The Ottawa Fringe Festival provides all performing artists, both emerging and established, with the opportunity to produce their work – regardless of content, form or style – and makes the Festival as affordable and accessible as possible to the members of the community. The Ottawa Fringe Festival’s mission is to empower audiences and to encourage artists to take risks, pursue their visions and develop their skills. An open-access festival where 100% of ticket sales go to the artists. Nobody curates the Ottawa Fringe Festival. Ottawa Fringe rents the venues and programs the festival by lottery. Every show is independently produced and more artists get into the program by submitting a Bring Your Own Venue show (BYOV). Since 1997, the Ottawa Fringe Festival has returned more than $1.8 million to independent artists.