The ‘open’ Fringe is a leap of faith in arts

If there’s one thing that’s clear, from the huge flowering of fringe festivals in cities across the world, it’s that “fringe” is a word of many meanings, even when we only apply it to the arts and performance. When the term was first coined in 1948 to describe the eight companies who had decided to present their own shows during the first-ever Edinburgh International Festival the previous year, it referred to geography as much as anything else; most of the recognised city-centre venues were occupied by the Festival, and the eight companies appeared around the “fringes”.