The Stage

PBH’s Free Fringe founder elected to board of Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society

Published Tuesday 8 February 2011 at 11:04 by Thom Dibdin

Peter Buckley Hill, founder of PBH’s Free Fringe, has been elected to the board of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, amidst allegations that a performer candidate was not allowed to stand in their own constituency.

In the first elections since the Society adopted a new constitution last November, Buckley Hill won the vote for candidates endorsed by one of the fringe’s 259 registered venues.

In a straight run-off he beat Steve Gove, the artistic director of the Prague Fringe and manager at the Assembly Rooms, who was seeking re-election to the board, by 132 votes to 86 votes.

A second vote, open to all members of the Society, was won by sitting board member Sally Cowling who received 99 votes after four rounds of preferential voting.

There were three board memberships open for nomination, but none were received in the post reserved for ‘performers linked to Fringe shows’.

However Buckley Hill was quick to accuse the Society of not allowing a performer to stand in that category.

He told The Stage that a candidate who “specifically put himself forward for the performers constituency was not allowed to stand in that constituency”.

“He would otherwise have been elected unopposed. There would at least have been another performer on the board, as there was intended to be,” he added.

A spokesperson for the Society refuted this claim, saying that “no candidate completed the nomination process for the performers category” and adding that the board of the Fringe society had decided to hold that election in August along with the next set of elections.

Buckley Hill is a strong critic of the current board, introducing a formal motion to give performers a voice to its AGM in 2008. He was a vocal advocate for the rights of fringe performs to direct representation on the board at the series of consultative meetings carried out in the run-up to the adoption of the new constitution.

The failure of anyone to stand in the reserved performers post means that the board currently stands at twelve members with five existing directors standing down to coincide with the elections. The term of office of five more existing directors will come to an end in August when the next round of elections will be held.

Buckley Hill’s election to the board means that half the elected board members are now performers, or have been performers, at the Edinburgh fringe. However, he is adamant that the fringe is not a “level playing-field for performers”.

He added: Until the Fringe belongs to the performers who both make it and pay for it, there is no cause for congratulation. Pay to play is still the dominant format at the Fringe. It ought not to be.”