To apply for the Festival Hub, you’ll need to fill in the JotForm EOI. The form has five parts:

  1. Part 1: All About You – key contact and demographic questions about you and your core team
  2. Part 2: All About Your Event – this page is where you tell us everything we need to know about what the event you’re pitching is
  3. Part 3: Technical Requirements – the information on this form not only helps us decide what room to program your work into, but also what equipment we’ll put into each room
  4. Part 4: Venue and Date Preferences – this is all the key logistical information we need around your date availability and preferences for capacity and performance times
  5. Part 6: Official Stuff – a couple of final questions to make sure you understand this is an application only and does not guarantee programming, plus a chance for you to review and submit your application.

To demystify the programming process for you: as a first pass, we decide what works are best suited to being programmed in the Hub from a creative / program perspective. This is mostly from the information you provide in Part 2 – at this stage of the programming process we’re really focused on the great ideas rather than how possible those great ideas are. This is where we implement our Programming Criteria and Vision.

Our next step is to consider logistics; for this part of the process we consider your answers in Part 3 and Part 4. Quite often we’ll get up to this point and some of our favourite shows aren’t able to be programmed because their competing for the same space (e.g. if we had three amazing works that have said they’ll only accept an offer for a particular room at a particular time – we have to drop two of the three shows off our programming list) or because the Tetris blocks just don’t fit together. So at this stage it becomes more about what is possible in this complicated matrix of programming rather than just what we think the best work is, which is why it’s so important for you to be flexible and clear in your EOI with what you will accept in an offer.

Once we have a draft program we then self-audit the programming choices to ensure that the program represents the breadth and diversity of events, genres and voices that Melbourne Fringe aims to program, and then we send out our offers. At this stage, the ball is in your court, and we usually give you about 24 hours to confirm your offered spot.

Part 1: All About You

In this section we will gather some basic details for contacting you, as well information that we’ll use to put together your venue hire agreement and other documentation.

We will also ask some optional demographic questions about you and your team. Your answers to these questions help us better understand who is taking part in the Melbourne Fringe Festival. The primary reason we ask demographics questions in the context of the EOI is because we prioritise diversity in our Hub programming decisions. The answers to these demographic questions assist us in ensuring we are meeting our targets to provide platforms for voices from communities not adequately represented in mainstage programming. As such, your answers to these questions will be considered as part of your EOI but will not be shared outside of the Festival Hub programming team.

Part 2: All About Your Event

Event Name and Category

You’ll be able to select a title and an event category for your work. A working title is fine!

Event Description

Please give us an outline of your idea! Think about content, style or form, number of performers, what you are exploring in the work. What will the audience experience at your event? Don't be afraid to put it simply and leave the 'art speak' for later! A good plain text description of your work is much stronger than a marketing pitch or waxing lyrical about the themes. (200 words max, but don’t feel you need to fill this space, sometimes less is more! We just want to a good idea of what the show is, not a full plot summary!)

Why This Event? And Why The Festival Hub?

What is the imperative to make this work? What does this event have that makes it perfect for the Festival Hub? Why is it unique / how does it stand out from other event ideas we’re looking at? You can also use this section to discuss how you see the presentation of this event fitting into your long term artistic practice. We want to hear about your ideas no matter how complicated, challenging or ambitious. (150 words max)