Leith Festival back on after crisis

ORGANISERS of Edinburgh’s biggest grassroots festival have revealed the event is back on this year despite a cash crisis that led organisers to say they would cancel it.

Leith Festival was set to be shelved this year after losing its funding, core staff and office premises.

The ten-day event, which has been running in some form since 1907, had expanded in recent years but struggled to attract public funding.

It emerged in November that the event – which costs around £70,000 to stage – did not have enough resources to commit to a festival in 2012.

However its long-standing board – who still intended to stage a traditional gala day on Leith Links – are now encouraging event organisers to come forward and start planning events.

They are hoping to recruit a new team of volunteers to help put this year’s festival on and have issued an appeal for financial backers to help publish an official programme.

Festival chairman Gordon Munro said: “We are just trying to get the word out that the festival is back on. We don’t have the funding in place to publish a programme or hire staff, so it is all being done on a voluntary basis, but we want people to organise events themselves and let us know what they are doing.”