The Sydney Fringe


The Sydney Fringe is an alternative arts and culture festival held for the first time in September 2010 in the inner west of Sydney, Australia.
The Fringe is an initiative of the Newtown Entertainment Precinct Association. It is the largest alternative visual and performing arts event in NSW. It encompasses genres such as stand-up comedy, music, theatre, cabaret, visual arts, and burlesque, though shows and events that are not easily labelled in that manner are highly encouraged; evidence of this in past years has included podcast recordings and indie video game events. It is billed as "a time for risk, discovery and adventure a three week celebration of the strange and the beautiful."
The Sydney Fringe, began as a curated festival as opposed to an open access "unjuried" festival. In 2012, festival director Richard Hull implemented the open access festival model, whereby the visual arts is now the only curated element.
The Sydney Fringe typically operates in a festival precinct encompassing a number of venues in the Newtown/Marrickville/Enmore area, with a few other venues in the wider Sydney area, including Leichhardt, Parramatta, Oxford Street and the City. In a departure from previous years, where venues registered with the Fringe in the same manner as artists, the Fringe 2013 team have selected a list of over 60 Sydney venues, for artists to then communicate and draw up contracts with.

Previous Sydney Fringe Festivals

The Sydney Fringe Festival ran from 1994 to 2002 in Bondi, founded by producer Victoria Harbutt and Megan Donnelly who were assisted fantastically by Cathy Carlsson, Sylvia DeAngelis, Gil Summons and Lucia Mastrantone” for four years and Katrina Sedgwick for one year. The Live Bait Festival, a successor to the Sydney Fringe Festival, also operated out of Bondi from 2003–2004 and was co-produced by Michael Cohen and Glenn Wright.