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EdFringe to announce this week; Creative Scotland announces funding package for creative community; Traverse shutters to June; King’s refurb on ice.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society has promised that it will be providing “definitive answers” about whether this year’s EdFringe will go ahead or not, this week (beginning March 30).
Speaking about why the decision has been delayed, Chief Executive Shona McCarthy said “public safety has been and will remain the top priority” but also recognised the need to minimise the financial impact on participants.
She explained: “As a charity, the Fringe Society’s job is to bring all the parts of the Fringe jigsaw puzzle together and, whilst we do not own or control the festival, we can consult, inform and connect people from across the Fringe to reach a collective decision about its future. Progress is being made in this area and we will continue to push for answers over the coming days.”
The King’s Theatre – planned refurb is “paused”.
Creative Scotland has announced details of three funding programmes designed to provide further support to sustain the country’s creative community during the Covid-19 outbreak.
The Creative Scotland Bridging Bursary Fund will help sustain creative practice by freelance creative professionals who have lost earnings due to the cancelation of work as a result of Covid-19. The £2 million fund will offer one-off bursary payments of between £500 and £2,500 to help support immediate needs. Applications opened on Monday 30 March.
A £1.5million Screen Scotland Bridging Bursary programme will provide one-off bursaries of £500 to £2,500 to freelance PAYE and self-employed screen sector workers who are experiencing immediate financial difficulty due to loss of income as a result of Covid-19. Applications opened on Monday 30 March 2020.
CS has revised its approach to Open Funding, with a £7.5million Sustaining Creative Development Fund to support creative practitioners to continue to develop work. Applicants will be encouraged to use funding to explore how best to sustain their practice, and reimagine their work during the current climate and in the months to come.
Funds may also be used for the development and presentation of work and will support up to 12 months of activity with a maximum award of £50,000. Applications to the fund will open on Friday 3 April.
Traverse closed to June
The Traverse has announced that it will now be closed until Sunday June 1 – at the earliest – and that all performances up until then are cancelled. All ticket holders will be contacted by email. If you have a ticket but haven’t been contacted yet, email info@traverse.co.uk with details of your booking and the Box Office team will get back to you as soon as they can.
The theatre’s Young Writers Group was held online for the first time last week and more updates about new ways to connect with the theatre are promised “soon”.
Capital Theatres, the charitable trust which runs the Kings Theatre, Edinburgh, has announced that the redevelopment project scheduled to start in September 2021 will be temporarily paused due to the impact of the coronavirus. Capital Theatres will now explore the potential of starting the project 12 months later, in September 2022.
Dame Joan Stringer, Chair of Capital Theatres, said the charity remains committed to its plans to redevelop the King’s into a modern venue, but that it needs to be “realistic and recognise that the current situation will affect our ability to deliver the project in our current timescales.”
ENDS
