Beltane Fire Society

Happy Samhuinn everyone!

As we take a well deserved rest from another fantastic festival (one which even the weather came along to play at!) our thoughts begin to turn towards our next festivals and the coming year.

Next year will be our 25th Beltane Fire Festival, marking a quarter of a century of development and change of both the Society and the Festival – from small, but significant beginnings, to one of the largest fire performances in the world.

BFS has come a long way in those 25 years – we are now a charity with the recognition that affords, have become more financially stable, and have a good working relationship with the council and other local groups - while still maintaining our core principles, and remaining composed entirely of volunteers.

So what do we do now?

Traditionally we have a meeting every year – ‘The Big Blether’, in which we discuss our plans for the next festival. This year, we want to do something slightly different – and discuss our plans for the future of Beltane Fire Society as a whole.

Since taking over as Chair I’ve heard lots of discussions on a wide variety of topics. What direction should we be heading in? How should we interact with other community groups in Edinburgh, Scotland and around the world? Are our festivals perfect the way they are, or is there something missing, or something that needs changing? We are now a charity – and have charitable aims – are we achieving them? Should we maintain our focus on Beltane and Samhuinn, or should balance our efforts across the year? Are people still getting more out than they put in? Are we reaching our audience and the community with our work? Should we wind it all up, call it a day, and move on to something completely different?

There won’t be a formal agenda, but we’ll be looking at questions under broad categories:

• Achieving our Charitable Aims – Education about the festivals, Community Outreach, etc.
• Volunteer involvement and society ‘structure’
• Our festivals – traditions, performances, rituals, directions and aims.
• Plans for the 25th year of BFS and our 25th Beltane

Of course – discussion will centre around the areas you feel are most significant!

As a bonus, we now have the preliminary findings of the Queen Margaret University Audience survey from Beltane 2011 which will be presented and discussed – they make very interesting reading!

So the important bit – when and where:

Sunday 13th November – 3pm, St Margaret’s House (room to be confirmed)

Please do try and make a space in your diaries for this very important discussion. Please also forward on this message to anyone else you think might not have received it.

If you can’t make it, but have some thoughts on any of the broad areas listed above, then feel free to email me your thoughts, and I’ll add them at the meeting.

Hope to see you all there!