A bittersweet announcement was made by experimental arts organisation Forest Fringe, who will no longer run a venue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and will instead run a monthly arts club at Somerset House to help develop future projects.

A statement published on their website says the new project could be a film, a new venue or possibly even the beginning of a new political party.

Co-director Ira Brand said: “We have made the decision that Forest Fringe will not be running a venue at the Edinburgh Festival for the foreseeable future. We want to explore what else we might do with the collective energy that we have previously dedicated to our presence at the festival.”

The Amateurs Club will be free and open to everybody. Forest Fringe will also continue to run microfestivals, residencies, parties and other projects, across the UK and internationally.

Forest Fringe will hold a farewell party at the fringe on August 11 at Edinburgh’s Cameo Cinema, with any money raised during the event to be donated for a fringe festival project. The organisation will also be writing a handbook of all the things it has learned in 10 years of making Forest Fringe, which it says will be a “toolkit of good ideas, accidental successes, practical advice, horrible arguments and hard-won lessons”.