The bright lights and busy streets of Brighton Fringe make for a spectacular welcome to summer in our seaside city. This year, throughout May until June 4th, Brighton & Hove played host to over 1,000 events across 168 venues. 2017 saw the most successful year for England’s largest arts festival, with a record number of audiences, registered events and ticket sales.
Brighton Fringe has grown substantially over the past few years and is now celebrated as the third largest Fringe festival in the world. This year’s festival saw a strong international offering, with 110 acts from 28 countries; including the first ever Brighton Fringe Dutch Season, held in association with Amsterdam Fringe, featuring 14 award-winning works direct from the Netherlands. Brighton Fringe’s arts industry showcase, WINDOW, also returned for the fourth year, highlighting new, ready-to-tour work taking place across the first ten days of the festival.
Fringe City performers took over New Road and Bartholomew Square throughout the month, with a total of over 110,000 people stopping by to catch a sneak peak of what Brighton Fringe 2017 had to offer. With four stages across two sites, food and drinks stands and barely a drop of rain, these action-packed events were fun for the whole family.
Managing Director, Julian Caddy described Brighton Fringe as “a chaos of creative visions” in a poem he shared with the audience at the closing Awards Ceremony on the 4th of June. Stand-out performances this year included Mumblecrust Theatre: the Tale of the Cockatrice, who took home two awards (Voice’s Best Newcomer to Brighton Fringe Award and IYAF: Best of Brighton Fringe Children and Family Show Award). The Big Issue Audience Choice Award was won by Kids with Beards: Fandango!, who were also the recipients of a bursary from The Pebble Trust. Cinebra: A History of Horror will be taking their show on the road as winners of the much sought after Brighton Fringe International Touring Bursary in association with The Pebble Trust.
Our key stats:
- 4,601 performances
- 1008 registered events
- 212 free events
- 249,483 tickets sold
- £8.61 average ticket price
- 555,518 total attendances
