The Sick of the Fringe - Diagnosis Writing

The Sick of the Fringe is a strategy, an ethos, a community, which makes the world safe (or safer) for challenging art and challenging realities.

The challenges we are particularly interested in fighting include inequality, inaccessibility, elitism and mediocrity.

We fight on behalf of artists, audiences and the public good, each in different ways.

Diagnoses are short, snappy and thoughtful descriptions of shows we see, talks we hear, and conversations we have. The purpose of Diagnoses is to give everyone in the world access to a show they might not have seen or might not be able to see.

For those who have seen the shows, Diagnoses aim to give the opportunity for them to add their own unique perspective. All sorts of people write Diagnoses, from artists, health care workers and researchers, to writers (professional and not), people who are used to seeing performance and those who are not. We have been keen to include writing from people with direct and lived experience of illness and disability.

For artists, Diagnoses aim to make the content their work accessible to audiences. We don't use words like "it was great" or "it was horrible" but instead look to "it was about..." "the show helped me think more about...." so that audiences everywhere can join the conversation.

Lewis Church was invited to respond to the discussions, workshops, events and performance during the festival.

He wrote on: