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Sydney Fringe has revealed that it will expand into the Entertainment Quarter in Moore Park for the first time this year, as the festival releases a report that boasts a $36 million positive economic impact in 2022.
According to the external report, the festival sold more than $2 million worth of tickets, created more than 400 full-time jobs, and reached an audience of more than 75,000 people last year.
Kerri Glasscock (bottom left) with past and current Fringe performers Frankie Fearce, Alice Williams, Almitra Mavalvala and Anita Lovell.Credit: Brook Mitchell
The report amplifies the festival’s enormous growth over festival director Kerri Glasscock’s 10-year tenure, which has seen it expand from the suburbs of the inner west to hubs in the western suburbs, The Rocks and Hurstville.
In 2023, the Entertainment Quarter will be the site of the Spiegeltent Festival Garden. There, the Sydney Spiegeltent will host The Marvellous Elephant Man by Marc Lucchesi with Jayan and Sarah Nandagopan – a new Australian musical about the so-called “elephant man” John Merrick. In the 300-seat circus dome The Vault, award-winning Melbourne circus company Head First Acrobats will present their comedy-acrobatic show Godz.
“Over the last 10 years as demand has grown from our artists, we’ve looked further afield and created festival hubs and gardens like the one at EQ this year,” says Glasscock.
“We are Sydney’s festival; we are for everybody. And if we truly want to be for everybody, then we need to be as far afield as we can be. We want artists to be able to perform in their local areas to their local audiences.”
Other highlights of the first announcement include opening night party Fringe Ignite and musical theatre club Lola’s Piano Bar in The Rocks; pop-up cabaret club at Riverside Theatres in Parramatta; singer-songwriters performing for free in George Place in the CBD on Thursday mornings; an AI-generated art block party down the street at Sydney Place; and the closing party Caribe Carnaval on Kensington Street in Chippendale, boasting a line-up of about 50 Latino musicians, dancers and DJs.
Glasscock is proud of what she’s managed to achieve in her 10 years in the role of festival director.
“When I started 10 years ago, it was a very small community event that was pretty much only in the inner west. Now we’re the largest independent arts festival in the state,” she says.
“People thought Fringe was this alternative, carnivalesque, weird program that was not as good as what was on main stages. There was a real bias against it in many ways, with general public audiences and media. And we worked really hard over the last 10 years to change that narrative.”
Glasscock stresses that as the head of an open-access festival her mission is to help provide a platform for local artists to present their work. According to the report, more than 2000 artists performed at the festival in 2022, with 25 per cent of those artists in the early stages of their career.
That help is critical, considering the lack of support for independent artists outlined in the report, with only 18 per cent of artists in the 2022 festival receiving external commercial or government funding for their projects.
That support from the Fringe extends to advocacy for the independent sector in Sydney – including helping to overcome regulatory hurdles to create new spaces where artists can perform, and contributing to the national cultural policy, Revive, and the forthcoming NSW arts and cultural policy.
“I love our festival. I love being able to shine a spotlight on the sector each year and introduce audiences to artists,” says Glasscock. “But the thing that is most satisfying is being able to really make change for our artists here in Sydney so that they have sustainable and viable careers.”
Sydney Fringe runs from September 1 to 30, with the full program to be announced in July and August.
Sydney Morning Herald subscribers can enjoy 2-for-1 tickets* to the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales during June 2023. Click here for more details.
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