Former Somerset House Studios resident

Forest Fringe

forestfringe.co.uk

Associate artist

Somerset House Studios

New Wing

Forest Fringe is an organisation run collaboratively by three artists based in the UK. Together they create festivals, host residencies and occasionally commission new work as a way of helping support a large and diverse community of independent artists working across and between theatre, dance and live art. They are perhaps most well known for the free venue they have run at the Edinburgh Festival for the last 10 years, providing space for new and experimental work within what is otherwise a very challenging commercial environment.

Since 2011 they have been taking Forest Fringe to locations across the world, creating new projects in each place that they hope all continue to embody the spirit of mutuality, generosity and adventure of this Edinburgh Festival venue. Past locations have included a former slaughterhouse in Shanghai, a warehouse in Yokohama, a 1960s cinema in the centre of Bangkok, a cultural centre in Lisbon and a music festival in Hong Kong. Forest Fringe exists outside of any major cultural institution and without regular government subsidy as an attempt to provide artists with agency and community and to imagine new ways of existing together under capitalism.

Watch Me Fall by Action Hero (Photo by Jemima Yong)

'an Edinburgh institution that has spread its wings around the globe and been hailed as the future of theatre'

The Guardian

After 10 years Forest presenting performance work at the Edinburgh Festival and around the world Forest Fringe is changing. They have spent time speaking with artists, audiences and other friends and collaborators, reflecting on what they did, how they did it, and what they might do next. They used their residency to put some of these ideas into practice. In particular, they developed a monthly event hosted at Somerset House Studios, as a way to dream up new Forest Fringe projects.