Festivals

Edinburgh Festival Fringe producers have received financial support to help them recover and remain resilient following the Covid-19 pandemic. 

A total of 13 Edinburgh Festival Fringe producers have been awarded a share of £1.275m from the Fringe 2022 Resilience Fund, financed by the Scottish Government and distributed by Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society.

Venues in receipt of the money are Assembly, BlundaBus, Gilded Balloon, Greenside, Just The Tonic, Laughing Horse, Monkey Barrell Comedy, Pleasance, Scottish Comedy Festival, Summerhall, theSpaceUK, Underbelly and ZOO.

A further £305k has been allocated to support the ongoing resilience of the Fringe Society, which includes £55k to support the delivery of street events during August.

Shona McCarthy, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: “It’s fair to say that the last few years have been the most challenging in our festival’s history. 

"Now, as we prepare to enter our 75th anniversary year, creatives across the Fringe landscape are working hard to ensure that this incredible festival not only survives, but continues to work hard to be the best version of itself.

“This support from Scottish Government is absolutely vital in helping us to achieve that goal: allowing producers and creatives across the landscape to not only recover from the devastating effects of the pandemic, but to offer enhanced support to artists, workers and volunteers; to continue to programme creative and innovative work; to improve accessibility; to tackle affordability and to ensure that this festival remains true to its founding principles of openness and inclusivity.”

Only around one in 10 headline acts at the leading UK music festivals taking place this summer will be women, a study has found.

A BBC study focusing on 50 of the biggest UK festivals found that out of 200 headline acts only 26 (13%) were an all-female band or solo artist whereas 149 (74.5%) were either an all-male band or solo artist.

Meanwhile 24 acts (12%) had a mixed line-up of male and female performers, and one (0.05%) artist identified as non-binary.

This is despite many events previously promising to achieve a 50/50 gender balance across their line-ups by 2022.

Maggie Rogers, a singer/songwriter who will be performing at Latitude Festival this summer, said: "What I come to music for - as a fan and artist - is community and to feel part of something, and I think community functions at its best when it feels inclusive.

"When that doesn't happen - when the line-ups reiterate imbalances that exist in gender and race and class - it's not surprising, but it's certainly not ideal."

Eighteen galleries across the UK have received support from the Art Fund to help curators visit London Gallery Weekend 2022.

The grants will go towards travel and accommodation costs for the event, which takes place this weekend (13-15 May).

The charity said it hopes the scheme will help create new and stronger connections between museums across the UK, London galleries and the artists they support.

Director Jenny Waldman said: “It felt like it was a really good moment to bring people back together.”

“The damage that has been done by the pandemic means that people have not been travelling to see work, travelling to meet each other.”

A new year-long festival will encourage artists and audiences to view their cities through the eyes of their homeless residents.

Streetwise Opera will commission nine composers, three choreographers, three designers and a filmmaker to work with more than 200 people who have been homeless for the festival, titled Re:sound. 

Working in London, Nottingham and Manchester, they aim to co-create nine micro-operas to be performed in March 2023.

The charity is partnering with organisations that address homelessness to expand its reach and create connections between artists and participants. Six of the operas will be written and composed in hostels and day centres.

“Staying creative is very important when you are recovering from homelessness, because it lightens your heart and inspires you to achieve more,” said Denise Alison, a participant in weekly workshops run by Streetwise Opera at the Southbank Centre. 

Streetwise’s Artistic Director Martin Constantine said the participating artists have “the ambition to reimagine the boundaries of opera and co-create work that aims to invite audiences, especially those who may think that opera is not for them, to rediscover their cities through a different lens”.

Cardiff Council Leader Huw Thomas says he will bring a new music festival to the city if he is reelected in May.

The Labour councillor says Cardiff's music strategy includes developing a music event to “do through music for Cardiff what drama has done for Edinburgh”.

Cardiff's live music scene has experienced mixed fortunes over the course of the pandemic. Several music venues close down, including Gwdihw, Buffalo and Dempseys, while Cardiff Castle was used as a live venue for the first time last summer. The city also recently hosted BBC’s Six Music Festival for the first time.

Thomas said: “It’s still in part under wraps for now but I think those gigs in the Castle and the Six Music Festival are exactly the foretaste of what [the festival] could be like."

Organisations in York that were negatively affected by Covid-19 are being encouraged to apply to a new grants scheme.

Awards of up to £10,000 are available to events and festivals to deliver activity planned for 2020 or 2021 this year. Applicants must demonstrate how their event supports economic recovery and the York Culture Strategy.

Funding has been provided by York City Council to Make it York from the authority's Additional Restrictions Grant allocation.

"Make It York have designed a quick turnaround grant-giving process, which opens from today (March 24), and we're looking forward to receiving applications," Managing Director Sarah Loftus said.

Applications close April 7, with successful organisations to be notified by the end of the month.

Fifty creative professionals will develop an immersive storytelling experience as one of the 10 commissioned projects for UNBOXED 2022.

Billed as the biggest project of its kind ever in the UK, StoryTrails will use augmented and virtual reality to reanimate public spaces in 15 locations across the country this summer.

The recruited creatives will co-produce, design and write the project, with support from StoryFutures Academy, the UK’s National Centre for Immersive Storytelling.

UNBOXED Chief Creative Officer Martin Green says the creatives were recruited from diverse backgrounds: “In doing so, they are playing a vital role in building a dynamic future workforce for the creative industries in the UK.”

StoryTrails will run between July 1 and September 18, culminating in a film presented in cinemas and on BBC iPlayer.