Bath Fringe Festival

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The Bath fringe festival is an yearly art festival in Britain. Bath Fringe was founded in 1981 as a counterbalance to the 'classical'-dominated Bath Music Festival (as then was) which was perceived to be elitist and out-of-touch with what a younger and/or local audience wanted to see and do. In many ways the Bath Fringe was a direct descendent of the legendary Walcot Festivals of the 1970s and 1980s, which had included elements of theatre outside (also outside conventional surroundings), pop festival, ‘happening’, eco-activism and local creativity, and via Bath Arts Workshop introduced a lot of creativity to the city - which was at the time pretty sleepy and run-down - and beyond.

It is among the oldest continually operating in Britain (always excepting Edinburgh) and doubtless further afield; it is also one of the larger ones (around 200 events for the last few years), though Brighton Fringe and Buxton Fringe, of the English festivals, both contain more events (...and the three places have a lot more in common than just an initial letter). Bath Fringe is early in the season, appearing on the calendar around the late May Bank Holiday, running for 17 days (and sometimes a few more) at the end of May and beginning of June.


Organisation

The 1981 vintage version hit the buffers, mostly for financial reasons, having shrunk to less than a dozen events by 1991–1992, when the reins were taken up by a new group, a cooperative of local artists, promoters, venue managers and audience members. Though most of the individuals involved have changed, that is still its general constitution today. Bath Fringe tends to try and create other organisations to run specific events or strands, so has variously given birth to:

  • FAB (Fringe Arts Bath) - the visual arts part of the festival
  • Walcot Independence Day - a large and popular outdoor party with lots of local creativity
  • Streats - street, outdoor, site-specific, installations, performances in unusual spaces, who run the annual Bedlam Fair street festival, financed through the Fringe.
  • Little Fiets – green-powered and activist events like ‘The Wheel Thing’.
  • ...and others


Character

Many of the people working on events, and the committee that sets it all up, are volunteers (and those who are paid are often working cut-price), although it does have 2 part-time workers. This sort of arrangement is common among Fringes and small festival organisations.

Other characteristics true of Bath Fringe in common with classic Fringe Festivals all round the world include:

  • Most of the programme consists of people presenting their own events in their own venue or one hired for the duration – Bath Fringe does however run a core programme of high-quality street/outdoor/tented events itself.
  • An Open Access policy, not imposing artistic constraints on work that participants put on themselves.
  • The major tasks of the organisation revolve around the production of a print programme and website, and facilitating others to put on or include events.
  • Relative financial independence of any individual sponsor or venue, and of the local council or Arts Council England – although Bath Fringe does receive money from all of these.


Bath Fringe in history

The southwest holds some of Britain’s major greenfield festivals - Glastonbury, WoMaD, Big Green Gathering and others are all held within 50 miles (80 kilometres) of Bath—and the city had an important place in the development of British Pop Festivals and Free Festivals—its popular Festival credentials go back to the pioneering Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. Many of the people working at the festival (technicians, facilities) also work at the big events, and there is some crossover on performers too. Bath Fringe sits in the ‘Festival Scene’ tradition as much as in the development of Fringe Theatre, although the Walcot Festival emphasis on outdoor performance and ‘guerilla’ events put it as a pioneer in the development of what are currently called ‘Street Arts’. That’s how it is with Fringes: the best of them take on local characteristics and traditions rather than running to a formula.

See also

Fringe Theatre

External Links

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