I have been working in the arts industry for over 20 years.
In this time I have had the pleasure of being able to observe and contribute to the cultural and artistic life of Australia.
I was a participant in the very first Melbourne Fringe parade way back in 1983, I was 16.
Back in those days the festival parade was nothing more than a few community groups, school groups and businesses celebrating their community and identity.
Over the next 10 years I watched and participated in subsequent festivals until the parade event out grew its self.
Brunswick Street could not cope with the amount of people and the out pouring of creativity that was the Brunswick Street Fringe Festival Parade. Although the parade outgrew itself the city of Melbourne recognised the need for the Fringe Festival to continue.
The festival has grown enormously and continues to foster and provide an environment for innovative, new, often experimental and popular theatre, dance, multimedia cross art form and music.
Melbourne today is recognised as the capital city in Australia for arts and fashion. I would argue the reason being is because festivals such as the Fringe have created environments that foster creativity and give creative people an setting to explore ideas, network, create, perform and be entertained.
Traditionally a fringe festival has a mixture of free and paying performance events set in an environment where theatres are close to each other and there is a central meeting place with a stage and bar.
Civic in conjunction with the Canberra Theatre Centre offers a perfect environment for this.
Like Adelaide, Canberra is an ideal place for a Fringe style festival.
The Civic area is small and there is abundance of theatre spaces available to foster a festival environment with a central location for a stage and bar area in Civic Square for free entertainment and a networking meeting place and after party area.
The theatres stretch from The Street Theatre, The ANU, and The Canberra Theatre Centre right through to Gorman House Arts Centre.
The ACT government should not only support a fringe festival but an arts festival in the Australian Capital Territory that will attract artists, performers and visitors from all over the world and place Canberra on the international map of artistic excellence.
Anna Voronoff, Macquarie
Greens MLA Amanda Bresnan (Letters, August 27) has taken issue with my support of the Fringe Festival.
I asserted that the Greens had been silent on the issue. I regret that the timing of my letter seemed to fly in the face of her support for the fringe.
My letter was written on the 21st and sent electronically on the morning of the 22nd. It was not published until the 25th. As Amanda well knows, a lot of debate can occur in three days. I will plead guilty to not having kept abreast of the Greens' website.
Prior to the announcement of the last election, it was totally devoid of any local issues and therefore of little interest to me. If this has changed I shall be bookmarking it to my favourites forthwith.
Finally she points out that I was a (very) unsuccessful candidate for the Community Alliance Party in the last election.
My letter was about the the Fringe Festival. Had it been some sort of promo for the CAP, I would have signed it as such.
Play the ball, not the man, Ms Bresnan.
Mike Crowther, Watson
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