Fringe40 - Remembering the Sunshine!

Fringe helper Barry Haynes with Kaleidoscope Choir's Carol Bowns

With Fringe Towers shrouded in cloud and rain it is time to take stock of a (mostly) sunny Fringe and all our happy memories. 

I've just been updating our Community Links page and it has been a great year for reaching out to people. To give you just a flavour: we supported a Rossendale Trust work experience placement which meant that Fringe fan Barry Haynes (pictured) was able to help us in some valuable Fringe work. Meanwhile musician Paul Cromford told us all about his life-changing experiences with Fairfield school children. Residents at Haddon Care Home helped us create a fantastic Fringe40 wall display on London Road and Buxton Art Trail brought some of the trail's artworks into the home for people who otherwise would not have been able to see them. Bringing the Fringe out of the centre of town, the beautifully decorated Working Men's Club really took off as a venue and has been praised in some of our audience feedback.

Over the summer we will be updating the gallery pages on the website so we can relive a fantastic July. We will be gathering all our stats and feedback so if you haven't yet filled in your audience survey form please do so soon before we disable the link.

In his last season as Fringe chair, Keith Savage told us that outside his family the Fringe was the most important thing he had done. We are hugely grateful to him for all his hard work over the last six years.

We are so thankful to everyone who supports the Fringe - committee members, volunteers, Desk staff, venues, tireless reviewers, our sponsor the University of Derby, financial supporters, the Opera House, Buxton International Festival and everyone who gets behind us. But most of all - thank you Fringe performers! Napping under the stars in the name of art, meeting a dinosaur sculpture in a domestic garden, shedding a tear at a teenaged girl's acknowledgement of the specialness of her "crap little family", bopping on the Fringe float, basking in a one-man performance so real that audience members thought there really was a retired policeman on stage, enjoying a singalong among the free flowers and veg at the Serpentine Community Farm... These are just a few of my Fringe40 highlights. 

We will be starting all over again in September and look forward to bringing the arts to even more people in the town and beyond! 


Buxton Fringe

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