Scotsman Fringe Award winners revealed in full as festival boss makes 'powerful' statement on event's future

The figurehead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has urged the UK and Scottish governments to work together to safeguard the future of the event.

Fringe Society chief executive Shona McCarthy said collective action was needed to help artists and companies who are finding it “more and more challenging” to stage shows at the event.

She said more action was needed to reduce the cost of accommodation in the city during the 77-year-old festival.

Ms McCarthy suggested the festival was having to “work against” a policy environment that was causing more problems for the arts industry.

She said she wanted to see UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy and Scottish culture secretary “get their heads together to tackle some of the major issues facing the Fringe and “find a way to bloody well support it properly.”

Fringe Society chief executive Shona McCarthy. | National World

The Fringe Society is among more than 160 organisations to back an open letter expressing “deep and grave concern” over a Creative Scotland decision to shut down its main fund for artists at the end of this month after more than £10m worth of government funding was cancelled or put on hold.

The Scotsman Fringe Awards saw the announcement of several special end-of-festival honours, including the Holden Street Theatres Award, which will send two Fringe shows down under to the Adelaide Fringe.

Khawla Ibraheem stars in the Traverse Theatre show A Knock On The Roof. | Alex Brenner

Writer and performer Alex Hill was recognised for his one-man Underbelly show Why I Stuck a Flare Up My A*** for England, about two die-hard football fans. Playwright and performer Khawla Ibraheem and director Oliver Butler were also honoured for Traverse Theatre show A Knock on the Roof, which focuses on a young Palestinian mother living in Gaza when the Israeli assault on Gaza begins.

Hill said: “I’m a bit shell-shocked to be honest. I don’t really know what it is going on. I feel quite emotional as I wrote this piece just as I was coming out of drama school and now it’s going down under. It’s unbelievable.

Butler said: “This is my first time in Edinburgh and I cannot believe I’ve not been here before. I don’t really choose projects to work on, I choose people. Khawla and I met and she has become an artistic soul mate. This play has transformed me in incredible ways.”

Khawla Ibraheem also won the Filipa Braganca Award, which was set up in memory of a gifted young performer who died in 2016 and recognises the best female solo performance at the festival, for A Knock on the Roof.

She said: “I’m very happy, thankful and honoured to be surrounded by so many powerful performances by women, stories about women, and women who are writing and directing at this festival. This is for all of us.”

The Brighton Fringe Award, which offers a slot to a Fringe show the following year, went to Ugly Sisters, an Underbelly show addressing the challenges of identifying as a feminist today.

Performer Laurie Ward said: “It’s really hard making work right now and quite hard to feel that you’re part of a scene. It’s really incredible that for a whole month we all really get to feel that we have a scene.”

The Mental Health Foundation Award - dedicated to Tim Cornwell, former arts correspondent at the Scotsman - was won by Leah Shelton’s Traverse show Bats**t, an exploration of “female madness”.

The Scotsman theatre critic Joyce McMillan, who hosted the awards, told the audience the cancellation of the Creative Scotland fund for artists had sent a “big shockwave” through the arts community and called for it to unite to campaign against the “climate of austerity” in the arts.

She said: “I was lucky enough to grow up in a post-war period when governments were free and able to invest in their people. We have to stay together to work across the arts and public sectors to campaign for a new system in which governments are more able to invest in the health, education, creativity and imagination of people. 

“When you think about some of the crises we now face, those are the only things which are going to help us to move forward.”

Speaking at the awards, Ms McCarthy said: “The event has been an extraordinary testament to the risks that have been taken by the artists, producers, venues and technicians at this massive, crazy thing that we’re all involved in.

"Our core values are about ensuring that artists thrive, being open to all and looking out for each other. Our collective mantra is to give anyone a stage and everyone a seat. That’s a much easier thing to say than it is to do. It is getting more and more challenging.

"We’ve done everything in our power to address the sheer costs involved in coming to the festival, including creating our Keep It Fringe Fund, which we are enormously proud of. We’ve given out 180 bursaries of £2,500 to artists this year and will do the same thing next year. We are also working our a***s off to source affordability accommodation in this city.

"But it all feels at times as if we’re having to work against the policy environment. Things keep coming out which make it even more difficult. Collectively, we’ve all got a job to ensure that working-class artists, artists of colour and anyone who faces a barrier can come here and be part of this festival.

"We know that [UK culture secretary] Lisa Nandy was in Edinburgh this week and met [SNP minister] Angus Robertson.

"Surely to God it is not beyond the power of those two politicians to get their heads together, to realise what is all around them in this city at this moment, realise that it is life-changing and life-enhancing, and find a way to bloody well support it properly.”