AUDIENCE TO HAVE THEIR SAY ON FRINGE COVER
This year, for the first time ever, the world’s largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is inviting audience members to play a role in designing the cover for its programme.
The Edinburgh Fringe operates on an open access basis. This means that anyone with an idea and a vision can bring a show to Edinburgh. This principle is the beating heart of the Fringe and organisers are keen to see it reflected in the design for the programme.
This year, the cover of the Fringe programme will emerge from a unique collaboration between the Fringe Society, a Scottish illustrator and the audience.
On Thursday and Friday of this week (25 and 26 March) Fringe audience members from around the world will be able to suggest via Twitter the most unusual thing they would like to see at the Fringe. Scottish artist and illustrator Johanna Basford will then draw the suggestions and incorporate them into a canvas, which will eventually take shape as the cover for the 2010 Fringe Programme.
To make a suggestion all a member of the public will need to do is send a message to the Fringe via Twitter www.twitter.com/edinburghfringe, and then they will be able to watch live on the internet (at www.edfringe.com) as their ideas take shape on Johanna’s canvas.
Launching the worldwide search for ideas, Fringe Society Chief Executive Kath M Mainland
said:
“The Fringe Society prints and distributes 400,000 copies of the programme every year. This iconic publication is an institution in its own right, famous the world over as the only comprehensive printed source of information about everything going on at the Fringe each year. Everywhere you look in Edinburgh, in August, people are clutching onto their Fringe Programme.
“The Edinburgh Festival Fringe operates on an open access basis. This means that anyone with an idea and a vision can bring a show to Edinburgh.
“The success of the Edinburgh Fringe over the last sixty years is, in part, due to its extraordinary ability to change with the times and absorb and illuminate changes in culture. One of the most profound changes we have seen over that time is the growth of social media. Like the Fringe, new and exciting ideas are the currency of social media. It is therefore completely natural that the Fringe should wholeheartedly embrace this extraordinary new medium.
“I am very excited to see what the outcome of this partnership between the Fringe, our audience and one of Scotland’s most talented illustrators will be.”
Commenting on the microblogging site Twitter as the project was unveiled, Johanna Basford said:
“I’m really looking forward to this. I can’t wait to start drawing people’s suggestions.”
The live event will take place from 10.00am to 10.00pm on Thursday (25 march) and Friday (26 March). It will be streamed live on the internet at www.edfringe.com.
To participate individuals can follow the Edinburgh Fringe on Twitter @edinburghfringe and for those who do not have access to Twitter suggestions can be e-mailed to [email protected].
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. The service is free to use.
The full Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme will be published in June.
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