Durham Fringe Festival
Durham Fringe is a grassroots organisation made up of local people, working alongside local businesses, looking to grow a collective dream of our own fringe festival in Durham City. This is our second year, and we cannot wait to welcome artists and audiences once more.
WHO WE ARE?
We started out as a group of friends, living and working in the North-East, who love Fringe Festivals and thought it would be great to create our own in Durham City. This is a grassroots organisation made up of local people, working alongside local businesses, looking to grow a collective dream.
We’ve set up a Community Interest Company to run the festival. It’s a non-profit organisation which sets out to benefit the people of our county and give performers the chance to find new audiences.
For our first year in 2021 we kept it small. Just 4 main venues each with space for 70 to 170 seats. And we sold over 2000 tickets. We have added 2 more venues in 2022. We are growing!
WHEN IS THE FESTIVAL?
The Durham Fringe Festival will take place from July 26th and run to July 31st 2022.
HOW WE WORK WITH THE CITY
After the impact of the pandemic, the Durham Fringe Festival hopes to bring vibrancy back to our beautiful city. We aim to once again, celebrate the amazing talent in our communities, welcome new visitors and support our local hospitality industry. We have working relationships with the various bodies around the city about how the Durham Fringe Festival can positively impact the offer the city has to its residents, those in the wider County Durham area and visitors to our City and County.
OUR HISTORY SO FAR
There are over 250 fringe festivals globally. With perhaps the most famous taking place in Edinburgh during August each year.
We believe Durham is well placed to be a fringe festival city. There is a diverse population who relish engagement with live entertainment, truly unique buildings offering themselves as venues, a thriving restaurant and café culture and world-renowned visitor attractions.
Recognising the potential, the seed for a fringe has been in place for many years. Our plan was to launch in 2020 but the global pandemic put paid to that. Never deterred though, we formed as a CIC in 2021 and held the inaugural Durham Fringe Festival in the summer of 2021 to much acclaim.
