Harrogate International Fringe Festival, July 1 to 31 (From York Press)

Harrogate International Fringe Festival, July 1 to 31

10:54am Friday 10th June 2011 in Exhibitions By Charles Hutchinson

GRAHAM Chalmers knew the re-launched Harrogate Fringe was on the right track last year.

“There was a moment that made it all worthwhile and made me want to do it all again,” he says.

“Esteemed music critic David Stubbs, who writes for Wire magazine, which I admire a lot, attended The Rest Is Noise event where we had classical music treated as a rave night with 3D glasses.

“It was a daft idea but bizarrely it was brilliant, and David said ‘Right now, this is the coolest place to be in Britain’.”

Not words you would often associate with Harrogate, the Victorian spa town of Bettys tea rooms, immaculate flower beds, the almost as immaculate Stray and a return last year to a Tory MP.

“On the surface Harrogate seems like the worst place in the world to put on a modern Fringe, but it’s got so many great people doing great things quietly every day of the week that it’s actually a great place to do it,” says Graham.

And so, with the backing of Sharon Canavar, chief executive of Harrogate International Festivals, Graham and his Fringe Advisory Committee of like-minded creative souls set about mounting Fringe number two with the tag line of Be Different.

"We called it the Fringe Advisory Committee as the idea was that it should be about advice and ideas and not bureaucracy," says Graham.

The event will run from July 1 to 31 and will feature the likes of Julian Cope of Teardrop Explodes, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals and Edwyn Collins, the former Orange Juice leader, who will be exhibiting his bird artwork.

“They are some of the most inventive names in recent pop history, and all of them are showing that creativity still counts. Their creativity and yours,” says Graham, whose line-up also features Toyah Wilcox, Soweto Kinch, Gered Mankowitz, Chris Welch and Teeth Of The Sea.

“The Fringe is the result of local people doing it for themselves, local organisations such as Kula Productions, Poems, Prose & Pints, 108 Fine Art, Redhouse Originals, Kamamica, Boiling Frog… with the support of its big sister, the International Festival.

“Harrogate Festival this year is going to be the biggest and best it’s ever been and the Fringe is its rock’n’roll edge.”

The input of the Harrogate arts community is vital to the Fringe, says Graham, who by day is the chief sub-editor at Ackrill Newspapers.

“What’s interesting is that when people talk about arts events being by the people for the people, it’s usually just a marketing line, but every event we have in the Fringe this year has been devised and organised by individuals doing it because they love doing it,” emphasises Graham, who has organised only five of the 17 events himself.

“The town we know as Harrogate is actually less than 200 years old and it’s more modern than it appears. If that wasn’t the case, great acts like Julian Cope and Gruff Rhys wouldn’t be coming here.

These are super-cool people playing Harrogate.”

For details, visit Harrogate-festivals.co.uk

• Gruff Rhys’s showcase concert on July 18 at 7.30pm at Harrogate Theatre will be his only date in the north this summer.