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.
 

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.