A SINGLE tweet has kicked off a young Scot’s mission to create a theatre company with kindness at its heart after it attracted more than 40,000 views.
Hannah Crawford is now not only producing five shows at the world’s largest arts festival but is also finding solutions to the accommodation crisis for performers at Edinburgh’s Fringe.
Originally from Bathgate, Crawford first performed at the Fringe when she was 11 and since then has worked in every area of the industry, prompting her to put out a tweet in February offering support and free advice to artists aiming to go to the Fringe.
“It was viewed 45,000 times and I ended up having 30 meetings with self-producing artists and companies heading to the Festival that I narrowed down to five extraordinary people with five extraordinary shows,” said Crawford who, at 26, is one of the youngest theatre producers in the business.
She founded her production company, Thistle and Rose Arts, with the ethos of “kindness, competence and vision” and the aim of creating the change she wanted to see in the industry.
“My goal as a producer is to create a sustainable working model which treats people as human beings and produces high-quality work. I have built our fundraising goal around that,” she said.
Crawford intends to build a better relationship between the arts and the private sector as well as find solutions to the high prices for accommodation facing artists at the Fringe.
As a result, she has found free or affordable accommodation for those working on her five shows and has so far raised £38,000 from businesses who have never before sponsored the arts.
Crawford believes her approach will also help foster better connections between local residents in Edinburgh and artists.
“The festival as a whole is growing bigger all the time and there is concern that Edinburgh has not got the infrastructure to support it long term, so the more we can foster a connection between local residents and artists the better,” she said.
“There is a danger that if you don’t do this, Edinburgh locals will feel the town has been taken over and there will be a bit of a culture war where people feel ostracised and resentment builds up.
“I think the more we can build connection and empathy between residents and artists, Edinburgh festivals will have a more hopeful future. If there is a willingness across the board to collaborate as much as we can then the festivals will continue to operate in a way that serves everyone.”
Accommodation for the artists on the five shows was secured by appeals through local Facebook groups as well as an approach to Church of Scotland ministers and congregations in Edinburgh.
Crawford, a Church of Scotland member, has been encouraged by the positive response and is hoping to build on her new contacts in the future.
“Having an ethos of kindness and approachability has made people more generous in return and in the last few months I have felt more buoyed by human nature,” she said.
The company’s approach has not only secured the five shows for the Fringe but also a queue of artists who want Thistle and Rose Arts to produce their shows in the future.
“We have The Grandmothers Grimm at the Traverse at the end of October and we’ll be taking our five Fringe productions further as we have future programming and ultimately West End ambitions for some of them,” said Crawford.
“We have only been up and running for four months so we must be doing something right. We do our best to pay artists and creatives sustainably and find them safe and clean accommodation, prioritising their wellbeing in an otherwise mentally and physically challenging month.”
A long-term goal for the company is to expand its network of small and large companies who want to funnel their capital into supporting the arts and find ways to make it work sustainably for them.
Crawford pointed out that there is a limit to the amount of government, national lottery and private trust funds for the subsidised arts sector, while the world of commercial theatre relies a lot on personal relationships between producers and high net worth individuals and business owners.
“Unless you have the mechanisms to meet these sorts of people it can be very difficult to fund work and find investors,” she said.
“A lot of the funding we have managed to secure has come through individual business owners we have met through various Chambers of Commerce around the country.
“Many people are open to the idea of funding theatre and the cultural capital that comes with it but often don’t understand how much money goes in to creating a Fringe show and the various ways they can market their business through a theatre production.
“Most of the time companies are battling for a few seconds of public attention but theatre has a captive audience for an hour or longer, so it is a much more effective way to expose people to your business or your brand.
“There is a wealth of opportunity that gets missed by business owners to market to potential customers through a theatre show. I’m doing my best to educate and communicate with business owners about how they can utilise that audience and support a much beloved and important sector of society at the same time.”
