She's just the ticket: Interview with new Edinburgh Fringe chief Kath Mainland

In her first interview in the hot seat as Fringe chief, Kath Mainland tells Chitra Ramaswamy why she can't wait to get her hands dirty pulling the world's largest arts festival back from the brink . . .

THREE days into what Kath Mainland describes as "the most brilliant arts administration job in the world" she knows she has her work cut out.

Waiting tomeet her at the Fringe office in Edinburgh, an assistant tries to figure out what number to get the first chief executive of the world's largest arts festival on.

There is still confusion between her phone line and that of general manager Tim Hawkins, the man who ran the unwieldy ship after director Jon Morgan stepped
down in 2008 in the wake of the Fringe's first sales drop in eight years.

Everything is changing in here, it seems, and people are still adjusting. Mainland left her job as administrative director of the Book Festival last Friday, nipped to Exeter for a golden wedding over the weekend, then started at the Fringe on the Monday.

She is not the type to hang around.

"I don't think it's a poisoned chalice," she insists when I ask how she is feeling following on from a year in which sales were down 10% owing to the £385,000 box office system collapsing on the first day, constant rain and the credit crunch.

This summer she faces full-blown recession, a city dug up by tram works, sponsors pulling out and the cancellation of Fringe Sunday.

"If I'm a glutton for punishment, which I might be, then the fact that there are particular challenges this year is part of it," she says. "At least they are well documented and haven't come out of nowhere. I know what those challenges are and lots of work has already been done to counter them. Bring it on."

She seems almost upbeat, I venture. "Come back to me in September and see what you think then," she shoots back, bellowing with laughter.

A feisty Orcadian who first worked here in 1991 as an admin assistant, Mainland seems both fired up and jumpy. It's not surprising. This is her first interview since she's been in post and she apologises for being inarticulate.

She isn't, but is clearly much more of a doer than a talker, which is why the Festivals community breathed a sigh of reliefwhenshe was handed the job. There is nothing precious about her and she even makes a face when she uses the word "culture" because "my mum always said it sounded highbrow".

When I ask her about the toughest decision she expects having to make, she says: "I'm not scared of making difficult decisions. The economic climate is
tough and I try very hard to be optimistic about it. But we are living in straitened times."

What about kicking Christian Slater out from behind the bar when she was manager of the Assembly Rooms?

"Oh, that was an easy decision," she says.

Many would say 2008 was the toughest in the Fringe's 61-year history. What was the knock-on effect?

"I think the impact was global," she says. "I've got friends who have worked here and at festivals across the world who were going, 'ohmygod, is it ok?' But there was that qualification. It wasn't like 'we don't care'. People are concerned about what happens here and that's good."

Mainland describes herself as "a card-carrying administrator", a crucial difference from her predecessor, Jon Morgan, who said when he stood down that "the role of Fringe director has taken me away from my first love of producing and presenting
exciting performances".

This is something Mainland would never say.

"I'm hugely fond of the arts but I've never had aspirations to make anything myself," she says. "I'm interested in how you do it, how you get the idea from someone's head in to a venue. It makes me sound dull, but you need the people with the vision and the person backing them up."

This is how Mainland envisages her role, as one of support. William Burdett-Coutts, who heads Assembly, one of "the big four" who bailed out the Fringe last year with their box office system, has like others complained about growing bureaucracy and the need for the Fringe to reconnect with venues, promoters, performers and audiences.

"I wouldn't necessarily agree,"Mainland says. "The only way is tomake sure communications are open. We're a senior management team, we're quite new to it, and that's good. This summer I want us all to be out and about seeing as much as possible so through the winter we can work out how best we can provide support. I want to have a real idea of what the issues are for people."

Her main focus is that the Fringe remains "open access". Last week it was announced that it has grown marginally from 2,088 shows to 2,098. It's hardly mass expansion, and growth doesn't necessarily translate to audiences, as many argue it is the monstrous size of the Fringe that is its problem.

Smaller festivals cost less to run and are cheaper for performers and audiences.

"You can't have it both ways," Mainland says. "You have no control over the scale
and nor should you. I'm firmly committed to that being the brilliant thing about the Fringe.

"It's expensive to bring a show here," she adds, "and because it's expensive, ticket prices aren't cheap. What we need to do is work to make it cheaper for
people to take part so it will be cheaper for audiences."

This year, she reckons, with the continuation of the Free Fringe and the new Five Pound Fringe, ticket prices will adjust.

"I wouldn't be surprised if people were doing more of that, and so they should. The Fringe is about discovery and taking a chance and you're more likely to do that if it's a fiver. It's a marketplace so some of that will start to level out. That's how it works."

Equally, she is sanguine about the so-called breakaway by the big four venues who make up half of Fringe ticket sales and are looking for a sponsor for their Edinburgh Comedy Festival.

"If ever there was a point when the big four were going to break away it was last year," she says. "Instead they rallied. They have their own brochure and that doesn't mean they're breaking away. They're trying to sell their work the best they can and everyone needs to do that."

This year's box office system is an upgrade of the one employed by the big four that was adopted by the Fringe in 2008, called Red 61, and it's also been tested
at the Brighton Fringe and a London venue.

This week Mainland met Festivals Edinburgh, the umbrella body set up as a result of the Thundering Hooves report, to discuss international marketing strategies, and is in talks with the City Council.

"The trams…" she mock-groans. "Princes Street doesn't look entirely as we would want it but the trams are coming and you can't get a new transport system without digging up some holes."

Would she like to see Princes Street open for the Festival?

"I'd like to see the trams running for the Festival, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen. We need to make sure we don't frighten people away by saying it's all been dug up. It's not true. We're all living and working here and getting on with it."

That may be the case, but we're not having to contend with millions of extra bodies negotiating their way around those holes. Mainland's message is as it is with most issues: she's working on it.

Why in the thick of recession should people come to the Fringe this August anyway?

"This is the original one, the place where it all started," Mainland says. "It wasn't invented as an engine for social regeneration. It's still the biggest open access festival in the world and not just some feelgood, fuzzy thing that happens. It's very important to the city."

She isn't convinced that the arts always suffer in a recession either, a view borne out on Broadway last week when record ticket sales were announced.

"We're living in extraordinary times, we need cheering up, and the Fringe is about all these brilliant people getting the chance to interpret it all," she says.

"The pound isn't strong and people aren't going abroad as they used to. Perhaps we can persuade those people to come here."

It remains to be seen how Edinburgh's Festivals will fare this August, but Mainland feels galvanised.

"One of the brilliant things to come out of last year," she says, "well, maybe the only brilliant thing, was the upswell of support for the Fringe. People love it, are
concerned about it, and they want it to continue."

The 2009 Fringe programme is launched 12 June, box office opens 15 June