Adelaide Fringe Postpones Submission of Rundle Road Closure
Fri, Aug 25 2023
Adelaide Fringe will postpone the submission for a temporary road closure of Rundle Road.
After an extensive and highly engaged consultation period via Adelaide City Council, Adelaide Fringe is grateful to see so many people offer positive feedback and are keen to make a road closure work for artists, audiences and residents in future years.
However, Adelaide Fringe is committed to addressing the concerns around a temporary road closure from the consultation and will no longer pursue the proposed closure for the 2024 Festival.
Closing Rundle Road during Adelaide Fringe would create greater accessibility to the box office and venues along with increased opportunity to attract world class acts to Australia’s biggest arts festival as a result of larger arena-style venues being positioned on the additional available space. We understand there will be many businesses in the East End that benefit greatly from Fringe who will be disappointed in this outcome and we hope to work collaboratively to ensure we can offer the best success for all businesses during the Festival period.
Director of Gluttony, Daniel Michael said, “Gluttony has read some of the feedback about the road closure from residents and businesses in the area. We want to be good neighbours and we want to be neighbours for a long time. With that in mind we have listened to people’s concerns and withdrawn from our application to use Rundle Road. We do however think that we can explain ourselves better to the residents and businesses and with that in mind we will continue to engage with them over the coming year to come up with solutions that work better for everyone in the long term.”
Adelaide Fringe Director and CEO Heather Croall said, "The benefit to closing Rundle Road in future years would be significant to the city of Adelaide as well as Adelaide Fringe, increasing the scale of shows on offer to audiences and the overall availability and sale of tickets by approximately twenty percent. With the public response resulting in so much positive feedback, we really hope we can make this a reality in the future, ensuring we address concerns raised throughout a refreshed consultation period ahead of Fringe 2025.”
However, Adelaide Fringe is committed to addressing the concerns around a temporary road closure from the consultation and will no longer pursue the proposed closure for the 2024 Festival.
Closing Rundle Road during Adelaide Fringe would create greater accessibility to the box office and venues along with increased opportunity to attract world class acts to Australia’s biggest arts festival as a result of larger arena-style venues being positioned on the additional available space. We understand there will be many businesses in the East End that benefit greatly from Fringe who will be disappointed in this outcome and we hope to work collaboratively to ensure we can offer the best success for all businesses during the Festival period.
Director of Gluttony, Daniel Michael said, “Gluttony has read some of the feedback about the road closure from residents and businesses in the area. We want to be good neighbours and we want to be neighbours for a long time. With that in mind we have listened to people’s concerns and withdrawn from our application to use Rundle Road. We do however think that we can explain ourselves better to the residents and businesses and with that in mind we will continue to engage with them over the coming year to come up with solutions that work better for everyone in the long term.”
Adelaide Fringe Director and CEO Heather Croall said, "The benefit to closing Rundle Road in future years would be significant to the city of Adelaide as well as Adelaide Fringe, increasing the scale of shows on offer to audiences and the overall availability and sale of tickets by approximately twenty percent. With the public response resulting in so much positive feedback, we really hope we can make this a reality in the future, ensuring we address concerns raised throughout a refreshed consultation period ahead of Fringe 2025.”
Adelaide Fringe 2024 season will run from February 16 to March 17.