Celebrating 20 years of the Laughing Horse Free Festival

The Laughing Horse Free Festival is celebrating its 20th anniversary this August, including a party at The Counting House on the 14th. We caught up with festival co-founder and director Alex Petty to find out more.

Has it really been two decades since you started out!? Time flies!

I've no idea how it's got to 20 years; it's flown by and I'm only now realising why it's tougher getting through it each year now; I'm a long way away from my late 20s when this all began.

How did the Free Festival start out?

A huge amount of the festival's existence, and free shows happening in force at the Fringe, is down to Linsay Watts. She ran the club at the communication workers union building on Brunswick Street, and not only welcomed the fringe, us and all of the performers and craziness with open arms, but help support us so much in the early years. A much missed person and venue, who - because of the Free Festival - inherited a farm in Australia, which really is another story!

I'd visited Edinburgh for a few years before this, first coming to the Fringe in 2000 with co-founder of Laughing Horse Kevin McCarron, and like many we discovered this amazing place to be in August, and wanted to put on shows and be part of it all. But, like many, we struggled to justify the overwhelming costs, we budgeted a traditional room and with full sales we'd only lose.... however much it was. Not great.

Through that disappointment and trawling around shows we discovered the single free entry comedy show that existed at the time, and it was great, and seemed like a good idea. A good friend of ours, Mike Belgrave, then ran a show at Linsay's using the model in 2003 and we thought, 'this seems to work, Mike's not totally mad, why don't we give it a go?'.

As I'm sure you and everyone know, in the first couple of years we ran things with Peter Buckley Hill, and we all know how that went and that partnership wasn't sustainable (but that is another story, and has been covered quite a bit I think...)

We started trying it all out in 2004 with one room and three shows at Linsay's bar, and people turned up, they donated and it seemed to work - to this union club well out of the centre of town on a side street that seemed 100 miles away from the Pleasance Courtyard, physically and metaphorically. The main show I ran was Laughing Horse Comedy Gladiators with compere Nik Coppin, who's still around doing much the same and with his own shows 20 years later.

The second year we made a second room at Linsay's and had found another venue, and I invited lots of friends from the comedy circuit to take a chance and see if it worked for them, as it had for us. That was the point it seemed free shows started to take off.

Linsay's became what felt like secret club for fringe-goers, packed full and busy with regulars getting a cab out of town to hang out for the night and see all of the shows, and party in the beer garden until long after license should have stopped us!

They were great, fun days and that's what made myself, and many of the performers, fall more in love with the Fringe and the free shows, as we could be part of it as well as consume it, and go home with a few quid in the pocket at the end of the month.

It then just grew from there. Year three was four venues, then finding more venues and growing - not long after finding our fist central hub in Espionage, another long missed space and a wonderful underground labyrinth of shows, and very dodgy plumbing.

And it was very much organic growth from there, and slowly educating audiences, reviewers and performers on free shows.

You've really built things up over the last decade. How many rooms/shows are you presenting this year?

This year we have 7,812 performances of 389 shows, if my current spreadsheet is to be believed. It's always a bit of a moving target.

That is spread across 20 venues, and 30 performance spaces. We were slightly bigger in the last years before covid, but we're not far off being back on a par with that.

That so many shows are staged under the Free Festival banner nowadays is testament to the fact the 'free' model really works, for both audiences, performers and premise owners?

Yes, it is something I really think works for everyone. It's the fact that there's all of these elements that are part of free shows at the venue - the venue owners, managers, performers, audiences and us in the middle of it - and it is a model that I feel benefits everyone in that equation.

Helping performers to reduce costs and perform to larger audiences; helping audiences to see more shows and open access to the arts which they may not be able to afford otherwise; and for venues to benefit from the huge extra footfall and the awareness this all brings to them not just in August but through the year. It's almost unique, as if everyone contributes from all those parties, then everyone benefits; there really is no losers.

What have been the biggest challenges during your time running the Edinburgh venues?

In the early days it was making audiences, performers and everyone involved in the Fringe understand what exactly free shows meant. People didn't understand why there were free shows at all, how it helped performers - and the challenge was to make this solidly part of the Fringe eco-system.

Before 2004, there was maybe one or two free comedy shows; of course busking, open galleries and exhibitions, and of course going back to before my time much more in old fringe clubs and venues that no longer exists. Ivor Dembina still does shows with us, who really was one of the instigators of free shows back in the dawn of Fringe history. He's put his prices up now, and you can get 3 jokes for a £1 off him on The Royal Mile!

The argument early on was always 'it's free, it must be shit' or 'it's free so it isn't really part of the Fringe', and we've demonstrated this is absolutely not true, with shows, audiences, reviews and awards. Yes, there are good and bad free shows - but there are good and bad shows at every price point and in every venue.

Coming full circle now, and there is a generation who never knew what the Fringe was like before Free and PWYC shows existed and it's just an everyday part of the Fringe.

The biggest single challenging event, like for many of course, was making it through the pandemic, and thanks to support from performers, supporters, audiences at the Fringe we've done that and come back just as strong. There was a point when a lot of us where thinking 'would this even be possible again?'.

And, on both a personal level and for the Free Festival, it was unexpectedly losing Lydia Mason to Sepsis last year, when she should have been here making it all happen, which made last year's fringe especially challenging, sad and difficult for myself and a lot of regulars.

And what have been your personal highlights/triumphs?

I was especially happy in August 2020 for us to have the only live and in-person of the entire Fringe during the pandemic year, thanks to restrictions allowing us to get Nathan Cassidy on stage outdoors at The Three Sisters for a performance. Reviewers travelled up from London to review the show! It means we've truly been in Edinburgh for the full 20 years of our existence, and - that year - 100% of Fringe shows in Edinburgh!

In a similar vein, another highlight was getting a Free Festival happening in 2021. Usually prep and planning takes us from October to August 1st each year, but the covid rules meant we didn't know we'd be able to put on a Fringe until the end of July, and that was still a gamble of the planned restrictions lifting to allow performances. Somehow - with the support of The Counting House, Three Sisters, Hanover Tap and Bar 50, plus a load of acts that were willing to take the chance and as desperate to get the show back on the road - we somehow ended up here with a season of shows that was amazing for everyone who took the chance to take part. The Fringe was back, and it showed us it was possible that it was still going to work going into the future.

Presumably you're up for continuing for at least another 20 years?

Sometimes I think the next 20 years will be a breeze, other times I'm doubting the next 20 minutes.

I'd like to think I will be, and I hope I will as I still love being part of the Fringe so much, and excitedly come up here each year to enjoy every crazy minute that happens up here. It's Disneyland for anyone who loves the arts, so I guess if I'm not up here I'll be in a wooden box.

But whether I still am running things quite as much when I have a free bus pass, or if the reigns will have been passed on to others, I've no doubt Free Festival will still be here in another 20, and another 20 after that - along with all the other venues that have adopted free, PWYW, PWYC and all the other alternative models that have sprung out of free shows that didn't exists in 2004, and I think all have helped the Fringe to become what it is today.

It's that continued growth and change that has helped the Fringe thrive, and I hope lots more people will come along with new and fresh take on things in the years to come to add to it, evolve it and take keep it as the vital centre of arts it always should be every August.

Find out more about Free Festival via freefestival.co.uk