The Gathering: Home to roost

Published on Saturday 14 November 2009 19:08

AS TENS of thousands of tartan-clad revellers poured into Holyrood Park to celebrate their Scottish identity on the last weekend of July, it seemed The Gathering – the centrepiece of the Homecoming celebrations – was a national triumph.

The clan tents were heaving, cabers were being tossed, saltires were being waved and lots of money was being handed over for food and drink and branded merchandise. To any objective observer, it appeared the organisers had defied both the naysayers – who criticised its Brigadoon approach to Scottish identity – and the recession to produce a vibrant and lucrative event.

In the immediate aftermath, the Scottish Government basked in the reflected glory of the world's biggest ever clan gathering and talked of staging another one to coincide with the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 2014.

Yet, just four months on, the company behind the event – The Gathering 2009 Ltd – and its directors Lord Jamie Sempill and Jenny Gilmour are at the centre of a bitter controversy. Far from making money, it has emerged the extravaganza lost a total of 600,000. Already, public-sector bodies – including Lothian and Borders Police, the Scottish Ambulance Service and the Scottish Government, which handed over a 180,000 loan to ensure it went ahead – have been forced to write off 300,000 of money owed after being told they stood little chance of getting it back.

And the fate of a further 300,000 owed to a string of suppliers and contractors is unclear after a deal to hand the intellectual property rights – and responsibility for the debt – to the recently-formed Destination Edinburgh Marketing Alliance (Dema) apparently hit the buffers last week. With the Scottish Government, Edinburgh City Council and Dema stonewalling over who is ultimately responsible for underwriting the loss – and funding any future event – angry Labour councillors are queuing up to demand a local authority inquiry and MSPs are urging auditor general Robert Black to launch an investigation.

Looming over the growing financial row is a broader cultural one about the concept of The Gathering, and the way it was marketed. While its supporters claim the event kept tourism buoyant in a difficult year, its critics insist it, and the Year of the Homecoming as a whole, has been politicised, becoming little more than a rallying call for Scottish Nationalism.

So what did go wrong with The Gathering? And – with no-one prepared to talk about their role in the debacle – how are any lessons to be learned for the future?

The idea of organising a clan gathering to bring the diaspora "home" was conceived in early 2007, six months before the storm clouds of recession began to gather. In February, The Gathering 2009 Ltd was set up with Sempill and Gilmour (who owns the Edinburgh-based events company Red Sky at Night) as directors, and around 500,000 of public funding was invested to get it off the ground.

The aim was to use the two-day event – comprised of the clan gathering, a parade down the Royal Mile and a pageant on Edinburgh Castle esplanade – to attract foreign visitors with Scottish roots to Edinburgh and boost tourism.

Although – at home – many disliked the idea of the country being promoted as a tartan-and-shortbread destination, there was a lot of interest from abroad. Soon ex-pats from the US, Australia and Europe were snapping up "passports" – all inclusive tickets sold for up to 110 – buying up traditional outfits and planning the trip of a lifetime. In the meantime, however, the credit crunch was beginning to take hold. With the banks in crisis, sponsors were thin on the ground and whisky company Diageo was the only major company to commit funds on a major scale.

At the same time, according to Sempill, costs escalated, payment terms changed and passport sales began to flag.

It is at this point, critics say that The Gathering ought to have cancelled or at least started scaling things down."The aspiration for this event was completely out of kilter with the available income," says Edinburgh councillor Andrew Burns. "The banking crash happened 18 months ago, so there was plenty of time to reassess the plans, but clearly that didn't happen."

But according to Sempill, that was never an option. "We had already pre-sold over 4,000 passports and had invested all the income into developing the event," he says on Panalba, a social networking site used to galvanise interest in the event.

Instead, the Scottish Government agreed a 180,000 loan to ensure it went ahead, while, after reaching a plateau of 7,000 passports, The Gathering slashed the price of the final 1,000 to 55. Costs kept mounting, eventually hitting 2.4m. On the weekend of The Gathering everything seemed to go reasonably well. Edinburgh was awash with kilts and banners and clan badges and Holyrood Park was packed, although torrential rain affected attendance figures on the Sunday.

Soon satisfied visitors were praising the event on Panalba, and an independent report from the Economic and Social Development Company (Ekos) revealed that not only had The Gathering generated 8.8m for Edinburgh and 10.4m for Scotland, but 73 per cent of foreign visitors interviewed said they were "likely" or "very likely" to make a return visit. The organisers were praised, their education programme recognised with an award – and a repeat event seemed a certainty.

When details of the 600,000 losses emerged, however, the atmosphere quickly turned hostile. Revelations that The Gathering 2009 Ltd had made a 38,000 loan to Panalba, whose directors include Sempill, added to speculation that something was seriously amiss.

Now questions are being asked not only about The Gathering's management of the event, but the degree to which the Scottish Government and Edinburgh City Council scrutinised its business plan before parting with funds.

"The more that comes out about this, the more questions there are to be answered," says Sarah Boyack, Labour MSP for Central Edinburgh. "There seems to me to have been a complete lack of financial grip on the whole project," she added.

Some companies involved in the event continue to sing its praises. At Royal Mile Whiskies, which bottled the official Gathering malt, and exhibited and sold whisky at the event, managing director Keir Sword said he had been impressed by the organisers' efficiency.

But others take issue with the whole concept of an event based on ancestral roots and quibble with the notion that the losses made by the event are worthwhile because it created so much tourism.

"I don't pay much attention to this spurious thing about how much money has been generated for the Scottish economy. You never how much of it would have accrued anyway," says Lord George Foulkes.

The Labour MSP for the Lothians says he believes there are better ways to promote Scotland than to fall back on its bagpipe and haggis image.

In particular, he is concerned The Gathering – and the Homecoming as a whole – may have been hijacked by the SNP.

This perceived "politicisation" was blamed for poor ticket sales for the final Homecoming event to coincide with St Andrew's Day – a series of three big concerts at the SECC – which was last week downscaled, with promoter Geoff Ellis having previously claimed: "Some people seem to think it is going to be an SNP rally, which couldn't be further from the truth."

Despite mounting pressure for greater transparency, it is still unclear who will shoulder the responsibility of repaying The Gathering's remaining creditors, although it seems destined to come from public coffers. The deal with Dema appeared to have foundered when its chair, Norman Springford, resigned last week, apparently over a lack of consultation.

An attempt by Sempill to defend The Gathering on Panalba has caused fresh consternation. Claiming that marketing the event locally required a "much higher level of investment than we had budgeted (for]", he appears to blame a lack of interest in some quarters on people's negativity. "What was very clear was that people did not fully understand what was on offer primarily because they had no previous terms of reference."

Describing the size of the commercial failure as "a bitter pill", he says the conclusion he draws from it is that "to effectively create an event on this scale, the level of public funding has to be much higher".

Apparently downplaying the importance of the losses, he adds: "As a final note to the taxpayer... your total contribution to the event amounts to a manageable 43p per head."

His defiant attitude has annoyed those who believe public funds should have been more closely guarded. When the Dema deal was first announced, the marketing body said it now planned to hold the event to coincide with the London Olympics rather than the Battle of Bannockburn. But does it want to be saddled with putting on an event whose brand has been badly damaged? And should a second Gathering even be up for discussion before the debts accrued by the first one have been settled?

"I think we need to carry out a post-mortem before we carry on with another festival," says Boyack. "To glibly suggest the event ought to be bigger and better next time round is not the right attitude," adds Burns. "Things have clearly gone wrong and lessons have to be learned."