Alastair McDonald

Festival director ALASTAIR McDONALD puts his case for the Highland Festival.

THE HIGHLAND FESTIVAL has a central role to play in providing a platform for Highland arts and culture. By establishing its cultural identity through the support of both local residents and visitors, it plays an important role in the economic and social life of the region.

Traditional Music is the cultural core of the Highland Festivals programme. The Festival prides itself in being a driver of the tradition, taking it forward by commissioning new work and by encouraging collaboration between traditional musicians and artists in other styles and disciplines. We are respectful of the past but we are not slaves to it!

By investing in our indigenous artists, the Festival is strengthening both the regional identify of the Highlands and the national identity of Scotland. Music is a universal language, and through the festival many more people are becoming aware of traditional Highland musical forms.

There are economic spin-offs in the form of CD sales, national and international tours, and television documentary programmes. These innovative projects also provide a springboard for the artists involved to collaborate in related projects.

The Gaelic language remains a vital defining element in the cultural life of the Highlands and Islands, in the songs and poetry of the Bards, the ancient messengers and spokesmen of the rural  communities. The National Mod, recognised as one of the last bastions of the Gaelic cultural tradition with its singing, dancing, speaking and acting competitions, is beginning to embrace the renaissance in Highland culture through its ‘fringe programme of eclectic music and non-competitive events.

But there is much more to the festival programme than traditional music. A whole range of cultural activities are available, from opera to African dance, art-house film to puppet shows. Writers events rub shoulders with street events, ceilidh cruises up Loch Ness embrace ecological participatory arts events in dark forests. Local artists mix freely with visiting companies and artists from around the world.

These events take place in a wide range of venues. The Highlands and Islands are not blessed with many opera houses, concert halls or large indoor arenas, but we do have an extremely active and valuable range of alternative venues, including school and village halls, community centres and churches, and even distilleries.

And lets not forget the extraordinary array of unique outdoor locations at our disposal. Some of the best performances I’ve seen anywhere have been in the most unorthodox venues – on lochs, aboard boats, in caves, up mountains – it adds to the atmosphere.

The festival thrives on the principle of partnership. It was founded in 1995, when two core purposes were established: to provide a high profile platform on which to showcase the very best of Highland art and culture, complemented by the best from elsewhere, and to attract more visitors to the region in the early summer, before the main tourist season begins.

We have moved our dates back a little this year, but there is still a reasonable amount of bed capacity unfilled at that time. It also opens up the possibility of collaborating with the St Magnus Festival in Orkney in future years, although we just missed out on that this year.

Over the years, with generous support from private sponsorship and the public sector, the Highland Festival has produced a programme of top quality events across the spectrum of arts activity, including Combined Arts, Classical Music, Theatre, Dance, Blues, Jazz & Big Band Music, Contemporary & World Music, Childrens Events, Early Music, Traditional, Folk, Roots & Country Music, Literature, Poetry & Storytelling, Special Events, Visual Art and Comedy, plus a full programme at Eden Court Theatre, the Highlands major performance venue, as well as Community and Specialised training sessions and Street Events in Inverness and outlying large towns.

The Highland Festival has three full-time staff – a director, a business manager and an administrator – and five part-time staff, including four Arts in the Community Enablers (ACE) based in Strathspey and Badenoch; Ross & Cromarty; Inverness, Nairn  and The Great Glen; and Skye and Lochaber.

We adopted a new structure for the festival last year, and are now in the process of developing it over a longer period. The main focus of the festival in June will be on Inverness and its environs, but the Highland Festival ACEs have a crucial role in developing local events in their areas, some of which may eventually be seen in the main festival.

I’m a great believer in the power of community arts, but I believe that the only way to get results is to have people with professional skills and outlook to help develop the talent that is out there.

Additional staff in the form of office and box office assistants, event management, production and technical staff are engaged in the lead-up to and during the Festival.

The festival was established with the financial assistance of its three principal funders, the Scottish Arts Council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and the Highland Council, but also relies on support from the private sector and from charitable trusts that give grants to arts organisations.  We also earn a part of our income from the sale of tickets to audiences for our events.

There is a very interesting percentage mix of public, private and earned income within the overall funding profile, which graphically demonstrates the importance of why culture in rural areas must be viewed in more than simple economic terms.

The ideal for any arts festival would be to have a perfect balance of funding between the public sector, the private sector and earned income. In some cities, where there are plenty of potential business sponsors and plenty of people with money to spend on tickets, this may be possible. Cities, too, have theatres and concert halls and arts centres with large numbers of seats to sell. In rural areas like the Highlands and Islands of Scotland there is a rather different picture.

In the area where the Highland Festival operates there are almost no large businesses. There is only one theatre of any size. This is in the main city of Inverness and has 800 seats. Most of the venues used by the Highland Festival are small theatres and community centres.

A large audience might be 100 people, some of who will have driven a long way to get there. Wages in the region are relatively low and so ticket prices need to be low too. The income of the Highland Festival is made up of about 60% from the public sector, 25% from the private sector and 15% from the sale of tickets.

The public sector absorbs well over half of the cost of the Highland Festival because the festival attracts tourists, and tourism is the main employer and the main income-generator in the Highlands. The festival draws people into the area and aims to make them stay longer and, very importantly, return.

In  employing first and foremost its indigenous artistes who live and work in the region, the bulk of the finance is ploughed back into the region, and this in turn fuels inward investment. Artists are encouraged to stay in the area, and in turn use their skills to provide training opportunities for the wider population.

They help in the process of strengthening communities, they assist in making folks lives more creative, and they help secure the future of the indigenous culture – in short they make the Highlands a better place to live and work in, and a better place to visit.

The festival is also a shop window to the wider world.  It attracts critics, agents, festival directors, artists and producers from outwith the area who take the homegrown art on show at the festival out into the world. And the result is more work for the artists and more visitors to the region in  search of indigenous arts. Its an ever-increasing cycle and it means good business for the Highlands.

The Highland Festival is the biggest festival in the region but by no means the only one. The internationally renowned St Magnus Festival in Orkney, the Hebridean Celtic Festival in the Western Isles and the Nairn Jazz Festival are a few of the other highly successful annual festivals taking place. All of us are helping to make the Highlands and Islands a place where more people want to live and work.

Fifteen years ago there was one performing arts company in the Highlands and Islands, today there are fifteen. Any number of artists, writers, craftspeople, performers, cultural consultants, musicians, composers, and curators are based in the area. In turn they employ an equal number of administrators, accountants, builders, technicians, PR people, drivers, caterers, and so on.

The scenery and the natural environment plays its part, too.  In 1996 three Hollywood movies were filmed in the area – Braveheart, Rob Roy and Loch Ness. More have come since, with television series and commercials being made here on a regular basis.  We have our own film locations service and a support structure for film and television second only to Glasgow in Scotland, and the go ahead has been given for a major mainstream film production studio on the outskirts of Inverness.

Culture is a big industry in the Highlands and Islands, and a growing one. In some respects 2003 is a transitional year for us, and although we have shortened the span of the festival, we are actually putting on events for the same number of days as last year, with no gaps. We are emphasising Highland arts and artists very strongly, and will be doing more in the street in Inverness this year.

Alastair McDonald is the director of the Highland Festival.  The Highland Festival runs from 6-14 June 2003.