The Adelaide Fringe Festival is an arts festival held annually in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. The event is the Southern Hemisphere's largest arts event and the second-largest fringe festival in the world,[1] second in size only to the Edinburgh Fringe.[2] Prior to the year 2007, the Adelaide Fringe was a biennial event, occurring in even-numbered years to coincide with the Adelaide Festival of Arts.
The festival is run over 24 days and nights in February and March of every year and includes hundreds of cabaret, comedy, dance, theatre, music, and visual arts events. Festival highlights include an opening night party, parade and concert, street theatre, the Garden of Unearthly Delights and Fringe Family Weekend.
The AFF attracts interstate and overseas visitors: 18% percent of the Fringe’s 1,004,440 audience members are visitors to the city.[3]
As an open-access festival, anyone can perform or apply. Artists pay a one-off registration fee to the Fringe as well as pay the presentation costs of their performance, season, event and/or exhibition. To help participating artists present their work, the Adelaide Fringe provides information and, wherever possible, facilitates.
In 2010 the Adelaide Fringe, Festival of Arts and WOMADelaide are all occurring over the same three week period.
The Adelaide Fringe is governed by the Adelaide Fringe Board.
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The first Adelaide Fringe Festival, in 1960, came about when a few artists decided to stage their own event in response to the exclusion of many artists from the curated Adelaide Festival of Arts. It continued to be held bianually, and in 1975 the AFF became an incorporated association. In 2007 the AFF became an annual event.
Today, the AFF occurs yearly. Although the Fringe and Festival of Arts are inextricably linked, their operating organisations are separate, with different philosophies and intent.
Artists from across the globe participate alongside home-grown talent, in all art forms. Adelaide Fringe also organises its own public events.
The Adelaide Fringe does not actively seek out the events which form part of the Fringe Program and thus a vast variety of different performances can be seen. Typically the Adelaide Fringe is dominated by comedy and visual arts performances, although music, cabaret, dance and theatre also have numerous performances. It is not uncommon for one performance to contain a variety of different genres.
The Adelaide Fringe is Australia's largest open access festival hosting thousands of artists from Adelaide, Australia and the world, all needing a space to present their work. Since the very first Fringe, venues across the city and surrounds have been supporting artists by providing or transforming their venues into visual and performing art spaces. In 2009, over 250 venues opened their doors to Fringe performing and visual artists. These venues ranged from the 2000 seat theatres to the corners and function rooms of pubs, clubs, council buildings, outdoor venues, churches, cinema’s and the odd alley way.
Because of Adelaide's very strict street layout within a square mile, venues are close together, forcing patrons to cross paths on the city streets. The city's surrounding parks provide venues outside of the established and converted venues within the city itself. With the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers' Week all sharing the same spaces, there is significant opportunity for patrons to participate in events in all three festivals in those years they all run.
The Fringe includes free and priced events. Details regarding the free Opening Night Street Party, Fringe Family events and more appear in the first few pages of the Fringe Guide, which is released in January of each year. Priced events vary.
The Adelaide Fringe allows any type of artist, national or international, to perform, interact and play with their audiences. In 2009, over 530 performing and visual arts events were staged in over 250 venues across the city. Over 3000 artists registered, undertaking over 5000 individual performances, from 15 minute performances to multi-day events. There were over 1,000,000 attendances to Fringe events/venues across the 24 days of the festival.
Amongst the festival's events is the announcement of the nation-wide poster competition winner, and the launch of the winning poster.
The Adelaide Fringe began in 1960 as an alternative to the 'mainstream' Adelaide Festival of Arts. The latter was seen to offer limited opportunity for local and smaller-scale artists. The Adelaide Fringe is an open access event, allowing anyone with ideas and enthusiasm to register in the program, and so to showcase their arts to the public.[4] For many years the two events were inextricably linked and together created an atmosphere of electric excitement across the city. From 2007 onwards, the Adelaide Fringe became an annual event in its own right.[2]
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