Edinburgh Meeting House festival venue renamed
‘We are becoming a Fringe venue again – under the auspices of C Venues Ltd. The Meeting house will be called C alto.’
Edinburgh Meeting House is returning as a venue for this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Miranda Girdlestone, manager of the Meeting house, told the Friend: ‘We are becoming a Fringe venue again – under the auspices of C Venues Ltd. The Meeting house will be called C alto.’
The Meeting house was previously called Venue 40, but did not act as a venue last year. Instead Edinburgh Quakers provided a sanctuary for Fringe artists.
Hartley Kemp, artistic director of C Venues, said the company was ‘delighted to have been entrusted with the programming and operation of the Quaker Meeting House… [the programme] will showcase theatre, dance, music, digital performance and discussion from all over the world that asks who and what we are, and makes us laugh, cry, consider and reflect on the challenges and opportunities facing humanity,’ he added. ‘We look forward to welcoming members of the Quaker community to performances.’
A minute from South East Scotland Area Meeting Festival Committee said last May that it had become ‘increasingly challenging for the Festival Committee and Meeting House staff to continue to run Venue 40 in the same way…Given the change of circumstances over the last few years we feel that at present we don’t have the resources to run as an independent venue’.
The Meeting house was also hit by new licensing rules. In 2022, Edinburgh Council said venues that wanted to host any commercial profit-making events needed an all-year licence, which Friends called ‘prohibitively expensive’. Instead, the building was restricted to only showing plays that make no money.
