FRINGE WORLD Festival is excited to announce to be returning in 2021 from 15 January to 14 February.
Thanks to the strong state government leadership and the efforts and responsibility shown by Western Australians, FRINGE WORLD are proceeding with plans for a 2021 Festival that will include additional support for venues and artists and feature as many venues that want to participate alongside the return of our two major Hubs; The Woodside Pleasure Garden and Girls School. Read on to find out more about some of the changes FRINGE WORLD has been developing for the 2021 Festival.
Venue and Event Registration
Many FRINGE WORLD participants have suffered significant losses due to the impact of COVID-19 and the Festival is committed to looking at ways to support and encourage you to return to the Festival in 2021. For this reason, FRINGE WORLD will be waiving venue registration fees in 2021.
We will also be offering more flexible registration timelines and no upfront costs for event registration for ticketed events with FRINGE WORLD sharing the risk.
FRINGE WORLD App
There will also be more flexible registration timelines and a new FRINGE WORLD app. The FRINGE WORLD app is almost finished and it’s looking awesome with functionality designed to make it even easier for customers to browse shows, buy tickets, save favourites to a planner, get personalised recommendations and plan their Fringe Binge. During the Festival, the App will be even more useful as it stores all tickets for easy scanning at the door (that's right, paper ticket free!), they can search for shows nearby and use the fun Shake to Search function to find a random show starting soon near them.
Another improvement is fully integrating FRINGE WORLD’s news and reviews site Fringefeed into the Festival website and the app. This will enable customers to leave a review in the app or website, and for both critic and customer reviews to appear on event pages to assist customers to buy shows. The FRINGE WORLD app will not replace the FRINGE WORLD website, but it will enable us to reach different audiences and make the Festival experience better for customers, which will result in more tickets purchased for your shows.
Printed Festival Guide
With the roll-out of the new App and coupled with budget constraints due to COVID-19, The decision has been made to not have a printed Festival guide in 2021. This is a big decision, and has not been taken lightly, but FRINGE WORLD feels that the App alongside some additional digital publications on the website will be able to fill the gaps. The Festival is also looking at some printed material and additional signage options to fill the physical space that the guide filled in shop-fronts and streets alongside additional advertising opportunities for artists. Another bonus of moving to the app is of course not printing hundreds of thousands of pages for the Festival guide, which will be kinder to the planet.
Festival Events
In terms of the numbers of venues and events in the Festival, it’s not known yet how many independent venues will participate but the number of Hubs that FRINGE WORLD will present is much less, as there will only be The Woodside Pleasure Garden and Girls School
All indications are Australia’s International borders will not open in time for the 2021 Festival, FRINGE WORLD is hopeful that interstate borders will, allowing for artists across Australia to take part. For those participating in the Festival, the reduced number of venues, but comparable audience attendance will likely mean there is higher demand from customers so busier events for everyone.
Key Dates
Venue registrations open: 21 July
Event registrations open: 4 August
2021 Festival dates: 15 January to 14 February
The FRINGE WORLD Festival organisers hope this update gives you the confidence to start planning for your event/venue activity for the 2021 Festival.
Further information on the 2021 Festival will be available in the Artist and Venue Registration Packs which will be released over the coming weeks. To keep up to date with all the information about participating in FRINGE WORLD 2021, make sure you sign up to our e-news and select 'participating as an artist’.
Click on a link below to find out more about how you can be part of the largest annual event in Western Australia in 2021!