2009 felt like the year that the Camden Fringe came of age. This was our fourth go at running our annual North London fringe festival and the year that it began to feel like our hard work and dedication was beginning to pay off.

The Camden Fringe started, in 2006, as an experiment confined to the Etcetera Theatre, to determine whether it was possible to run a festival at the same time as the Edinburgh Fringe anywhere other than Edinburgh. The experiment results showed the idea had potential, so we have been running the festival since then, steadily adding one venue per year so that this summer saw our reach extend across 4 Camden venues. In 2009 we used the Etcetera, the newly re-named Camden Head (formerly known as Liberties), the Camden People's Theatre. Our new venue was the studio space at the iconic Roundhouse on Chalk Farm Road. For us an involvement with the Roundhouse not only gave us a larger performance space to play with, but also the added kudos of being involved with the legendary venue. For me the most important thing was putting shows on in a building that had, less than two weeks before, played host to the mighty a-ha (oh, and Oasis, Stephen Fry and some others at the iTunes Festival.)

Along with our grown-up new venue, we also had an online redesign and came up with a grown-up new website, which was a great improvement on the earlier version. Slicker, more colourful and professional, the website reflected the increasing maturity of the festival. Hits on the website are up 150% on 2008, so it is clearly being well used by acts and punters. Chris Limb of Catmachine is the brains behind all our design - online and print - and over the years we've worked with him on numerous sites. I think we all agree that the new look Camden Fringe website is the best yet.

The online redesign led to a re-think about our print, and 2009's brochure was another leap forward. Zena Barrie and I put our heads together to think of a simple idea that would most simply and eye-catchingly sum up the Camden experience, and a punk pigeon with a Mohican was what we came up. Well, it seemed the obvious choice. Chris Limb, with a little help from the magic of Photoshop, came up with the very image. Set against a bright pink background, this formed the basis of the Camden Fringe posters and brochure. So popular were the posters that those on open display around the venues had to be regularly replaced as they were taken by punters. A very flattering form of theft.

The most important aspect of our coming of age, was the high standard of acts that were involved in this year's Camden Fringe. Over the years, as Edinburgh Fringe producers, London fringe venue managers and the directors of the Camden Fringe we've built up a wide range of contacts in the industry, which this year's programme reflected. So, as well as acts that have performed at the Camden Fringe regularly (such as Becky & Naomi and Get Over It Productions) we also programmed new acts and some that we have know for some years, but were making their Camden debut. In fact, back in 2003 the first show Zena and I worked on together was at the Etcetera (now the headquarters of the Camden Fringe), when we hired the space to put on a week of shows by sketch group The Trap. The Trap returned to the Etcetera at this year's Camden Fringe, which had a satisfying circularity to it.

The sales figures from this year were up 84% on 2008. We sold 10,600 tickets over the 4 weeks. Of the 399 performances which made up the programme, 82 sold out, with completely sold-out runs by stand-ups Scott Capurro, Robin Ince (whose forthcoming Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People has sold out a run at the Bloomsbury Theatre), Simon Amstell (with a show that went on to do a huge UK tour) and Tom Price, plus sketch acts The Trap, Four Monks and A Nun and Policy Wonk International. Oscar Wilde's Salome, Lady In Bed and pole-dancing drama Shaft were the big sell-outs on the theatre front, with Safe House, OAPz and Cleopatra's Gone! also playing to full houses.

Camden is a fantastic place for a fringe festival as the borough has been instrumental historically in the development of experimental, political and fringe theatre. From the foundation of the Unity Theatre in Kings Cross by the Worker's Theatre Movement in the 30's through the conversion of the Roundhouse by Arnold Wesker's Centre 42 movement in the 1960s, to the pioneering work of the Drill Hall in the 1980s, Camden has always been at the heart of new, untested and community theatre. (More information can be found on www.camdentheatres.com)

So, to the future. The 2010 Camden Fringe will mark the North London festival's 5th birthday and will take place from 2-29 of August. The Lion and Unicorn in Kentish Town has been confirmed as our 5th space and we are currently in talks with other venues to extend the scope of the festival. Whilst we plan for the festival to be bigger and better than ever, we’ll be holding true to our intentions to keep the Camden Fringe truly a fringey festival - small venues, experimental performances and an anything-goes attitude.

Camden Town has been undergoing a process of renewal over the past few years. As well as the new-look markets there are currently (as I write I can see it happening outside the window) improvements being made to Camden High Street. The pavements are being widened, and the road is being stripped of all markings and signs as it becomes the first area in central London to use this Dutch concept to make the area safer for pedestrians. We'd like the Camden Fringe to develop in parallel with the development of the general area - to grow, renew, innovate, become more appealing to visitors and yet to remain essentially Camden.

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(c) Michelle Flower 4 December 2009