The past 19 months have been a very challenging time for the arts, including the Beltane Fire Society. Now we are making a return to live events, we are hopeful and optimistic about the future but have been running from our reserves and continue to operate smaller scale events. 

This Winter we are hosting both an in-person live event, the Samhuinn Fire Parade 2021 and another festival in the digital realm, Samhuinn Hearthfire Digital Festival 2021 and we have been asking you to help us out by making a reservation at Citizen Ticket. There is a suggested donation of £5 (+ booking fee), but you are free to amend that to whatever you can afford. Every little really does help in these uncertain times.

Registrations for the Samhuinn Fire Parade are ow full! In order to manage numbers and manage the live event safely, we are asking only those who have pre-registered to attend the Fire Parade. But fear not! If you can’t attend in person we are hoping to live stream the parade – full details of how to watch are here: Samhuinn Hearthfire Digital Festival 2021. 

WHY PAYING TO REGISTER HELPS US (and the planet!)

This year we are returning with a live fire parade to celebrate the night of Samhuinn, and while this event is smaller in scale than our regular festival which is held on Calton Hill, there are numerous running costs associated with hosting an event. This includes licenses, security fees, fencing, stages, and a lot of body paint. The society is almost totally made up of many wonderful and talented volunteers, we also have three freelance contractors who we want to keep giving work to. There’s web domain costs, rent to pay, and again, lots of body paint…

Ordinarily we would have sold thousands of tickets throughout the year, including Beltane in Spring and the other Quarter Days. These funds help not only pay for the festivals themselves but continue to sustain our organisation for another year. As a society it has been through the enduring support of our audience that our festivals have survived for more than 30 years. 

Registrations can be made via Citizen Ticket, an Edinburgh based ethical platform established in 2013 to pursue the simple and secure future of ticketing. For every ticket purchased on their platform, 5p goes towards planting trees in the UK. So far, Beltane Fire Society has helped plant over 37 trees, meaning that after our events are finished, their legacy lives on – helping to absorb CO2 and promote local wildlife.