Fog clearing at Buxton Fringe

The weather might be murky but behind the scenes at the Fringe we have been reviewing some of our website pages to see if we can achieve a bit of cockle-warming clarity.

Entrants’ Information seemed like a good place to start and we’ve tried to do that difficult thing (for Fringe freaks) of pretending we know nothing about the Fringe or how to plunge into it. If you’ve already been looking at these pages, you’ll need to refresh the page (F5) to see our changes, but don’t worry, we’ve not done anything super-radical, just added some structure, detail and in some cases simply space to make each point read that much more clearly. We’ve also added a load more useful links.

In the process, we did some head-scratching over whether we were throwing too much information at entrants while at the same time adopting a slightly hectoring ‘you will read all this or else’ tone of voice. Well, it’s no shorter but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. We certainly didn’t want to skimp on detail and I think we’ve decided that it is not so much a question of forcing anyone to read anything, but of simply letting people know that there is some really useful gen up there that will be helpful even to those performers who consider themselves to be old hands.

I remember when we first created the website (yes I’m that old) I was slightly scared by the concept that it was never going to be finished and might forever be a work in progress. These days I think it’s a real advantage of the medium. So if you think we’ve missed out some crucial stuff amongst our advice, do let us know and we’ll try to put it right!

Meanwhile if any of you are busy crafting your entries to the Fringe, remember that clarity is all. No matter how obscure your material, your listing has to appeal to as many people as possible. I can guarantee that you are too close to your content so try getting your Auntie Mabel to read your draft and see if she has any clue what the show is about. Oh and if she’s not busy, you can send her off to read Entrants’ Info as well…

Buxton Fringe

Website: www.buxtonfringe.org.uk
Facebook: buxtonfringe
Twitter: @buxtonfringe