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Storytelling PR Fringe 26 – Senior Publicist

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Storytelling PR are currently looking for a Senior Publicist to join us for a period of maternity cover for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026.

We work from buzzy and busy offices in Summerhall, Edinburgh and our team operate the Summerhall Arts Press Office here in Summerhall, as well as our working roster of Fringe clients. Storytelling PR provides a challenging and exciting environment to work in, requiring a range of skills and personal qualities and encouraging professional and personal growth.

This role requires candidates with an amazing contact list; interest in representing some of the world’s most progressive artists in the world’s largest arts festival. Experience of working in a press office and publicity experience in a busy environment is essential. Specific experience in culture and arts PR is not essential but a keen interest in seeing the work our artists present, following comedy, theatre and performance art from around the world definitely is!

We appreciate that this is a short term contract, our priority is to find a member of the team who has experience, the passion for live art and interest in working within a dynamic team throughout a busy festival.

The deadline for applications is 6pm, Wednesday 27th May 2026
Interviews will be held the w/b Monday 8th June 2026.

Download the full Job Description doc here.
Have a look at our equal opportunities doc here.

Edinburgh Fringe 2025: Storytelling PR round up, a huge thank you, Fringe show awards, and what’s up next this year

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As ever, we were delighted to work with a roster of brilliant artists and shows this August for yet another non-stop Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Coming to us from all over the globe, our 2025 artists included expert comedians, international acrobats, experimental dancers, rising theatre makers, innovative new writers, skilled clowns, passionate musicians, world-class martial artists, cabaret stars, technological creatives, immersive storytellers – and everything wonderful and imaginative in between.

‘Score’ by Isaiah Wilson
(Kultur|lx Luxembourg selection 2025)
| Image credit – Léa Junet

Their shows took us to the heart of Palestine and its people; through the space-race and intimate stories of pregnancy loss; into the last launderette on the Isle of Wight; around the edge of a lonely swimming pool in Saudi Arabia; through surrealist imaginings of ‘Edutainment’ and a fisherman’s curious one-night tale of rare true love; towards living on Mars and futuristic immigration exam requirements; in amongst the seams of beautiful sung and spoken life stories; under the skin of electro-muscle stimulation and dystopian bodies moving in sync as one; and to sit down at a very special Burns Supper table with the historic Bard himself.

‘Is There Work On Mars?’ by Faye Yan | Image credit – Amy Lauffer Neff
‘The Genesis’ by Copenhagen Collective | Image credit – David Poznic
‘Stepping in…Spilling out’ by Mark Bleakley | Image credit – Tiu Makkonen
‘Cheese and Guava’ by Cênica, part of São Paulo Showcase | Image credit – Guilherme Di Curzio
‘Scott Turnbull presents… Surreally Good’ by Scott Turnbull | Image credit – Mel Butler
‘These Mechanisms’ by Christine Thynne and Robbie Synge | Image credit – Brian Hartley

2025 was a very busy year for our team – and we couldn’t be prouder to play a role in bringing so many wonderful stories to life on stage. Whether reuniting with old friends and returning artists, or building beautiful new multidisciplinary global connections, it is always a joy to see our offices brimming with life every summer for the world’s biggest gathering of performance, artistic companionship, and never-ending creative collaboration.

AWARDS 2025 – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

In Fringe-specific awards, we were delighted to see many of our artists smash it out the park across various accolades – including the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, The Scotsman Fringe Firsts, The Besties, and the Brighton Fringe Awards, and lots more.

‘Creepy Boys: SLUGS’ by Sam Kruger & S.E. Grummett
| Image credit – Mat Simpson

‘FLOAT’ by Indra Wilson and F-Bomb Theatre
| Image credit – Mihaela Bodlovic
‘PALESTINE: Peace de Resistance‘ by Sami Abu Wardeh, Counterpoints and Palestine Comedy Club | Image Credit – Zoë Birkbeck

September onwards…

‘Time Keeps The Drummer’ by
Fevered Sleep |
Image credit – Winnie Yeung

As we go into the final third of 2025, we’re excited to be working with some wonderful artists and performers. In addition to continuing our year-round projects and collaborations with friends, we’ll be working with Colette Sadler and FERAL Arts on Present Futures Festival Dundee (10 – 11 September), Shotput’s touring production of Enda Walsh’s Arlington (17 October – 8 November), Hercules the Bear by Tenterhooks (29 September – 29 October), bold new British musical Gwenda’s Garage by Out of the Archive Theatre in association with Sheffield Theatre (15 – 25 October), Harry Clayton-Wright’s Mr Blackpool’s Seaside Spectacular (6 and 8 November), Rhianna Ilube and Coney‘s touring game-theatre show 1884 (9 – 25 October), Kerry Wright’s tour and debut play Kailey (11 – 25 September), Fevered Sleep’s radical multi-genre durational performance Time Keeps The Drummer (touring 12 September – 12 April), and more.

