C ARTS Spark Fund – supporting creative ingenuity and diversity

Spark Fund has been created by C ARTS to help artists and arts practitioners who have been disadvantaged or are from under-represented backgrounds and communities to show their work at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2023.

The Edinburgh Fringe – the largest open access arts festival in the world

The Fringe has led the world in establishing an open access forum for all artists, and an important principle of this is that anyone can turn up and perform. However, disadvantaged artists and arts practitioners face more barriers to participation than those from advantaged backgrounds and communities.

C ARTS has developed Spark Fund to help disadvantaged and under-represented artists and arts practitioners to overcome obstacles to participation. We are delighted to have been to be awarded funding by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society to allow us to directly support those facing societal or structural challenges or discrimination in bringing their work to the Fringe.

C ARTS – showcasing creativity, celebrating diversity

For the past thirty years C ARTS and C venues have been home to a myriad of performing companies and artists from all over the world, many of whom might consider themselves as being on the fringe of the Fringe. The C ARTS Edinburgh Fringe programme showcases a wide range of eclectic performance, and highlights many voices from different backgrounds.

C ARTS operates a curated programme within the Fringe, selecting work from an open call applications process, and inviting individual companies and artists to take part. We aim to remain true to the spirit of the Fringe, and our applications process is open to all. We seek to offer opportunities for innovative and interesting work, and look for work that demonstrates creativity, ingenuity, and diversity.

About Spark Fund

Spark Fund is intended to give a little extra help to productions and projects that might not otherwise make it to the Fringe. This initiative has been made possible by a grant from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society's Fringe Artist and Venue Recovery Fund, with additional resources provided by C ARTS and C venues.

Spark Fund applications will be assessed by a panel who will consider the artistic and creative merits of projects applying for the funding, how each project meets the criteria of Spark Fund, and how the composition of each project's leadership and membership reflects the aims of Spark Fund. The members of the panel have experience of the Fringe, and represent some of the diversity of the people that the awards are intended to support.

Spark Fund applications have now closed.