Capital Fringe Festival

The Capital Fringe Festival was first held on July 20–30, 2006. Founded by Julianne Brienza, Mike Geske, Colin Hovde, Scot McKenzie, Nyree Neil, William D. Parker, Charles Phaneuf and Damian Sinclair, the festival was in the spirit of other Fringe festivals worldwide to provide a stripped down platform for artists to perform their works for adventurous audiences. The first festival took place in 28 venues all over downtown Washington, D.C. The festival grounds were located in the Penn Quarter Neighborhood and the eleven day event featured 90 arts groups in almost 400 performances. The second year's festival took place in 2007 and expanded performances to 120 arts groups and close to 500 performances. Over the years the festival has won several awards including the 2011 Mayor’s Arts Award for Service in the Arts and the 2013 Helen Hayes Award for Innovative Leadership in the Theatre Community. In 2020 the festival was cancelled and they formed a partnership with the Caandor Labs and Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. This led to launching the Down to Earth paid artist residency. In 2021, instead of running the Fringe festival, the Fringe ran the four 13-week visual art Down to Earth Residency. Each artist received $10,000 for their residency period. The program concluded with an in person gallery show at the Honfleur Gallery in April 2022. Fringe also launched Duck Pond Music. This is a free outdoor concert series to create earning opportunities for local DMV musicians. But 2020 was not kind to the Fringe and the festival had to sell off their headquarters in 2021 and revamp their plans for building out their space and curating year-round programming. They did not hold a festival in 2021, but returned in 2022 in a much smaller capacity. Due to high rent increases the Fringe moved the festival to Georgetown. The 2022 festival featured 30 performing groups over two weekends in July. ==References and external links==