Because of it's vast size and hugely eclectic nature, the Edinburgh Festival can be off putting at first sight. Where the hell do you start? How do you pick shows from the 1500+ on offer, many of which have performances every day? To help you navigate it all, here is a quick(ish) guide to how the Edinburgh Festival 'works'. The whole thing may look a little off-putting at first, but don't be put off - it's worth it, because everyone should experience the Edinburgh Festival at least once.

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What is the Edinburgh Festival?

One of the reasons the Edinburgh Festival is so confusing is because it doesn't really exist! No, really. The 'Edinburgh Festival' is actually a number of different festivals that all take place at some point during a five week period in August (with a core three weeks in the middle that most people consider to be the main Festival).

Each festival has its own organisation, director, website and printed programme - which is why you won't find any one programme with 'Edinburgh Festival' written on the cover. These festivals include the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Edinburgh Art Festival, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Festival Of Politics, the Edinburgh Mela, the People's Festival, the Edinburgh Interactive Festival and the Edinburgh Television Festival.

To make things even more confusing, while the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has its own organisation (the Fringe Society), website (www.edfringe.com) and printed programme (the 'Fringe programme'), actually that organisation doesn't produce any shows itself - it merely represents over 100+ independent venues, and 800+ promoters, producers and theatre companies, who together present and produce the 1700+ shows that make up the Fringe.

Like I say, a bit confusing. But stick with us. Here's some info on each of those festivals...

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Edinburgh International Festival (13 Aug - 5 Sep 2010)

The Edinburgh International Festival was launched in 1947. It aimed to bring the very best performing arts companies and orchestras from across the world to the Scottish capital in a gesture of post-war collaboration.

Over sixty years on, the International Festival has the same core aim, to bring together some of the best theatre, dance and opera companies, orchestras and speakers from all over the world to take part in an innovative and exciting three week programme of arts and culture. The International Festival is led and programmed by one director – Jonathan Mills – who picks themes and sets the tone for each festival and cherry picks the companies that take part.

The International Festival programme consists of theatre, dance, opera, classical music and visual art, plus talks with people involved in the Festival.

The EIF website is at www.eif.co.uk.

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Edinburgh Festival Fringe (6 Aug - 30 Aug 2010)

In that first year, back in 1947, eight smaller theatre companies recognised that a large audience of arts fans would be pulled to Edinburgh by the International Festival. They seized on the opportunity to 'borrow' that audience and took over smaller venues not being used by the main festival. And so the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was born (though it was a couple of years before people started calling it that).

The Fringe grew each year until it was considerably larger than the main festival itself, but as it grew it kept the informal and slightly erratic approach that had been behind its creation in 1947, something which developed into what some people call the 'spirit of the Fringe' – that is that "any performer or theatre company who can raise the money and find a performance space is welcome". To this day, the Edinburgh Fringe remains unprogrammed – there is no director, board or company who says what can or can't be performed – anything goes (within the limits of the law, obviously). 

Because of its open access artistic policy, pretty much any kind of show can appear in the Fringe, which means pretty much every genre is represented in one way or another. The main genres, though, are comedy, dance and physical theatre, exhibitions, music, musicals and theatre.

The Fringe Society

A Fringe Society was established in 1958 to oversee the administration of the Fringe, and it continues to do so today, as well as publishing a central programme, running a central box office and press office, coordinating street theatre on Edinburgh High Street, and providing resources and advice to companies and performers performing at the Fringe.

It is easy to confuse the Fringe Society with the Festival Fringe itself – but they are in reality two separate things. The Festival Fringe is an erratic, informal and intangible beast, the Fringe Society is the organisation appointed (and in part funded) by performers and promoters at the Festival Fringe to coordinate centralised activities on their behalf. The Fringe Society does not produce or promote any events (with the exception of a programme of workshops for performers and the open-mic-type stages on the Royal Mile).

The Fringe Society website is at www.edfringe.com.

Fringe Venues

The Festival Fringe takes place in 100+ venues, each independently run, and each with their own artistic aims and ambitions.

Most venues will host a number of performance spaces, and some are based in a number of different buildings around Edinburgh.

Some venues invite specific companies to perform in their spaces, while others invite anyone with a show to perform to rent space (most do a bit of both). Each venue will publish their own programme and run their own box office (some venues work together on these), in addition to the central programme and box office published and run by the Fringe Society.

Venues at the Fringe vary hugely from year round theatres to grand looking churches to major concert halls to expertly converted bespoke Festival venues to back rooms in pubs. Some are very posh and plush, others less so. Others a lot less so!

Some of the bigger and longer established venues enjoy a higher profile, mainly because they tend to host some of the bigger name artists and companies. These include the so called 'big four' - The Pleasance, Assembly, Gilded Balloon and Underbelly – as well as the ever growing empire of C Venues, and Edinburgh's year-round new writing theatre the Traverse and year-round comedy club The Stand.

Other increasingly high profile venues include those operated by the Sweet, Zoo, Space, Just The Tonic and Universal Arts teams, while Augustines, The Vault, Venue 13, Diverse Attractions, Bedlam Theatre and the Bongo Club are all established Fringe names. On top of that, each year the Free Fringe, Free Festival and Five Pound Fringe operate numerous venues each, including most of the pub venues.