That’s us for now…! If you’d like to work with our lovely team in the future (whether on year-round work or Fringe-specific shows) please do get in touch with Managing Director Miriam, Executive Director Emma, or Senior Publicists Ambrose and Polly.

Storytelling PR x

Summerhall Arts Fringe – Press Team Jobs Available

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Summerhall Arts  are currently looking for 2 Press Office team members to join us for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025. Summerhall provides a challenging and exciting environment to work in, requiring a range of skills and personal qualities and encouraging professional and personal growth.

As a Press Officer/Assistant, you will be part of a small but efficient team that is the first point of contact for thousands of journalists and industry visiting Summerhall in August. As well as looking after these journalists and companies within the building, you will be trusted to manage admin tasks, tickets and publicity for the building as a whole. 

Deadline for applications is 6pm, Wednesday 25 June. 

Interviews will be held the w/b Monday 30 June. 

Role Description – Fringe Press Team 

Contract term

Essential training in later July during contracted hours. 

Position starts: 16/07/2025

Position finishes: 26/08/2025

Press Office Team will be required to work 6 days a week in August and 5 days a week in July. Shows in most venues run between 0900-2300 (though some run as late as 0300), and once the festival commences there will be shifts from 9am – 9pm (9 – 6, 10 – 7, 11 – 8pm)

Direct Manager

Summerhall Arts Press Office Manager – Emma Ainley Walker (Storytelling PR Exec Director)

With day to day support from Fergus Craig – Press Office Lead. 

Key Internal Relationships

Summerhall Arts Box Office Managers, Marketing Manager, Programmer + Press Office Team. 

Key External Relationships

Visiting media, visiting companies.

Duties and Responsibilities will include:

  • Manage and oversee issuing of press tickets to all accredited media (this will involve skilled admin time on Red61 alongside the Summerhall Box Office) 
  • Pitch to journalists and try and increase the number of press in the building
  • Ensure coverage is neatly and clearly on display around the building.
  • Liaise with and support companies where relevant with their publicity questions and ideas.
  • Respond thoughtfully to last minute and occasionally complicated requests. 
  • Pitch and matchmake shows with journalists. 
  • Support and be a friendly face for companies and media coming through the office.
  • Oversee the fringepress@summerhallarts.co.uk inbox, answering enquiries, logging requests and sending out press images and press materials for all shows at Summerhall.

Candidate requirements – essential and will vary based on specific role in the office

  • Relevant experience of working in a theatre / cultural events press office or for a publisher / publication / media group. 
  • Have an interest in working in the media on either side of press or PR/marketing. 
  • Have experience using box office software. (Ideally Red61)

Candidate requirements – desirable

  • Have an interest in events at Summerhall and attend events and shows.
  • Have a good understanding of the Summerhall Arts Fringe programme.
  • Be tidy and focused on tasks in a timely order. 
  • Have a keen interest in seeing avant-garde, intersectional and new work. 
  • Have experience using Red61 Box Office software 

Rate of pay

  • Press Officer – £13.00 per hour + holiday pay
  • Press Assistant – £12.60 per hour + holiday pay

Perks

  • You will receive a staff pass which gives you: First come first served access to fringe shows which are not sold out; food and drink discounts across the site

We work from a light, buzzy and busy office in Summerhall, Edinburgh.

We welcome those interested to send a cover letter and CV to georgia@storytellingpr.com

We welcome questions about the role to emmaaw@storytellingpr.com 

Have a look at our equal opps doc here. 

PR for Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025

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Hello. It’s been a while! If you don’t know us already, we’re Storytelling PR – one of Scotland’s leading creative PR agencies and industry specialists in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Being a brand new year, we thought we’d touch base early on and introduce ourselves to artists or companies looking for PR and communications support.

