We have just published our latest Annual Report, detailing the work carried out by Federation of Scottish Theatre in 2016/17. Here are a few highlights…
A Special Year
This was a landmark year for us as we marked 40 years of FST with an event at Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh in December 2016. Speakers Anne Bonnar and Fiona Hyslop joined members, staff and stakeholders in celebrating the many wonderful achievements of theatre, dance and opera in Scotland.
Networking and Information
We created opportunities for our members to meet and connect with Members’ Meetings throughout the year and extended the invitation across the industry with our specialist forums focusing on Dance, Producers, Technical and Production and Touring. We also held our annual Festivals Reception with ITC in August 2016 and our flagship Emporium event brought together over 200 delegates across two days in March 2017.
Advocacy
We continued to coordinate Culture Counts, which produced an Advocacy Toolkit to help arts and creative industries make the case for the culture, as well as engaging with MSPs and policymakers, analysing research and publishing summaries to support advocacy.
Training and Development
We offered a range of training courses in legal, people management, international touring, finance, marketing, technical and health and safety. The focus on best practice and skills development for production, stage management and technical personnel continued though the Creative Production and Technical Skills project, and over 110 people attended our three-day residential Technical Winter School in February 2017.
Capacity Building Projects and Services
In January 2017 we launched the new Access Scottish Theatre website and we continued to co-ordinate the use of the shared captioning equipment in Scotland, enabling 70 captioned performances to take place in 2016/17. We also continued our successful partnership with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Creative Scotland and the Scottish Music Centre to promote Scottish dance, music and theatre to international programmers attending the Fringe with the 2016 Made in Scotland showcase.
To download a full copy of the report, visit the Research Resources section of our website.