FRINGE WORLD Means Big Business

FRINGE WORLD Festival has launched its 2019 Impact Report, revealing that the Festival recorded 15% box office sales growth from the previous year, achieving free and ticketed attendance of more than 850,000 and more than $12 million in box office sales.

Across a global landscape of more than 200 Fringe festivals where all of the largest are experiencing significant annual growth, FRINGE WORLD maintained its status in 2019 as the third-largest Fringe on the planet.

FRINGE WORLD’s Impact Report has annually tracked the outcomes of the Festival since 2012 using methodology developed with BOP Consulting UK; a leading international agency for cultural impact reportage. 

Minister for Culture and the Arts David Templeman launched the Impact Report and said that FRINGE WORLD has a strong record of delivering positive social and economic benefits to WA communities.

“It’s a Festival that Western Australians take great pride in being part of; from the thousands of local participating artists to the hundreds of thousands of audience members,” Minister Templeman said.

“The Fringe has also shown that the arts can mean big business, with the stimulated spend and impact generated by the 2019 Festival surpassing $100 million. For every $1 invested by the WA state government in Fringe, $80 was stimulated and spent in the local economy with 2,205 FTE jobs being created through this activity. This is a terrific result for the Festival and the state.”

The 2019 Festival featured 674 events at 169 venues located in 39 different suburbs in metropolitan Perth and regional WA and and delivered more than $10 million in payments to participating artists and arts companies. For WA artists, FRINGE WORLD continues to be the largest annual performance platform occurring in the local cultural ecology. More than 3,500 artists participated in the 2019 Festival, of which 74% were from WA.

FRINGE WORLD Festival Director Amber Hasler said that the Festival is an important platform that supports the local cultural ecology through direct presentation opportunities for local artists.

“FRINGE WORLD is also a Festival that delivers significant flow-on benefits for the WA cultural community and sector, through growing engagement with a mainstream and non-traditional arts market that, through Fringe, give cultural consumption a go,” Ms Hasler said. 

The organisation behind FRINGE WORLD is Artrage Inc, a not-for-profit registered charity that, according to the Business News BNiQ Arts and Culture 2019 Report, is currently ranked first in relation to total patron engagement in the State arts and cultural landscape and second in terms of annual turnover.

The 2019 Festival marked the final chapter in retired Artrage CEO Marcus Canning’s 17 year history with the organisation.

“Launching and rapidly growing such a game-changer of a festival with a dedicated FRINGE WORLD team has been a thrilling adventure. To have assisted Artrage to grow its annual turnover of less than $350K in 2002 to over $25 million in 2019 will continue to be a source of great pride,” Mr Canning said.

“It’s a great time to welcome the next Artrage chief. The organisation has never been stronger and the future is looking dazzingly bright for FRINGE WORLD.”

Artrage CEO Sharon Burgess commences in September after completing the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe season, where she is Managing Director of one of the largest and oldest multi-venue Fringe producers, Assembly.

“I am honoured to have been appointed as the new CEO of Artrage, a company I have always admired. I look forward to building on the exceptional work by Marcus Canning and continuing to shape and grow Artrage’s position in the cultural landscape of WA and beyond,” Ms Burgess said.

The findings of the Impact Report show that the Festival’s positive impact across cultural, social, civic and economic terrains are ongoing with positive indicators for further growth in the scale and reach of its programs.

The primary source of evidence supporting the Impact Report are comprehensive surveys with more than 5,000 responses. Key results revealed in the Impact Report include:

• 96% of artists would recommend Perth as a place to visit
• 92% of audiences believe their FRINGE WORLD visit has made it more likely they would attend more arts events in the future
• 84% of audiences think FRINGE WORLD increases their pride in Perth as a city
• 78% believe FRINGE WORLD is one of the top five best things about Perth.
• 94% of artists are likely to recommend FRINGE WORLD to other artists.

In the state arts and cultural landscape Artrage Inc is ranked 11th in relation to levels of state Government investment with only 5% of annual revenue made up of state funding, it. With increased funding, Artrage and FRINGE WORLD are geared to deliver even more for the people of Western Australia as the Festival commences to build FRINGE WORLD as the Edinburgh Fringe of Asia within a 10+ year timeline.

Click here to read the Impact Report.

The 2019 FRINGE WORLD Impact Report was launched at Girls School, which is home to a winter pop-up cinema. Girls School Cinema. Open now, the pop-up season runs Wednesdays to Sundays til 12 October 2019 with a program of blockbuster and crowd-pleasing films. 

The open-access Festival will open for event and venue registrations in July.