The cultural programme of events that ran in Glasgow in parallel with last year’s Commonwealth Games have been shortlisted for the national finals of the Scottish Thistle Awards.
Having already secured a regional prize for Central and South West Scotland, Festival 2014 goes forward for the annual tourism awards ceremony at the EICC in March next year.
According to Gordon Boag, media officer at Glasgow Life, the scope of Festival 2014, whose central hub was Glasgow Green, but incorporated venues throughout the city, was “truly breathtaking”.
He said: “Throughout the Commonwealth Games we had cultural events running from 10 in the morning till 10 at night, with thousands and thousands of people engaging with a whole series of events, cultural and sporting, on Glasgow Green every day.”
With a budget of more than £4million (the nationwide pot was £13million), events ranged from the big to the very small, with a million plus people attending in the city alone; across the entire country research showed that more than 2.1million people ‘actively engaged’ with the programme, a figure which outstripped the overall attendance for the Games themselves.
As a result a cultural programme will now be part of the formal criteria for bids to host the Commonwealth Games from 2022. A recent evaluation report also found that 98 per cent of organisations taking part in Festival 2014 used social media as a resource to reach audiences.
Councillor Archie Graham, Chair of Glasgow Life said: “I am delighted Festival 2014 has received a regional Thistle Award. Festival 2014 was the Glasgow-focused element of the nationwide Cultural Programme for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. We sought to bring a games experience to every part of the city and involve as many people as possible as Glasgow proudly hosted the best ever Commonwealth Games whether they wanted to attend the sports events or not.
“I can’t imagine anyone who sampled the amazing atmosphere in the city will ever forget what it was like as the streets and venues burst to life celebrating the Commonwealth Games and the legacy of the partnerships created and new ways of working will be felt across Glasgow and beyond for years to come.”
One of the many performance events in the city was put on by the Grinagog Theatre, which told stories of Glasgow’s East End in an ice cream van with ‘The Pokey Hat’, (pictured left).
Clare McGarry, Director of Grinagog Theatre, said: “The Pokey Hat was a celebration of what is great about growing up in Glasgow; going to the ice-cream van, holidays doon the water and how Italian people found their way over to Scotland to make their home.
“It was a joy to travel across Scotland to share these stories and to hand out over 5,000 ice-cream cones along the way!”
The Scottish Thistle Awards takes place at the end of Scottish Tourism Week on March 18 next year.
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