Guest Blog: Co-Founders Michelle Flower and Zena Barrie on London's Fringe Spirit and Celebrating 20 Years of the Camden Fringe

August 2025 marks the 20th edition of the Camden Fringe. Well, sort-of. Remember 2020? We were in the midst of taking applications and booking shows when the pandemic hit, so that particular version had to be abandoned. But 2025 at least marks the 20th time we’ve organised a fringe festival. To be honest, we’ll probably be celebrating our actual 20th birthday next year as well.

If you are of a mathematical bent you will have worked out that this means the Camden Fringe started in 2006. At the time there were Fringe festivals in Edinburgh (obviously), Buxton and Brighton. But London’s boroughs, although full of fringe spirit, were untroubled by any sort of festival. 

In 2006 we were managing the Etcetera Theatre on Camden High Street and simultaneously producing comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was always difficult to get bookings for the theatre in August, once the July “fringe preview” season had finished, as the received wisdom was that everyone was in Edinburgh. The lightbulb moment was Zena’s - she suggested we put on a season of new work doing short runs and call it The Camden Fringe. It might work.

We had a miserable year spending a lot of money slogging through the Edinburgh Fringe, whilst in London, the Etcetera Theatre was having a lovely time hosting many and varied shows. From these humble beginnings we very slowly grew the festival - adding a venue each year until 2010 when we went a bit wild and almost reached double figures. 

We work with venues that exist year round. For many of them August has gone from being one of the quietest months of the year to one of the busiest. We’re delighted that the festival has not only provided a great platform for emerging artists to mount shows in a safe and supportive environment, but also highlighted many of the brilliant fringe theatres that exist across north London.

If you’d told us back then that we’d still be organising the Camden Fringe in 2025 and that the festival would host 450 different productions and spread from Hoxton to Hammersmith we would have been amazed. And perhaps a little scared. We would have certainly imagined that we’d have some sort of team working on it, perhaps in a nice office, wearing casual chic office wear. Sadly none of this is the case - it’s still just two of us working on it in our respective homes. Zena has the office chic look down; I’m more often found sporting a dressing gown for work.

The strength of the Camden Fringe is also its weakness - we’ve never received any meaningful funding, financial support or sponsorship to run the Fringe. This means we’ve never had a massive marketing budget to promote the festival and we’ve not been able to employ anyone else to work with us on the admin side. But the small, focussed nature of the festival means it’s been sustainable and we’ve never had the rug pulled from under us by losing any of the above.

The problem with having 450 shows taking part is almost impossible to pick any highlights from the programme. It is almost entirely new work and the open access nature of the festival means that the majority of the performances are untested at this point.

My favourite way to experience the Camden Fringe is to pick a date (for me it’s usually quite late on in the season, when the admin has subsided a bit) and try and cram in as many shows in as many different venues as I can. If you plan carefully you can do 4 or 5. I don’t really think about what the shows are - kids shows, dance, comedy, theatre, magic - I just turn up with an open mind. My favourite always ends up being something completely unexpected that I hadn’t predicted as a highlight.

But I wouldn’t be doing my job here if I didn’t signpost a few highlights from 2025, so here are a few things that have caught my eye:

I love a murder mystery and None of them Will Get Out Alive at the Hen and Chickens is a brand new addition to this classic form.

A funny lady with a harp? I’m interested. One who has been described as “Michelle Visage mixed with the musical and comedic brilliance of Victoria Wood”? I’m all in. Sam Hickman: First Woman at Museum of Comedy 

In recent years, niche long form improv shows have been having a moment. The Shite Lotus is an improvised episode of a popular recent TV series. If you can’t guess which one from the title, the show might not be for you. Catch this at Camden Comedy Club 

1816: The Year Without A Summer at Theatro Technis is the third consecutive show brought to Camden Fringe by Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society. This one is about the summer that writers including Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley spent together trying to write a scary stories. I hope this isn’t a spoiler, as it’s not mentioned in the press release, but I happen to be the sort of nerd who knows that during this holiday, not only was Frankenstein conceived but also one of the first pieces of Vampire fiction. 

A quirky, late addition to the festival is The Head. Head to the Etcetera for some female body horror that will emerge from a toilet… it sounds utterly bizarre. 

The Camden Fringe runs at various venues around London from 28 July – 24 August