The Stage

Changes to Edinburgh Fringe constitution delayed

Published Tuesday 29 June 2010 at 14:26 by Thom Dibdin

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society has postponed its constitution-changing meeting from this month to November at the earliest.

This means that the first annual general meeting to be held under the new rules will be 2011, not 2010 as announced in the society’s annual report in January. The deferment only came to light this month, in an unheralded addendum to a Fringe-produced blog site, although the decision was made as early as February.

A membership ballot has now agreed to suspend all new memberships and allow sitting directors to stay on until the autumn. Society membership, until January capped at 100, had risen to around 200 members by May.

The new constitution is part of a sweeping review of the workings of the fringe, instigated after the ticketing failure during the event in 2008. A constitutional reform sub-committee of the society board has been examining the constitution ever since.

Speaking exclusively to The Stage, Pip Utton who chairs the four-person sub-committee explained that it had failed to come up with a consensus on the changes, although it had consulted widely across most of those involved with the Fringe.

He said: “We are going to have one final bit of consultation, most likely in the first week of August. We are going to have an open space meeting in McEwan Hall so lots of people can attend. We are going to do it in the first week in August because that is when the critical mass of people are around, and we are going to do it in the morning.”

Utton said the sub-committee will present options to the society’s board at its meeting in August - although not the AGM. A new constitution will be put to the October board meeting and, if it is passed, a general meeting of the society will be held in November to ratify the new constitution.

“Most things are still possible,” said Utton of the potential changes, adding, “there are certain areas where there is a consensus amongst all the groups and there are two or three areas where there is absolutely no consensus at all.

“There is absolute consensus that we should remain a membership society. The question that is hardest is the eligibility for being a member.”

According to Utton, there is also no consensus on who should be a director of the society or how they should be appointed. Nor is there consensus on the possibility or makeup of a participants’ council.

Utton said that because the Society will remain a charitable body, “a lot of the constitution will write itself. We are not changing our memorandum and articles, and a lot of things have to in the constitution, because that is what has to be in a charitable constitution.”

Following the fringe ticketing fiasco in 2008 - when the event’s main box office system collapsed, a review was held into the workings of the fringe. The Scott Moncrieff report, published in February 2009, supported the concept of the working group, warning that “the society’s general governance arrangements are weak. In particular, there is a lack of strategic direction and transparency in decision making”.