Southend Fringe Festival 2010

Emma Reed is organising this year’s Southend Fringe Festival. It aims to complement the bigger Southend Festival – which runs through June. Here’s Emma to tell us a bit more about it:

“When we first attempted to drum up interest for a Fringe Festival in Southend, I heard one phrase more than any other. ‘Southend isn’t Brighton, you know!’ I did know, of course. Due to the brevity of university terms I was actually oblivious to Brighton’s Fringe Festival for the entire three years I lived there, but in 2008 I decided rashly to organise an event for it and take a whole bunch of friends from Southend along for the ride. The event was not a great success. Only six locals came along, two of whom had won their tickets from the local paper. Brighton is brimming with activity, has a strong tourist industry and allows the subcultures to define the masses. There is nothing to rally against anymore. The Fringe is the norm. Here of course, it’s a different story. Our tourist industry is still a little beleaguered but Southend is on the way up. It’s hard to go anywhere without bumping into a musician, an artist, a promoter, a protestor, or someone who embodies them all. We’re spoilt of for choice but still people are turning up to watch, to participate, to document and to steal idea for their own projects. We haven’t yet started to take it for granted. So why do we need a Fringe Festival?

To me, the idea is that this way everyone gets brought along for the ride. Art and performance shouldn’t be things that only some people are allowed to do. People worry to much about what others think of them, and this makes sense in a town where you can get abuse hurled at you in the street just because you don’t look fashionable. We all become defensive, and we conform for an easier life. I wanted to create a three week window where everyone gets to be free. Too often we’re told that rock stars need to be 26 and stick thin, that gay people like different music to straight people, that you need to go to college before your art has any validity, that some of us will always have two left feet. Why should we keep listening? Last year a balding man in his 50′s brought the house down while wearing a dress and singing along with a band who, by their own admission, have never learnt to play their instruments. Across town at the same time were an amateur group performing ‘Woyzeck’, a play about a man going mad and killing his wife, and then in Westcliff professional musician Theoretical Girl was telling the audience how much she needed to go to the loo. The Fringe opens people up to new possibilities. They might not all appeal to everyone, but that’s the point.

I don’t want to change Southend. I certainly don’t want to turn it into Brighton, or anywhere else. I just want to create a safe space for people to have unabashed fun, and to maybe learn a few things about what matters in life on the way. The fact that several people have taken this space and done amazing, creative and ingenious things with it is just a bonus. We’re not trying to detract from any of the other festivals in the area and we’re certainly not trying to make money or prove a point. If we could help boost tourism and in turn increase local job availability, that would make us very happy. I have taken the things which dissapointed me as an event organiser in Brighton and tried to do those things differently for our organisers in Southend. This festival is not just a clone. It has come from a grassroots level and will hopefully stay there for the forseeable future.

This year we have music, dance, performance poetry, exhibitions, comedy puppetry, workshops and film. We run on an absolute shoestring and we will be holding a raffle to try and help cover our costs. If you like the sound of what we do and what we stand for then we are still gratefully accepting raffle prizes! We are a not for profit organisation and all the money goes into publicity, running costs, and most importantly, where we can, the performers. Several of our events are free so come along, meet some new people, and discover how much you have to be proud about. If you don’t like it, there will be something different along soon after.”