Edinburgh Fringe is the largest international performance festival in the world.
The city’s streets burst with creativity, possibility, and large amounts of choice but, in some ways, it can feel like Edinburgh Fringe is stuck in its past and refusing to reflect its present.
This year, I went to Edinburgh with my first full length theatre show, Burgerz. Although it has received positive reviews, had sold out audiences and I’ve been able to watch so many artists I love work their magic on stage in just an hour, my experience felt incomplete.
At times, Edinburgh felt… how do I put this? SO white. Like, really white. Like, I can’t quite actually comprehend how white, kind of white. Not even mild spice on Nando’s kind of white – more like ‘what is Nandos?’ kind of white.
I’ve been living in the UK all my life, working in the arts for five years and before that I had a brief cameo at a Russell Group university. I am not new to feeling like places are just for white people.
To be more accurate, I am not new to the experience of feeling isolated due to race. The arts, education systems, performance, theatre world – all of these spaces have a very prominent race problem.
So I was prepared for Edinburgh, or thought I was. The population of the city explodes during Fringe season. The vast scale, size and variety of the festival was shocking yet at some shows I still spotted only one other black person in the crowd.
The festival boasts an international array of cross-cultural arts, yet there was a few black posters in a sea of white.
Spending a month in Edinburgh with the trials of doing daily shows, press, reviews, late nights, it wasn’t my work that exhausted me, rather the elongated feeling of not seeing others that look like you occupy public space.
The nod you do to another black person when you cross them in the street was never as loud as it was in Edinburgh. It was almost like: ‘I thought I’d be kidnapped and sent to Get Out – The Sequel without knowing, but thank God you are passing me in the street – it’s just a homogenous arts festival after all.’
I’ve heard so many people of all races admit and exclaim about the Fringe’s race problem almost as if it is an unchanged characteristic. That upsets me. It is not enough to just name the problem – where is the urgency from racially privileged artists and stakeholders to change it?
I do not believe the problem starts in the city. The arts has an access problem loud and clear, the rent prices of Edinburgh and the cost of bringing work here means that for many artists it is not possible.
Yet beyond this I believe there is a culture of accepting that the whiteness of the festival is part of the package, and refusing to see how this is a disservice to culture.
Of course there are people and schemes trying to rectify this. Comedy collectives like FOC It UP are addressing white, male aspects of comedy by creating a night of comedic excellence with a lineup of Femmes of Colour.
Or notable initiatives like Fringe Of Colour, started by Jess Brough: a festival-wide database and ticket scheme that lists all the shows in Edinburgh written, performed by or starring artists of colour. They also partner with the artists and venues to offer free tickets to people of colour to see the shows.
Initiatives like this bring the whiteness of the festival into question, and aim to create important remedies to the effects whiteness can have. Personally, I’ve valued seeing the audience members brought via Fringe of Colour to my shows, hearing their responses, and their excitement at attending.
Not only is this not enough, however, I wonder why the responsibility to solve arts’ racial problem, and the Fringe’s in particular, is always placed on those already exhausted by the issue? And more often than not, forcing people of colour to do it without financial support from those causing the problem.
I am not saying all buildings and institutions are not trying but it certainly does not feel urgent. Organisers on their own cannot solve the racial gap in this festival, it needs to be a city wide and sector wide commitment, treated as a top priority.
Fringe of Colour should not need to fundraise to create their scheme – the festival and institutions should recognise what giving Fringe of Colour funding, time and resource could do to help solve a problem.
The festival should hold public discussion, forum and trackable commitments to what is being done to lessen the racial equity gap, and the whiteness of the festival must stop being used as a quick passing comment, and rather an admittance of failure, and one that we all have a stake in solving.
Because when a festival is not serving everyone, does not include everyone, has an issue as glaring as this, then it is failing.
So much of culture, the arts, what we see in performance and live work derives from the history and present practices of people of colour and when a festival does not reflect this it cannot be seen as accurately reflecting what the art form is.
Yesterday I saw OUT by Rachael Young with Malik Nasdhad Sharpe, a Black queer dance piece exploring queerness and the Caribbean. The (full) audience and I were floored, stunned, and transfixed by such beautiful work.
I left the room wishing I could see more, watch others, be spoiled by a festival with choice – and unfortunately, at this moment in time, it is not the case.
MORE: How I survive Edinburgh Fringe
MORE: We can no longer accept LGBTQ solidarity that stops at a TV screen, stage or meme
MORE: Vagina blimp to fly after illustration of female genitals banned at Edinburgh Fringe Festival
