Fringe venue gets marching orders

One of the Edinburgh Fringe’s quirkier venues is to close after this year’s festival, after being turfed out of its home by its university landlords.

The Bongo Club was founded in 1996 and moved into its current home in Moray House in 2003. But now Edinburgh University, which owns the venue, has given it notice to quit in September.

Independent arts charity Out Of The Blue, which runs the Bongo year-round, says its closure would be ‘of real detriment to the city’. Almost 68,000 audience members attended the venue last year, it says, of which at least 20,000 were Edinburgh University students.

Out of the Blue is now campaigning to get the decision reversed, although they admit negotiations ‘currently indicate that the university have no intention to change their decision’.

The university says it is acting within the terms of the contract, and has given the Bongo more notice than it was contractually obliged to ‘to assist in the club's search for a new home’.

But even the university’s own rector, journalist Iain Macwhirter, is against the move, saying: ‘I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of Edinburgh University to find some accommodation for this highly successful and groundbreaking community venture, which has done much to strengthen links with the ordinary people of Edinburgh – the people who pay for the university through their taxes.

‘The university has a truly vast estate of buildings and surely some corner can be found. I say: Save the Bongo.’

Comedian Mark Thomas, who has regularly performed at the club during the Fringe, said: ‘The Bongo Club is a rare and wonderful thing, a club that encourages the best of its local artistic community.

‘During the Fringe it is a venue that works to promote new and exciting work that attracts visitors and locals alike and provides genuinely inspiring line-ups and shows at properly affordable prices.

‘It has an ethos of experimentation and discovery and accessibility that is unique. It is part of the artistic DNA of Edinburgh and to lose it would be an act of cultural self-harming.’

The Bongo is also known for it’s raucous late night revue show and for hosting the Tap Water comedy award, set up in protest at Perrier.

A university spokesman said: ‘The space in Moray House will be used to create a new home for our Office of Lifelong Learning, which serves more than 15,000 community education students a year. The move is in line with our long-term development of the Moray House estate and our commitment to providing the best facilities for our students.

‘We are happy to help the Bongo Club in its quest for a new venue and we wish it all the best for the future.’

Published: 7 Feb 2012