"Despite the obvious and numerous horrors of the pandemic, I have found one singular positive from it all. And that is to get on and do it. Since the start of 2020 I have written more, and more frequently... We found other ways to make art, which makes the industry less exclusive"

"I've wanted to be a performer since I could talk. It's just always been so clear to me that this is what I'm meant to do – so I've been finding any and every excuse to be on a stage since childhood."

Paul Williams will be performing at Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August.

"Growing up, my mum was always super creative with entertaining me in school holidays and encouraging hobbies… even if it led to me in tears at a trial ballet class because I didn’t want to ‘walk on my tippy-toes’!"

"This show was created before the pandemic but it was postponed numerous times due to covid and lockdowns and as we had two years to think about it, we re-wrote it twice. It’s instilled in me that you always need to spend longer than you think creating a show."

We speak to Connor Taylor, founder and principal of Adore Dance London in East London, all about the impact of lockdown on creative practice, gaining confidence to dance for yourself, and what it's like to run an entire dance school. 

"My family are Scottish and so I have a huge affinity with the country, and with Edinburgh. I love the way Edinburgh hosts the fringe, it’s like nothing else in the world."

"There’s a lack of diversity within alternative comedy, which I think is primarily down to its much smaller scale than more mainstream forms of comedy. If you scale down any industry, you get a microcosm of the same ratio, but it is far more blatant in a much smaller pool of talent."

Rob Auton returns to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a brand new show all about crowds

"Watching impotently as years of work and momentum were destroyed in front of me as I recovered from long covid made me a lot more zen, in the end. There are many ways to skin the cat of success."

Guide to Surviving Masculinist Territory is a performance in the form of a sound walk in urban space. The audience follows a woman in the street, while listening to the story of an "Incel", a member of this community of "involuntary celibates" who meet on the internet around their common hatred of women. 

"Without sounding like someone who owns an Etsy shop selling jewellery made out of pasta, I find inspiration from most of the people in my life who are hilarious and gorgeous, but that is mandatory to be in my cult."