An Advocate for Festivals?
 

HI~Arts hosted the inaugural meeting of a proposed Highlands and Islands Festivals Forum at the Waterside Hotel in Inverness. KENNY MATHIESON sums up proceedings
 

THE FESTIVAL SEASON is now underway, and the Highlands and Islands is not short on events, from the ‘headliners’ like St Magnus and the Highland Festival through to small – but in their communities equally important – local events. HI~Arts extended an invitation to all of these festivals to send representatives to the inaugural Festivals Forum meeting in Inverness late last month, and were rewarded with a fine turnout of 42 delegates representing over 20 different festivals or organisations (with apologies received from nine more).

The agenda was essentially to consider whether a formally constituted Forum would be desirable, and if so, what form it might take, and how it might be set up to advance the interests of all its members, given the diversity in size and scope of the potential constituency. David Pirnie, a management consultant and board member of HI~Arts, acted as a very efficient facilitator for the event, while Marcus Wilson and John Saich delivered the opening remarks on behalf of HI~Arts, and collated the feelings emerging from the subsequent Breakout Groups, which focused on ‘Marketing’ and the more generalised ‘Challenges’ respectively.

Keynote addresses were delivered by Colm Croffy and Nicole Mulholland from AIOFE (Association of Irish Festival Events), Ruari McNeill from the Gaelforce festival in Dumfries and Galloway, and Sandy Maxwell of NEAT (North East Arts Touring), who addressed the specific but vital issue of health and safety in a festival context.

The overall feeling of the meeting in addressing the agenda was both positive and constructive, and provided a basis for development that will be explored further in the coming months. The key issues for reflection centred on the key question of how a Forum might help the festivals to deliver what they do, and numerous possibilities emerged in the course of the discussion, touching on issues like awareness raising, information sharing and propagation, marketing and  market research, insurance, training, funding and sponsorship, and general advocacy for the sector.
 Murdo McLennan of the Hebridean Celtic Festival raised the question of whether any such Forum should be Scotland-wide rather than specifically Highland. Robert Livingston, the director of HI~Arts, pointed to the example of the Crafts website piloted by HI~Arts and now moving to a national roll-out as a possible model for any such expansion.

The delegates agreed that the get together and exchange of ideas had been very worthwhile in itself in a sector that by its nature is widely scattered and rarely able to convene in this way, and left with plenty of food for thought.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2004