Festivals within the Fringe

To confuse matters even more, there are a number of 'mini-festivals' within the Fringe - that is to say programmes of events that call themselves 'festivals', but which are also part of the Fringe, and therefore shows in them will feature in the Fringe programme, and most people will refer to them as 'Fringe shows'.

The mini-festivals are found mainly in the music and comedy sections of the Fringe.

On the music side there is the Festival Of British Youth Orchestras, staged by the National Association of Youth Orchestras, which is based in Edinburgh, and The Edge, a high profile programme of contemporary music, previously known as T On The Fringe.

On the comedy side there is the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. This venture was launched in 2008 by the aforementioned 'big four' - The Pleasance, Assembly, Gilded Balloon and Underbelly. Basically they have pooled all the comedy shows taking place at their various venues and put them under the 'Edinburgh Comedy Festival' banner. They have also produced a joint printed venue programme for all their shows, half of which doubles up as the Edinburgh Comedy Festival programme.

The aim of the ECF is to try and boost the UK-wide profile of the Edinburgh Festival, and in particular the comedy section of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which is, after all, the biggest and most important comedy festival on the planet. This is a good thing. The down side is that the name implies all comedy in the Edinburgh Fringe takes place at these four venues - which it DOES NOT. A lot of brilliant comedy takes place at other Fringe venues. There is talk of these other venues participating in the ECF in future years, but in the meantime don't be confused now!

Also within the Fringe are the Free Fringe and the Free Festival, both of which, as their names suggest, offer a load of completely free shows (mainly comedy, though there's some theatre too). Not all will be brilliant, but there are always some real hidden gems in amongst these two mini-festivals (and some bigger names are doing free shows these days), and with no ticket price you have nothing to lose. If you like what you get, I think its customary to throw some money into the hat at the end of the show.

As of 2009, there is also a Five Pound Fringe, another mini-festival that does what it says on the tin. In this programming strand all shows cost five pounds. Performers here are generally more established than those in the free festivals, but perhaps less well known that some of the names performing at The Stand and the big four (though again some big names perform here also).

While we are on mini-festivals - you may also find that certain producers or promoters who represent a number of shows at the Fringe (often comedy) will publish printed programmes for their acts and give that programme a name that implies they are some sort of independent festival (some of them have used 'Edinburgh Comedy Festival' in the past). Basically, they're not, and you'll find all the shows listed in the Fringe programme too.

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The other festivals

Since 1947 a number of other festivals have been launched, all taking place in August alongside the International Festival and the Fringe, and each one specialising in a different genre. Those being staged this year include:

The Edinburgh Book Festival (14 Aug - 30 Aug 2010)
Possibly the best literary festival on the planet, combining book readings and author based events with debates and discussions on literary, social and political issues, involving world renowned authors, journalists and commentators.
www.edbookfest.co.uk

Edinburgh Art Festival (29 Jul - 5 Sep 2010)
Bringing together art galleries from across Edinburgh, this is basically an umbrella grouping for selected exhibitions being staged by those galleries, providing an easy guide to the best visual art on offer in the Scottish capital during the Festival season.
www.edinburghartfestival.org

The Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival (30 Jul - 8 Aug 2010)
A brilliant festival presenting some of the finest jazz and blues talent from across Scotland and the world.
www.edinburghjazzfestival.com

Edinburgh Military Tattoo (6 Aug - 27 Aug 2010)
The British army's contribution to the Festival - no, really - a massive show featuring piping, marching and lots of tartan. The Tattoo takes over Edinburgh Castle every August, and sells out almost as soon as tickets go on sale.
www.edintattoo.co.uk

The Festival Of Politics (2010 dates tbc)
A festival of talks, debates, discussions and other political events based in the Scottish Parliament.
www.festivalofpolitics.org.uk

Edinburgh Mela (6 Aug - 8 Aug 2010)
A multicultural extravaganza, aimed mainly at Edinburgh locals.
www.edinburgh-mela.co.uk

Edinburgh People’s Festival (2010 dates tbc)
A unions supported 'by the people for the people' cultural programme, aimed very much at Edinburgh locals.
www.edinburghpeoplesfestival.org.uk

In addition to that little lot there are two festivals aimed primarily at 'trade audiences' - ie people who work in the gaming or TV industries.

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival (12 Aug - 13 Aug 2010)
A festival for the gaming industry, mainly aimed at people working in the industry, but with some gaming based events for the general public too.
www.edinburghinteractivefestival.com

Edinburgh International Television Festival (27 Aug - 29 Aug 2010)
The UK TV industry’s flagship annual festival.
www.mgeitf.co.uk

(Another of these festivals was the Edinburgh International Film Festival, though that now takes place in June rather than August - more details at www.edfilmfest.org.uk).

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Other stuff

And as if that wasn't enough, there's a lot of other stuff going on in Edinburgh during August not affiliated to any of these festivals. Many pubs, clubs, bars and cafes stage special events during the Festival, and all the tourist attractions that are open in the city all year round will have extra opening hours. As far as we're concerned, these are part of the intangible 'Edinburgh Festival' too.

Basically, you take all the above festivals, all the other stuff, put it altogether in one box, and that is the Edinburgh Festival. Needless to say, it is huge and, while a bit confusing, it offers simply the most exciting, diverse and eclectic mix of arts, culture and entertainment from all over the world, all in one place at one time. The Edinburgh Festival is simply the biggest and bestest festival on the planet.