Production

Production

I have produced a wide variety of projects and events, and in 2025 I even produced a small festival of co-created events called Fringe Cares Fest! It was an incredible experience and I’m always looking for new challenges like this. I especially like working on events that prioritise community engagement and have community at the heart. Keep reading to see some of my production highlights.

Fringe Cares Fest, 2025

Fringe Cares Fest is my most recent production role - and for a full festival this time! The Fringe Cares Fest is a mini Fringe festival of work in care homes. It provides paid opportunities for artists to work in care homes and bring a bit of the Fringe fun to some older folks in Edinburgh who can no longer get out to see shows. Each event was co-created by me, the care home staff, and where possible, the residents. I relied on the knowledge of the care home staff and residents as to what should be prioritised for each event, and the staff and residents always had the final say over the performers and how the events would run.

This is my favourite way of working and puts the community at the heart of the event’s creation, meaning I was reporting to the community members at every turn.

Here are some of the highlights:

Drag performer Jacqui Randa meeting care home residents - she was a total hit wherever she went!

Street performer Emma Price with her roving accordion act and glorious vocals

Musical quartet Pronto Jazz join the conga line at one care home

Musician Duane Forrest playing for residents - his silky vocals went down a treat!

BBC Scotland cover the festivities at one of the care homes

I worked with 24 artists to bring 30 performances to 16 care homes across Edinburgh and the Lothians during the festival. We had one event every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in August. I co-curated the programme alongside the care home staff and residents, and helped them prepare for the events.

I worked closely with the artists and made performer packs to help them plan and prepare. Working in a care home is a very different environment to a theatre and requires particular skills to help participants engage fully. It was an incredibly rewarding project!

We even got some funding to make a short film about how to run the project. Here I am talking about what goes into producing work like this.

Edinburgh Fringe Community Events, 2023

In 2023 I produced the Fringe Society’s Community Engagement events. This included three large on-site co-created community events around Edinburgh (including a street party!), eight community visits by performers, and an activity day at a youth centre in collaboration with Edinburgh’s other festivals. I also coordinated a roster of access events including BSL-interpreted street events and the on-street mental health provision of SAMH’s Wellbeing on Wheels bus.

I worked with 3 community organisations: Sikh Sanjog, a charity supporting Sikh women, Stepping Stones, an organisation supporting young families in North Edinburgh, and Space @ Broomouse Hub, a community centre in the West of Edinburgh. I took a participatory approach to the event production and co-created the events with the groups. The project enabled the Fringe to come out of the centre of town and visit the community groups directly. This meant that the events could take place in a setting that the community knew well.

Co-creating events is really exciting and puts the community voice at the heart of event planning and production. This was by far my favourite part of the job. Something I learned quickly is that it is vital to have unrestricted funds when working on co-created community events. If an organisation is serious about a taking a participatory approach to community engagement, they have to put their money where their mouth is and let the community group choose every element to make it work for them.

For example, free food was mentioned as a necessity for all community groups during the planning stage, either to negate a potential barrier to attendance, or due to the cultural significance of eating together. It created a great community vibe and the acts were able to fit in around this.

The groups chose everything from the location to the food to the acts and activities. In my view, this is the best (any maybe only?) way to work with community groups when co-creating events. You can’t make any assumptions about the needs of a community group, and you certainly can’t make any decisions without them.

You can read more about Fringe Community Events on their website here…

Some other production roles…

Macrobert Art Centre Creative Activities, 2024

In 2024 I was the Creative Activities Officer for Macrobert Art Centre in Stirling where I coordinated the creative activities and year-round programme of events. This included weekly classes such as the youth theatre, adult dance classes and Dance for Parkinson’s, holiday activities for children and young people, yearly activities such as the art competition and national initiatives like The Big Lunch.

I ran some seed planting activities to take place during The Big Lunch - every attendee left with their own plantable flower pot!

We also ran some pop-up activities as part of the council’s Play in the Park initiative and other summer holiday activities across the Forth Valley. The kids especially loved badge making!

Project Coordinator, Like Flying (NTS), 2022

This was a wee short project for me, but it definitely deserves an honorary mention! It was the first project I had ever worked on in a production capacity and I was very nervous - it taught me a lot about working with other people on a fast-paced production, like how important it is to be adaptable and flexible, how to find information quickly, and most importantly, how to use a walkie-talkie properly…