Isla Campbell on Edinburgh, the Fringe, Class and Creativity
Writer, actor and theatremaker Isla Campbell writes about their experience of the Fringe as a working-class Edinburgh local, and about Shark Bait's new show, Tartan Tat
When I was 15 years old, I was walking down the Royal Mile to my grandma’s council flat after school. I was approached by a sweaty performer who thrust a flyer into my hand and said to me, "Love the costume, what show are you doing?" I was in my school uniform.
Growing up in Edinburgh is a wildly unique experience, for better or for worse. One month a year your home city becomes a bustling hub of the creative industries, the arts capital of the world. However, for the other eleven months of the year you see how painfully underfunded the arts are. With backbones of the grassroots theatre scene like Page2Stage losing their Creative Scotland funding this year, it’s hard to not feel disenfranchised.
Within the hubbub of the festival, it’s easy to forget the working class soul of Edinburgh and how inaccessible the city is becoming. We see so many articles about how the Fringe is becoming too expensive for performers and accommodation too pricey; meanwhile, I have childhood friends that can no longer afford to live in Edinburgh – despite growing up here and living here for their whole lives – because rent is too high. Whole streets of flats that once were council flats are now lined with lockboxes, creating a vacant wasteland of what used to be a community. Yet for many local young people, the most accessible jobs are within the tourism industry, creating this strange cycle of feeding the beast; making money from the tourism industry, while the reason we can’t afford to live in this city is because of the tourism industry.
As a working-class creative, I want to centre this feeling in my work. Me and my writing partner, Lex Joyce, took this into mind when writing our 2024 Fringe show, Tartan Tat. Tartan Tat is a new comedy about a tourist trap gift shop on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and the characters that work there. The show shines a light on the real people behind this city and brings a mirror to the Fringe itself. My feelings as an Edinburgh local are all told through the character of Orla, who I won’t go into detail about – you’ll have to see the show to find out yourself!
Tartan Tat is also about online controversy when it comes to trans rights: how things can spiral out of control and how the media uses culture wars to distract people from the true failings of our societal leaders. The minorities within society are not the reason that young people can’t afford houses, that bills are too high or for the general cost of living crisis. As a trans person myself, this was important for me to write about and I feel this relates to the discussion of Edinburgh's gentrification. The issue is not the Fringe itself nor the creatives involved – it’s the greed of people higher up the chain.
Growing up working-class in Edinburgh while also being a creative creates a weird identity crisis; having all this artistic goodness on my doorstep in August is amazing and I’m so lucky for it. However, for the other 11 months of the year – for the past 23 years of my life – I’ve seen the soul be ripped from my hometown. I love Edinburgh with my whole heart, but I fear that in the future it will become an empty corpse, adorned with a see-you-Jimmy hat, Gryffindor scarf and an AirBnb lockbox.
Tartan Tat by Shark Bait Theatre, theSpace @ Niddry St, 2-20 Aug (not 11), 2.10pm, £8-11