A map of 280 shows, built in under a week
Every August the Edinburgh Festival Fringe puts on more than 3,500 shows. Being there, with no easy way to find the queer ones, we built one: a free interactive map, filters, a quiz, and a planner, live within a week and updated daily through the festival.
The situation
Edinburgh Queer Network had compiled a guide of more than 100 shows as a PDF. It was generous work and hard to use in the moment: no map, no filters, no way to plan a day. We wanted something performers could use between flyering shifts and audiences could use on the street.
What we built
- Every listing on a live map of Edinburgh, with filters by genre and date, growing from 100 shows to about 280.
- A four-question quiz that matches shows to a visitor's mood, dates, and bedtime.
- A day-by-day planner that emails visitors a personal itinerary.
- Ticket links that go directly to each venue's own box office, so more of every ticket reaches the artists, and a submission form so performers add their own shows.
What changed
The guide drew more than 1,100 unique visitors and 2,000 pageviews in its first week and was passed hand to hand through the festival's queer artist community. Performers used it to find each other's shows, reviewers used it to find work to cover, and audiences planned whole days around it.
This is my third Fringe and every time it's overwhelming to be able to find other queer shows while doing the million other things required of me as a performer. The Queer Fringe guide has helped me cut through that work and made it so much easier.Celine Kuklowsky, Bed Boy
It's a great resource to be able to see shows that may not immediately appear to be queer friendly but are actually created and performed by queer people.Mr Brake Down, Doom & Glitter: A Tribute to Tom Waits
A shared tool a community would never build for itself can be built by one member in a week, if it starts from a real need and a real dataset.
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