So, what do we do? Year-round, we work on PR and communications for a beautiful mix of activist, community-focused, and multidisciplinary performance work, including touring productions, in addition to providing organisational and development support for creative organisations and artists. We also offer specialist services in crisis comms, consultancy, one-off news announcements, PR planning, and media training.

In the past year, we’ve caused a giant stir at Ruthin International Arts Festival, got dizzy in Sheffield, celebrated queer lives in Blackpool, helped Hebridean Treasure tour the Highlands and Islands, brought sparkle to Manchester, danced with Knockengorroch Festival on ancient land, introduced DARKFIELD’s curious arcade to the world, and championed new models of creative work in Crawley and Tees Valley. 

Every August in Edinburgh, we also work with a roster of brilliant international and UK Fringe acts, ranging from comedians, clowns and circus troupes; theatre-makers and dancers; to spoken word artists, site-specific and immersive experiences, drag queens, musicians and choirs; storytellers, cabaret acts, and everything in between.


You can check out some of the brilliant year-round clients we are currently working with here; and you can view some of our incredible past Edinburgh Festival Fringe clients here.

Our team is based in Edinburgh and central Scotland year-round, and are up at all hours across a number of timelines to manage local Scottish, national UK, and wider international projects. We are familiar faces to the London theatre circuit and make multiple trips a year down south to assist on some brilliant work. We have over 20 years of combined hands-on industry experience across a wide spread of specialisms – and, most importantly, we love what we do, and we love to do it well.

As we all recover from a particularly cold winter, the Storytelling PR team is looking ahead to the warmer months with excitement. Our Edinburgh Festival Fringe planning is well underway – we’re seeing our 2025 lists grow already.

To get an idea of who we’ve worked with in the past, and the sort of work we love, our 2024 clients included a brilliant mix of international artists from New Zealand, Norway, Luxembourg, Singapore, Australia, America, Ireland, and beyond, including hit Fringe shows like: Dylan Mulvaney’s F*GHAG, Leah Shelton and Quiet Riot’s BATSHIT, SELL ME: I am from North Korea by Sora Baek, You’re Needy (sounds frustrating) by tasteinyourmouth, Plotnek Productions and Nick Cassenbaum’s REVENGE: After the Levoyah, ALOK’S Hairy Situation, Mark Bittlestone’s Find Me A Straight Guy, still hungry and Bryony Kimmings’s Show Pony, The Purple Pill by Nabil Abdulrashid, and Salty Brine’s These Are The Contents Of My Head (The Annie Lennox Show).

We’re always keen to work with the next best out-of-the-box, irreverent, hilarious, devastating, intersectional, heartbreaking, lyrical, powerful, dark, joyful, futuristic, experimental, personal shows.

If you’d like to work with Storytelling PR on your 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, you can get in touch with a senior team member here!

Edinburgh Festival Fringe PR – what does Storytelling PR do in August?

Working with artists and companies leading up to and throughout the Edinburgh Festival Fringe truly is our ‘bread and butter’ work. Whether you’ve been performing at the Fringe for a decade, or you’ve finally decided to take the plunge this year, we pride ourselves on helping shows of all shapes and sizes tackle the Festival beast as successfully as possible.

We centre our Edinburgh Festival Fringe PR services on our company ethos: to provide authentic, compassionate, inclusive, and artist-led assistance in all we do. Every Festival, we work closely with each individual artist and creative team to realise, understand, and achieve PR goals specific to their Fringe show, personal experience of festivals, and unique creative disciplines. Our office is based in central Edinburgh, so we always encourage our artists to drop in as and when they need a chat, a rest, some space, or just a moment of quiet. 

Storytelling PR’s Festival services do not take on a one-fits-all shape. Instead, we take the time to get to know you, and form the perfect plan, start-to-finish, from there. If you do decide to work with Storytelling PR this year, here’s a little insight into what we can provide: 

  • Compilation and distribution of all written physical and digital press materials (e.g., media releases, press kits, digital assets) to key UK and Fringe arts critics and journalists, media outlets, broadcast TV, radio, podcasts, blogs and newspapers.
  • Expert pitching, tailored for your show, to targeted press lists – in the lead-up to and during the Festival, for maximum exposure. 
  • In-person PR assistance from our team, as and when possible, throughout the Festival (e.g., Storytellers made physically present for your important performance dates, in-person media interviews, industry meetups and mixers, filming or photography, etc). 
  • Expert in-the-moment advice on all Fringe questions. 
  • Consistent contact and support from our team to yours, in mediums that best suit your Fringe schedule (e.g., email, telephone, WhatsApp, in-person, etc). This includes regular press, media, and review updates, directly to your inbox – including press links and clippings.
  • A comprehensive end-of-Fringe summary report, including all press and media obtained across the campaign, and a run-down of all highlight points, noteworthy pieces of press, special reviews, thoughts for the future, etc. 
  • Post-Fringe debrief and exit chat. 

Get in touch with us if you’d like to discuss your Edinburgh Fringe show!

Theatre and Festivals to watch out for in 2025

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We’re looking forward to a new year with some highlights of exciting things to come from just some of the wonderful people and organisations we work with across the year. Expect fresh takes on the classics, daring new work, and there may even be a chance to sing-along…

Get in touch with us if you’re looking for support in 2025, or to request press kits for anything listed below.

John Douglas Thompson will star in The Merchant of Venice. Credit: Henry Grossman.

The Merchant of Venice

Lyceum Theatre | 18 January – 15 February 2025

Shakespeare’s perennially contested play about corrosive bigotry and blinding vengeance is poised at the radioactive intersection of race, class and religion in Arin Arbus’s production.

As Arbus observes, “The Merchant of Venice depicts a divided society saturated with hate and inequity. The world boils with anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, classism, and homophobia.”

The show’s uniquely diverse company evoke a deeply stratified Venice. Its connections to our own grievously fractured world are vivid, stark and startling.

Book now

Andrew Bennett and Janet Moran will star in Heaven. Credit: Publicis and Leo Byrne.

Heaven

Southwark Playhouse Borough (The Little) | 5 – 22 February 2025

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh | 25 February – 1 March

The Fringe First-winning, sell-out hit from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023 makes its first return to the stage, with a London premiere followed by a return to Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre.

HEAVEN is set in the Irish midlands, during the weekend of a local wedding. Mairead and Mal are struggling to keep their marriage together. Perhaps attending a wedding will help, or it might raise questions that are difficult to answer.

Created by Olivier Award and quadruple Fringe First Award winners Fishamble, Heaven is written by Eugene O’Brien, directed by Jim Culleton and stars Andrew Bennett and Janet Moran in two world-class performances. 

Find out more

James Rowland will tour across the UK this Spring. Credit: Rosie Collins.

James Rowland’s Songs of the Heart Trilogy UK Tour

Various Locations including Stratford East, London and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh | 7 February – 31 May 2025

From Essex to Edinburgh, from village to vaudeville, James will perform his second trilogy of storytelling shows, following life through its journey from youth, to middle age, and to our own mortality: Learning to Fly, Piece of Work, and finally, James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show. Each a remarkable hour of theatre, each a captivating mix of storytelling, comedy and music; and each sees James strain every sinew to keep the audience completely rapt.

Find out more

Rehearsals for The Law of Gravity, which has its premiere at Manipulate Festival 2025. Credit: Charlie Lyne.

Manipulate Festival 2025

Venues across Edinburgh | 12 – 15 February 2025

Manipulate Festival is an annual celebration of excellence in the fields of animated film, puppetry and visual theatre. Manipulate Festival 2025 will see world premieres from exciting Scottish companies Groupwork and an innovative collaboration between Scottish Ensemble and Blind Summit.  Animation will see 3 shorts programmes and 2 feature films, including an exciting French double-bill on valentines day. 

The Festival will put artists at its heart, with development, works in progress and more. Creating a platform for creative exchange, debate and discussion alongside staging boundary-pushing new work for adult audiences, the Festival has gained recognition nationally and internationally for its innovative curation and unique blend of artforms.

Book now

Liam Rees writes and directs The Land That Never Was. Courtesy of the artist.

The Land That Never Was

Tron Theatre | 21 February – 2 March 2025 | Edinburgh dates and tickets coming soon

In 1820 Gregor MacGregor sold a country that didn’t exist. In 2025 Liam Rees can’t stop lying to tourists. Part confessional storytelling. Part TED Talk. Mostly bullshit. 

The Land That Never Was tells the true story of Gregor MacGregor (yes that is his real name), a Scottish conman who sold a country that literally did not exist. Blending confessional stand-up, storytelling, and a whole lot of bullshit, this is a story about wanting to burn it all down and start again from scratch. It’s a story about a group of strangers who collectively believed in something that doesn’t exist… yet. It’s is a story about us. Written and directed by Liam Rees.

