Central Returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
With 2022 marking the momentous 75th anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Central staff, students and alumni have been hard at work preparing and taking their shows to the festival. Central was especially excited to be back at the Fringe this year, in person for the first time since 2019, to celebrate this work and to welcome members of our community to the annual Central in Edinburgh Party.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival, a hive of performance and creativity taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland for three weeks each August.
Every year, the Fringe welcomes performers from across the globe to present thousands of shows across hundreds of venues around the city. Over four million people descend on Edinburgh throughout August to attend both the Fringe and the Edinburgh International Festival, and there really is something happening around every corner. The Fringe provides a launching pad for new talent and emerging companies, with many works commissioned as a result of their showing at the festival.
Central’s students, staff and alumni have a long association with the Fringe, bringing an array of work to Edinburgh each year. Central, in turn, travels to the Fringe every August to support, promote and celebrate their work, and to host a gathering for our community at the festival.
This year, we were excited to welcome over 150 incoming and current students, graduates and friends to this gathering, which was generously hosted by our friends at the Fringe, Assembly. The event also featured speeches from Central’s Principal, Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE, Assembly Founder and Director and Honorary Fellow of Central William Burdett-Coutts, and Central academics Professor Sally Mackey and Jessica Bowles.
This year’s Festival featured over 80 shows (that we know about!) with involvement from members of the Central community, and information about more shows is coming in all the time. You can find the full Central in Edinburgh listings page for the Fringe on our website.
To mark Central’s return to the Fringe, and to celebrate the festival’s 75th birthday, we are also pleased to release a bonus episode of the Discover Central Podcast featuring students and graduates Will Sebag-Montefiore, Adwitha Arumugam, Sam Law and Aadar Malik, and hosted by Central’s Alumni and Events Manager Shaun Northover. This episode provides a special, behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to bring a show to the festival and offers advice for performers and creatives who are considering taking part.
You can listen to our Bonus Episode: Central in Edinburgh 2022 and to the entire catalogue of Discover Central episodes on our website or wherever you normally listen to your podcasts.
Best of luck to everyone taking part in this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe – and we look forward to seeing you again next year!
