The Stage

Fringe Society chair should only serve for six years - Edinburgh festival survey

Published Wednesday 6 January 2010 at 11:50 by Thom Dibdin

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society should limit the tenure of the chair of its board, according to the results of a survey carried out by the society into its future governance.

The open, online survey is the biggest in the history of the fringe and is part of an ongoing process to reform the society, following the ticketing fiasco which dogged the event in 2008 and resulted in the resignation of its then director, Jon Morgan.

Of the 2,068 respondents, 76% wanted to cap the length of time the society’s chair can hold office.

The fringe’s communications officer Neil Mackinnon told The Stage that a majority wanted the limit to be two, three-year terms in office. However, he denied this was a direct snub to existing chair Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill, who has been in the position for more than 11 years.

“We asked people to consider how they wanted the society to be governed in the long term,” he explained. “In terms of responses to the present board or the chair, I don’t think that there was any criticism at all levelled against the present incumbents.”

Other key responses in the survey are that, while there is a strong consensus for continuing the society as an open membership organisation, there was also consensus for increasing the number of people who can be members, which is currently restricted to 100.

Respondents would also like to see a change to the make-up of the society’s board, to allow appointed board members as well as those elected by the membership.

On the issue of membership, there was no clear outcome over whether participation in the programme should automatically confer society membership among the wider respondents, although a clear majority of performers thought it should. There was also an even split over whether there should be different categories of membership.

Kath M Mainland, chief executive of the fringe society, added: “The working group tasked with bringing forward proposals for changes to the society’s constitution will use the findings of the survey as a starting point for a series of meetings with key participant and stakeholder groups.

“The current constitution of the fringe society was written in 1969 and has had only minor revisions made to it since then.”

The five-strong working group will bring forward concrete proposals using the results of the survey and discuss them with groups of performers, producers and venues over the next few months. The resulting changes are expected to be implemented during this year’s event.

Of those filling in the survey, a majority (1,162) said they had most recently participated in the fringe as an audience member, with 195 performers, 87 producers and 86 venues also taking part. Other significant groups identifying themselves were promoters (34), fringe employees (29) and journalists (25).