Press Key Facts

• The Chelsea Fringe is an alternative garden festival celebrating community growing initiatives, outdoor performance, botanical art, walks, talks and events during nine days in late May

 

• The first Chelsea Fringe Festival was held in 2012. We have run every year since then, even during lockdown, when we held two online festivals. We have now seen more than 1,800 events created for the festival

 

• Projects range from community-garden events to avant-garde art installations, from walks, talk and performances, to workshops, dinners, demonstrations and on-street ‘happenings’. Nearly all the events are free

 

• The Fringe, a community interest company (CIC), is unsponsored, unfunded and volunteer-run

 

• The World Festival Network has called the Chelsea Fringe ‘the fastest-growing Fringe festival ever’

 

• Individuals, community groups and larger organisations create the events, supported by the Fringe’s team of volunteers

 

• There have been a number of ‘satellite’ Chelsea Fringe Festivals – in Cambridge, Cornwall, Bristol, Henley-on-Thames, Kent, the Isle of Mull; Fukuoka, Nagoya in Japan; Argentina, Canada, Poland, Italy and Seattle

 

• The Chelsea Fringe has attracted national and international media coverage, including BBC and ITV television news, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio London, as well as articles/listings in all the major broadsheet newspapers. The Fringe has been particularly well supported by the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, the Evening Standard and the Guardian

 

• The Chelsea Fringe is a true Fringe festival in that it operates on the Fringe of an established event or festival [in this case, Chelsea Flower Show], and it works on an ‘open-access principle’. If it’s on-topic, legal and interesting (this last being the key point), then it’s in

 

• Anyone can enter a project in the Chelsea Fringe; most projects pay £40 (volunteer/community rate). There is a discounted rate for events signed up before the end of March

 

• There is an increasing national and international component to the Fringe. In its first year a number of international artists participated, and the intention has always been to spread the Fringe ideal more widely

 

• The Chelsea Fringe operates with the blessing of the Royal Horticultural Society, organisers of Chelsea Flower Show, but is entirely independent

 

• The Fringe does not last for just 9 days. We continue to encourage the spread of ‘fringe gardening’ (as we like to call it) all year round

 

• The Fringe was an original idea by founder-director Tim Richardson

 

FAQ

For our FAQ with Tim Richardson please visit FAQ