busy people in this building over the next year or so, just really making it

01:22ready for the future, so we're less interested in shiny chrome veneers and more about what

01:28bits of the building we can keep, so you can see behind us some of this panelling. All

01:31of this will be stripped and put back, so we're really just going to restore it back

01:34to its former beauty and its former function, actually. The best thing about getting a building

01:39like this is it's so useful and we can do so much with it for ourselves but also for

01:43the wider Fringe community.

01:44Will a lot of the spaces in the building be quite flexible to be able to use them for

01:48different things throughout the year?

01:50Yeah, so our priority, especially because building projects can get quite expensive,

01:54our priority with the investment that we've been given is really about making the building

01:58as functional as possible, so we're not over-designing, we're not over-engineering. We want to keep

02:02things as flexible and as dynamic as possible, so whether that's office space, rehearsal

02:06space, shared working space, other space for artists to do rehearsal aerial work, as flexible

02:13and as dynamic as possible and as efficient as possible. We don't want to end up with

02:17a huge overhead for running a building, so if we can keep it warm, keep it tight and

02:21cosy then hopefully it will last us for many years to come.

02:24To what extent will this building be open to the public and also open and accessible

02:29to artists and arts organisations who are based in Edinburgh year-round?

02:34I mean, those two things are key pillars of the programme, so as the charity responsible

02:39for supporting the festival and its open access principle, it's really important to us that

02:44the building belongs back to the city and part of our case for taking over this building

02:49was we wanted to put it back to use, so the doors will be open all day, every day to anybody

02:54that wants to come in, whether that's because you want to hide from the rain or you want

02:57to look at some of the cool stuff we've put on the wall or you need to use the bathroom.

03:01Think of it like a library, people can come and go and there's no obligation for people

03:05to engage with us at any point, they just can use it as they want to. The outside space

03:09is similar, we want to really open that up to the city to use, it gets 16 hours of sunlight

03:14in the summer, it's enormous, so much potential and we don't need all that parking, let's

03:19give it back to the people of the city who just need somewhere quiet to eat their lunch

03:23or somewhere to sit down, let the kids run around and we're not going to be precious

03:28about it, so we know that the buildings of schools, it's very functional, it's very hard-wearing

03:31and we want people to use this building, so rehearsal space and working space will be

03:36ring-fenced for Edinburgh's performing arts community and we'll make that as affordable

03:39as we possibly can, so that the building is being used all the time for connection

03:44and creativity and people having good ideas and trying things out and experimenting, because

03:49that's entirely what The Fringe is about and that's very, very exciting.

03:53To what extent will people be able to learn a bit about the history of The Fringe? It's

03:58not that easy to find out the full history of The Fringe, are you going to be able to

04:02reflect that a bit more here than you've been able to in the past?

04:05Yeah, we've got tons of wall space in which to tell stories, but one element of the project

04:10is a new archive space, so our ambitions at the moment are to understand where all the

04:16history of The Fringe is, bring some of it into this building, but also be able to signpost

04:20people to it better and also realise some of the shared resources, so everybody's got

04:26lovely stories about The Fringe, so it's as important as posters from the 70s, as capturing

04:32the couple that met and got married after they're doing a Fringe show together, so in

04:36the spring we'll be undertaking an archive and oral history project in which to bring

04:41some of those stories into the building and then they'll live here, and we'll also have

04:45space for people who are doing research on The Fringe to come in and borrow old books

04:50or look at old things, as well as hopefully a digital resource that houses all of that,

04:54because people always ask us questions about The Fringe and people always have different

04:57ways of trying to navigate the stories of it, so our job is to help facilitate as much

05:01access to that information and doing it in this building just gives us another space

05:05in which to do that, so I'm hoping that a history of The Fringe around our walls, we've

05:10got plenty of them to put artwork on, very cool.

05:13And just tell us, if everything goes according to plan, when is the earliest you think you

05:17might be fully operational here at this point?

05:20Our current opening will be January 2026, and it's all on programme, it's all on schedule,

05:28building projects are always complicated, but we've got a really, really incredible

05:31design and construction team who are rooted in the values of what we're doing and really

05:35know that we're keen to be in as soon as possible, so for the festival it will be Fringe 2026,

05:42so give us 2025 to spruce you up a little bit and you're welcome to join us at the opening

05:47party in 2026.

05:48Looking forward to it, thank you very much, Lindsay Jackson, cheers.

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