Fringe in £70,000 drive to attract reluctant Glaswegians

IT IS the world’s biggest arts festival and already worth an estimated £141 million to Scotland’s economy.

Yet hardly two per cent of tickets for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe are sold in Glasgow, less than an hour’s train journey away from the capital.

Now, for the first time, a major advertising campaign, backed by public funds, is to be mounted in a bid to persuade Glaswegians to take in the Fringe.

Its first ever promotional push in the city is hoped to build momentum in the run-up to 2014, when Glasgow is hosting the Commonwealth Games just before the Fringe and persuade transport operators to extend late-night services further.

The festival has been given £70,000 from Scotland’s national arts agency for the dedicated to lure in new audiences in Glasgow.

The percentage of tickets sold there has stayed at largely the same level over the last decade despite a huge growth in the number of Fringe tickets sold during that period.

The funding - which is actually more than the festival’s annual £70,000 grant from Creative Scotland - has been awarded by the body as part of a year-long initiative to capitalise on the London Olympics.

It is thought around five per cent of Fringe tickets are sold in the west of Scotland area, compared to some 50 per cent in Edinburgh and the Lothians, and 25 per cent in the rest of the UK outwith Scotland.

More than £10 million of public funding is being ploughed into Edinburgh’s festivals this summer when many of them will be in direct competition with the Olympics for audiences.

The Scotsman revealed last month that the Fringe’s public funding had reached a record level of £410,000, compared to just £65,000 only six years ago.

Creative Scotland spokeswoman Michelle Jordan said: “Fringe research shows that less than two per cent of tickets sold last year were to audiences living in Glasgow.

“With such a huge potential audience living less than an hour away, Creative Scotland is supporting the Fringe to develop new marketing partnerships in Glasgow.

“In this, the Year of Creative Scotland, attracting new audiences to enjoy Edinburgh in August, and to return year after year, supports our objective of increasing attendances at many of Scotland’s best-known and best-loved festivals.”

Neil Mackinnon, head of external affairs at the Fringe, said: “We from from the postcodes of our ticket-buyers where they are coming from to the Fringe and the number in Glasgow has always been traditionally very low, despite the good transport links between the two cities.

“We’ll be launching the campaign well in advance of our programme launch and it will take a number of forms, but will be largely concentrated in the city of Glasgow itself.”