Book for the Tron Theatre

Olivier Award-nominated Dawn Sievewright will star as Rose-Lynn Harlan in Wild Rose. Photo Credit: Matt Crockett, Design Credit: Louise Richardson.

Wild Rose

Lyceum Theatre | 6 March – 5 April 2025

There is only one thing in Rose-Lynn’s life that has ever made sense: country music.

Fresh out of jail for past mistakes, and bursting with incredible raw talent, charisma and cheek, the free-spirited Rose-Lynn dreams of escaping Glasgow to make it as a singer in Nashville.

But her mother Marion has had a bellyful, insisting that she settle down, ditch the fantasy, and focus on raising her two young kids.

Rose-Lynn reluctantly agrees to take a cleaning job and finds an unlikely champion in her new boss, Susannah, bringing her dream closer than ever. Now Rose-Lynn must decide if risking everything will really pave the road to Nashville.

Book now

Frankenstein

Stellar Quines | Site specific, Kirkaldy, Fife | Spring 2025

Stellar Quines’ first programme of work from their new homebase of Kircaldy, Fife will kick off with a site-responsive production taking over their new home town. A feminist adaptation of Frankenstein written by Julia Taudevin, it will be directed by Stellar Quines AD Caitlin Skinner and feature a professional cast performing alongside the Young Quines and a new community company recruited from the local area. 

Stellar Quines are Scotland’s leading intersectional, feminist theatre company, whose work looks to increase equality for those from marginalised genders, while creating world class, professional theatre to tour across Scotland.

Find out more

Creative Crawley

Venues across Crawley, Surrey and West Sussex | March and throughout 2025

Creative Crawley, the Crawley arts charity dedicated to supporting and creating a flourishing arts scene in Crawley and beyond, will be returning with another jam packed programme of events, programmes, and initiatives in 2025.

With their full Spring season to be announced, Creative Crawley are delighted to launch their season with exhibition and live performance across the town. 

Super Normal Extra Natural (28 to 30 March) sees singers, dancers and Crawley locals take over County Mall Shopping Centre in a unique, intimate and surprising dance spectacle by Requardt&Rosenberg; the creators of experiential performances Future Cargo and DeadClub™ 

And from 28 March to 6 April, Leap Then Look’s Play Interact Explore turns exhibition into an active, exciting place for people of all ages to play, collaborate and experiment.  Everything in the exhibition is designed to be interactive in some way and visitors are encouraged to spend time exploring all the possibilities available: to look in different ways, create sculptures, take photographs, move things around, get in front of the projection, rock, roll, stack and play.  

Creative Crawley will also use this  moment to test two cultural hubs across the town, exploring what it would look like to have more physical space for the arts in Crawley, as part of a Cultural Hub consultation. 

The full season will be announced in January 2025.

Find out more

OMEGA NEBULA are in the line-up for Knockengorroch 2025. Courtesy of the artists.

Knockengorroch 2025

Galloway, South West Scotland | 22 – 25 May 2025

To be held from 22 – 25th May 2025, in the stunning hills next to the North East tip of the Galloway Forest Park, Scotland’s longest running greenfield festival will welcome back festival favourite artists and exciting new acts from Scotland, the UK and internationally. Knockengorroch has been bringing together communities since its first festival event in 1998, set amongst the unique green and rambling lands of the Carsphairn hills. The upcoming festival’s 2025 theme is survival, of live music festivals, community, language, culture and biodiversity.

Find out more

The Mountaintop will feature in the Lyceum’s Spring season. Credit: The Lyceum.

The Mountaintop

Lyceum Theatre | 31 May – 21 June 2025

April 3, 1968. Room 306, the Lorraine Motel, Memphis. It’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr’s last night on Earth.

Exhausted from a life on the road, hoarse from testifying day after day, all King wants is a coffee and some cigarettes. Room service arrives in the form of Camae, a motel maid with the face of an angel who smokes, drinks, and curses like a sailor while giving King a run for his money.

This funny, compelling drama imagines the man behind the legend on the eve of his assassination; and sees the public façade and the private turmoil, the family man and the martyr, desperate to finish what he started.

Book now

Darkfield

Various dates and locations to be announced

Throughout 2025

Pioneering immersive theatre producers DARKFIELD have a blockbuster 2025 planned, with its critically acclaimed line-up of shipping container-based immersive theatre shows coming to a variety of venues and festivals across the UK and beyond…

Find out more