£2m campaign to ensure future of Highland Show
A major fund-raising campaign has been launched to raise £2 million to secure the future of Scotland’ s biggest outdoor event, the Royal Highland Show.
Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS) chief executive Alan Laid law admitted this week that against the loss of £6m due to the cancellation of this year’s event due to Covid restrictions, the show’s future stood in the balance.
“The society, through the Save Your Show fundingraising campaign, is calling for individual and corporate donations to allow it to plan ahead as far as 2022 –th es how’ s 200 th anniversary year–confident that funding is in place,” he said.
Stating that while ever y move to reduce the organisation’s expenditure had been taken–including cuts to the salaries of senior staff members and the furloughing of others – overhead and running costs of the facilities at the Ingliston showground on the outskirts of Edinburgh meant that it was necessary to raise a considerable sum over the coming months to keep the organisation afloat.
This included the servicing of a£10m loan used to finance both improve - ments to the showground infrastructure under taken in recent years and the building of the new members’ pavilion.
Pointing to the widespread feeling of loss felt by many in the industry during the week in which the show would normally have taken place, Laidlaw said that both the society directors and its 16,000 members were fully behind the initiative to keep the show going :“While we are exploring ever y ave - nue including big corpo - rations, governments and major agricultural organisations, we are also keen to receive any support which members and show-goers can afford to help with this, the first ever appeal the society has made for funding.”
He said that many members had already made generous donations to the society–and simple arithmetic showed that if each member donated 125, the £2m target would be reached.
“But we know that no t everyone can afford this sort of money so we are exploring every avenue open to us,” he said.
He added the society was actively pursuing revenuegenerating activities alongside support offered by the Scottish and UK govern
ments, including £200,000 from the Scottish Government’s event funding support grant which had been used to service running costs in the interim: “However, the reality is stark and we need to be realistic as to what we can achieve without external financial support from our members and the wider industry.”
Commenting on the shape of any show in 2021, Laidlaw said that it would almost inevitably be a very different affair from the normal event which sees close to 200,000 through its gates during its four day run.
“While planning has been going ahead for next year’ s show, we are currently looking at six or seven different scenarios. But with the unpredictability of the course of the Covid pandemic and the associated government regulations, it would be pointless to indicate which was the most likely at this stage – but we will have to take some sort of decision early next year to allow arrangements to be finalised in time,” he concluded.