New Artrage chief executive Sharon Burgess reckons she has the best job in Perth, allowing her to combine her passion for the arts with her business experience.
New Artrage chief executive Sharon Burgess reckons she has the best job in Perth, allowing her to combine her passion for the arts with her business experience.
Ms Burgess spent 20 years working in a multinational outsourcing company, before deciding a decade ago to move into the arts sector.
She has since worked as general manager of Gilded Balloon Festival, as a producer, and most recently as managing director at Edinburgh Fringe venue Assembly, coordinating 27 venues over 27 days to sell 600,000 tickets, while serving on the Edinburgh Fringe board.
After first visiting Fringe in Perth in 2012, Ms Burgess returned annually to scout for new shows and build strong relationships with the Artrage management team.
Ms Burgess said she didn’t apply for the chief executive position because the timing wasn’t right, but was later headhunted for the role.
“I was thrilled to be given the opportunity and I was equally as thrilled and delighted that they saw and had enough confidence in my ability to do the job to give me the time to complete my commitments back in Edinburgh, which was really important,” Ms Burgess told Business News.
Previous chief executive Marcus Canning held the position for 17 years and started the Fringe World Festival in 2011, growing the audience to 857,747 in 2019.
“It’s a hugely successful product and it’s a hugely successful brand and there is a desire for it,” Ms Burgess said.
“I always tell people [in Perth] what I do and why I’m here and the response is overwhelming and it’s absolutely, without exception, enthusiasm and excitement.
“They say ‘Oh my god, we love Fringe’ so I’m not going to come and change something that works; that would be insane.”
While she doesn’t want to make big changes, Ms Burgess said she wanted Fringe World to be an event people would travel to attend.
“It attracts new audiences from beyond the city so we are looking at interstate, we are looking at overseas, we are looking at people coming to Fringe as a destination,” she said.
“That means providing quality, which is not just about quality of the performance, it’s quality of the surroundings, it’s quality of the offering, it’s food and it’s drink and it’s engaging with everything else that’s happening in the city.”
In 2019, Fringe events filled an average 59 per cent of available seats, and Ms Burgess said the team’s focus in 2020 would be to encourage new audience members who hadn’t been to a Fringe show before.
“You don’t have to grow, there’s still capacity, there’s still empty chairs,” she said.
“Every year if we have 500 shows, 500 shows will not be 100 per cent full so let’s get the audiences in to fill up those seats and make sure that all the artists are having the best experience they possibly can and having a successful season; and that doesn’t always come with bigger.”
“I have sat in theatres with kids who have never seen a live performance and watching their faces, you think: ‘This is why we do what we do’.
“It’s about developing those new audiences.”
