Testimonials

Hello lovely Space team, I just wanted to email and thank you for all your help and support this fringe, what a month it was! Let me offer my sincerest gratitude for the lovely chats, check ins and support you provided.

Thank you so much for having us. We've had an intense week run with Red Button and still have managed to sell out! We usually sell out in London but we weren't sure we would generate any interest at EdFringe. It's our first time ever in Edinburgh, and first time at the Fringe. It's been a great experience, mostly because of you. Thanks for all the support, advice, info, and for being a shoulder to cry on, and laugh on as well. It's a tough festival, with loads of competition and it's hard to capture anyone's attention towards a small self-funded show. We've managed to reach our main objectives and generate interest towards the show. THANK YOU!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thanks for having me at theSpaceUK. We really enjoyed our time at the Fringe and found this to be a lovely theatre (excellent location) but above all lovely and helpful staff who just made everything that much easier.

After two performances of The Rape of Artemisia Gentileschi can I say I am so impressed with the kindness, friendliness and helpfulness of your staff. Each and every one of them has made us welcome and helped us so much. It is a pleasure to be at your venue and please pass on my thanks to all the great people working at theSpaceUK. I am so pleased we chose your venue.

My students and I would like to thank you and the entire SpaceUK team for the opportunity to perform at Fringe. You went out of your way to help me navigate the entire process and patiently dealt with the complications I had on my end. The result was a genuine transformative learning experience that truly changes the student

Thank you so much for all your support and guidance over the last nine months. I can't wait to return to the Fringe and when I do, I'll certainly return to theSpaceUK. You and all your colleagues have been fabulous. We had an amazing time performing The Amazing Clinic of Armour and Smith at Venue 45. The performance space was beautiful, the tech team were very accommodating and incredibly friendly and the box office were helpful and cheerful. I'm also happy to announce that we sold out and got plenty of laughs from our audience. I look forward to seeing you again.

I’d like to thank you and everyone in theSpaceUK team, particularly at theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, for a fantastic experience. Things have run very smoothly. There isn’t a lot of space (no pun intended!) for performers with disabilities at the Fringe – at least, not as much as we think there should be – and when we made a presentation on access issues to Fringe Central earlier this week, we were able to highlight how accommodating and constructive theSpaceUK has been in this regard.

We would like to say a huge thank you for helping to make our show so successful again this year (our fifth year on the row). We look forward to working with you again next year

Coming to Edinburgh as a solo artiste is hard. The festival can be daunting, scary, exhausting and lonely when one is travelling with a team, but to be in the middle of the chaos of Edinburgh as one person...And not just one person who needs to perform one (or in my case, two) shows a day, but who also is in charge of media, postering, outreach, promotion... It is a tough task. And I achieved it - and successfully, too - but this is because even though I came to Edinburgh alone, the staff at theSpaceUK quickly became my team. And I am so incredibly grateful to each and every one of them. I had an incredibly successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe. My children's show, "Opera Mouse", received four 4-star reviews, and a 'Hidden Gem' listing. My adult show, "Piaf and Brel: The Impossible Concert", also received four stars, and sold out the entire run. In addition, I received performance offers in New York, Dubai, Kuwait, as well as throughout the UK. In so many ways, theSpaceUK was the perfect fit for me, and I could not have been nearly as successful without Charles' advice in advance of the festival about what theatre would be the best fit for me, and the wonderful, supportive staff at all of theSpaceUK venues. Most venues in Edinburgh are rented with a guarantee v % model, which puts an artist at significant financial risk. They are large businesses, with their own financial gain as their main focus. And theSpaceUK is the complete opposite: Flat fee rental: This allows an artist to budget for their run, and takes away the pressure of needing to satisfy a guarantee. It is a fair, artist-friendly way of running a venue. Also, with 100% of the ticket sales being given to the artist (and not a percentage, as at many other venues), the ticket sales that one achieves from flyering or promotional events directly benefits the artist. I could not say enough about the staff at theSpaceUK. Throughout the run of my shows, they became my team and my support system. When I sold out, they cheered along with me. When I was having a rough day (and it happens, when one is exhausted and completely hits the wall mid-festival), they were supportive and cheery. The staff at the ticket desk always had a smile and a friendly greeting. They all knew that I was alone at the festival for most of the run, and several times I sat in the courtyard with staffers, chatting over a G&T or a haloumi burger. I have performed in over a hundred theatres around the world, and the ticketing and front-of-house staff at The Space was probably the best I have ever encountered. Rory in particular was incredibly helpful. The technical staff was excellent. My operator Wayne was fully committed to both of my shows - he did not just show up and do a job, he seemed genuinely delighted to be there, and always took a few minutes after to say something nice. He was professional, enthusiastic and attentive to my needs as an artist. The other tech (and other) staff members went above and beyond their job descriptions, coming into the theatre to help set the lights before the show, helping with front-of-house, and setting my microphone as I rushed around getting things ready for the show. Some of my most memorable moments at the Edinburgh Fringe were with these wonderful, supportive, caring staff. Without exception, the other artists I met at theSpaceUK were friendly, good-natured and solicitous. All of the friends I made at the festival were either staff members or other artists at my venue. The venue policy of allowing rush tickets to other shows allows artists to see each others' work, which was just so nice. This also allowed for personal recommendations of other shows at the venue, which is an invaluable way of spreading word-of-mouth about lesser-known shows. theSpace also have a dedicated press office and when I was chosen for a feature in ThreeWeeks magazine (one of the major EdFringe publications), the office supported and tweeted about the feature to their extensive following.

"Spaces filled with fringe goodness"