Fair play
Fringe of Colour founder Jess Brough tells us how they’re working for a more equitable arts scene.
Words by Arusa Qureshi
Illustration by Jemima Muir
In August, the city of Edinburgh becomes every creative’s favourite playground, devoted to the celebration of art in its varying forms and guises. From death-defying circus companies and drag superstars to internationally renowned musicians and local street performance legends, the Edinburgh Festivals have provided a hotbed of talent since the very first edition of the International Festival in 1947. Despite the emphasis on expression, spirit and collective revelry though, the attention to inclusivity is something that has notably fallen short, whether that be for participants, spectators, or indeed both. Discussions around diversity at the Fringe and its sister festivals have amped up in recent years, led largely by individuals and initiatives questioning exactly who has access to and who truly benefits from this annual flood of culture to the capital.
Fringe of Colour has been a pivotal force in the interrogation of the often insular landscape of the Edinburgh Festivals, having been founded in 2018 by Jessica Brough to highlight the scarcity of shows by people of colour at the Fringe. “After speaking to artists about what they needed,” Jess explains, “I found that a big issue many of them were facing at the Fringe was performing to an almost always white audience for three weeks and not having that audience to connect with or seeing people in the audience that were represented by the work they were making.”
Starting life as a database of shows collated by Jess, Fringe of Colour grew into a free ticket scheme offering people of colour the opportunity to attend shows by performers of colour at the Fringe and beyond. But like all other organisations, the Fringe of Colour team were forced to rethink any plans they had made earlier in the year as a result of the cancellation of all the major cultural festivals in the city, and from this, Fringe of Colour Films was born. “It came purely out of necessity,” Jess says of this year’s revamped happenings. “With performance opportunities being lost due to the Fringe being cancelled, we wanted to create paid work and create a platform for people to showcase that work.”
For the entirety of August, Fringe of Colour Films hosted over 40 films made by people of colour, as well as live conversations and a platform for writers to respond to the work programmed by the festival. For Jess, it was vital in ensuring that any prior progress wouldn’t be rolled back due to the ongoing effects of Covid-19. But it also gave audiences something to engage with, removing the possibility of a creative drought over summer as venues remained shut and events cancelled.
“Putting something like that on for so long was really tough but it was necessary – we didn't want to shove everything into the one week, we needed each performance to have its time to shine. And we wanted to replicate that excitement of August and have something that you could look forward to for a full month.”
With a few months having now passed since Jess and the team launched their fully virtual festival, Jess is able to reflect on Fringe of Colour Films’ success, as well as recognise the upsides of the shift to digital. ‘What I thought was really cool about the platform was how many people were watching from outside the UK. I got very into looking at the stats by location and that to me is one of the most positive outcomes of going online.”
With close to 700 people signing up for passes over August and audiences engaging with content daily on Twitter, Fringe of Colour Films exceeded expectations and also proved that there is an appetite for this kind of work and for this sense of community. For Jess, a significant personal highlight was the films that the team themselves commissioned for the programme. ‘Inviting artists to make that work and giving them the space to do what they wanted with it, and then to be able to go and shout about it was pretty amazing.” And for the artists involved, it wasn’t just a simple case of being included on a programme; Fringe of Colour Films offered a much-needed outlet for their creativity which the pandemic had generally eliminated.
It’s true that there will likely be lasting damage on the creative industries because of the consequences of 2020. Even though as an industry the mood appears hopeful for a return to some form of normalcy, artists and performers acknowledge a need to evolve and think about their practice differently. With this awareness, conversations around the establishment and gatekeepers have only accelerated as our whole cultural ecosystem erodes around us.
“The idea of equality requires people to give up their power,” Jess says when asked about the future of the arts and our creative landscape. “And that's not what anyone wants to do because that's the only thing that they have. You need to be a bit more revolutionary about it. I’m interested in small organisations or grassroots organisations who are thinking about what to create for themselves that doesn't rely on these people or these structures.”
Jess is optimistic for the future of Fringe of Colour and how the festival will develop alongside the ever-changing environment of the arts. But, as Jess notes, it’s also fair to say that there are too many unknowns at this stage to make any solid long-term plans. “I'm glad that we were able to create something that I think has the potential to continue beyond Covid-19. I would like to keep going with the work that we started. I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, but I'm really interested in working out how we can make the platform more available to people, more accessible to different audiences. I feel hopeful that people are going to be very inventive with how they move through this and how they sustain themselves creatively.”
As their response to 2020 proves, Fringe of Colour will carry on thriving with or without the surrounding infrastructure of the Edinburgh Festivals. Above all else, Jess knows that the widespread support the platform has received will keep the dialogue around access, diversity and anti-racism going, regardless of the impact of Covid. With the current precarious nature of the arts, it’s crucial that we continue to underline the work of such platforms that place a spotlight on the artists, performers and audiences whose future within this creative playground perhaps remains the most uncertain.
