Fringe World

The tradition & historical record

Fringe World, or Fringe World Festival, is an annual multi-arts fringe festival held in Perth, Western Australia during the city's summer festival season of January/February. The annual program of events features artists and acts from a range of styles including circus, cabaret, comedy, music, dance, theatre, film and visual art. ¹

The Festival Fringe Society of Perth was established in 1983 and was the forerunner to the Fringe World Festival. The Society held an annual Fringe Festival up until 1988 at which time the organisation decided to move the Fringe from summer to spring and to re-brand it as Artrage, an annual festival dedicated to the presentation of alternative independent arts – a format that was followed until the organisation's 25th "Silver" festival anniversary in 2008. Shortly after this time Artrage began consulting with stakeholders and the wider arts community in Perth around the idea of reintroducing a genuine independent "fringe" to the Perth summer. This led to the presentation of a pilot Fringe program in February 2011, staged in the newly purchased De Parel Spiegeltent in the Perth Cultural Centre. The pilot Festival featured 23 events at six venues and there were 12,000 tickets sold. ¹

The 2012 Festival was the first full Fringe World Festival, held from 26 January to 19 February. The Festival presented over 200 events running across 40 traditional and non-traditional venues in Perth. ¹

The 2013 Festival extended one week more than in 2012 and was held from 25 January to 24 February. Ticketed attendance at the 2013 Festival was over 120,000 and the program featured more than 300 events at more than 60 venues. The total free and ticketed attendance was over 215,000 and over $2 million was spent at the box office. The majority of events in the 2011–2013 Fringe World Festivals were held in Northbridge and the Perth CBD, but more specifically at several pop-up performance venues (including De Parel Spiegeltent) in the Perth Cultural Centre. ¹

In 2014 Fringe World revealed that it would be expanding its presence in Northbridge with another site of venues to be held in Russell Square, Perth, which would be transformed into The Pleasure Garden for the Festival's duration. The 2014 Festival was held from 24 January to 23 February and featured 1,788 participating artists, 418 free and ticketed events, 80 venues, free and ticketed attendance of over 370,000 and box office sales of over $3.2 million. ¹

The 2015 Fringe World Festival was held from 23 January to 22 February and was billed as "31 Days of Perthect", featuring a program of more than 500 events at over 100 venues throughout the Perth metropolitan area. The 2015 Festival featured The Gold Digger, a new custom-designed pop-up venue in the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia courtyard, that presented a program of Australian and international comedy talent as part of the Fringe Comedy Central program. The Gold Digger was presented by the Perth Theatre Trust as part of a long-term collaboration with Fringe World. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Fringe World”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Fringe World is annual multi-arts fringe festival held in Perth, Western Australia, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²