Buxton Festival Fringe 5-23 July 2017

Latest figures from Buxton Festival Fringe show that even though the event as a whole was slightly smaller than in 2015, it still contributed nearly £400,000 to the local economy and made a bigger splash than ever with high satisfaction ratings and Fringe website hits going through the roof.

152 events resulted in an estimated £48,000 being spent by performers during their stay in Buxton according to entrants’ feedback. Meanwhile figures from the audience survey suggest that punters spent some £325,000 on food, accommodation and ticket sales for shows from local performers.

The Fringe scored highly for satisfaction with 86% of audience goers who responded to the survey scoring the event 4 or 5 out of 5 and 19% choosing to see six or more shows. 20% of respondents were attending the Fringe for the first time, a good sign for the future, and there were over a million total hits on the Fringe website during the month of July with the number of unique visitors trebling compared to the same period in 2015.

The Fringe is a proving a big draw nationally with visitors coming from London, Edinburgh, Oxford, Newcastle and Leeds as well as from abroad. At the same time there was an increased percentage of locals in the audience (61% had SK postcodes compared to 45% in 2015) confirming anecdotal reports that people in the area had been enjoying staycations. Among the performers, about a third were from the SK area - a figure in line with previous years. Half of the artists who responded to the Fringe’s entrants’ survey were also attending other festivals including Edinburgh and even Vancouver.

Ticket sales held up well with the average, per performance, audience figure for ticketed events being 29. The estimated total audience figure, including audiences for free events, was over 16,000.

Comments received were overwhelmingly positive with audience feedback including:
“Everything is splendidly organised”; “A great year for the Fringe! Such talent on display, the Fringe Festival really brings the town alive…”; “Another brilliant Fringe”; and, from an enthusiastic local, “Wonderful, fantastic, marvellous to have all this on our doorstep”.

Meanwhile, performers praised the Fringe for the simplicity of its entry process with comments such as “Very easy - and fantastically responsive. The team are brilliant”. There was also praise for managed venue, Underground Venues, in its last year underneath The Old Hall: “We are very happy with Underground Venues and hope they get a new home soon.”

Fringe chair Keith Savage summed up: “The Buxton Fringe 2016 seemed like the most enjoyable of events, but when you are caught up in the middle of something it is possible to misread the mood. So it is really important that hundreds of people from all over the country have taken the time and trouble to tell us how good their Fringe experience was. We look forward to welcoming even more people to our beautiful town next July.”

Next year’s Fringe dates have been set as July 5 to 23 2017 with the Fringe website www.buxtonfringe.org.uk opening for entries on December 1.

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