Culture Fund: Orkney Traditional Dance Association

Our aims were to promote, preserve and enhance the dancing heritage of Orkney.  Our Summer Special & October Hoolie events achieved this. The agreement with OIC, to use our Key Client funding, enabled OTDA to host 17 family events, 15 in Kirkwall and 2 on Hoy. Through this we were able to monitor the viability of our events for future decisions.

Our choice was to go back to basics with Family Orientated Events. This in turn should boost the future of local Harvest Homes, Burns Suppers, Weddings etc. from those who attended our events.  We charged £5 per adult on the door and children were free. Children are the future of our heritage. The final part of our Family events was an ‘October Hoolie’ weekend coinciding with the October school holidays. Our events can be found on our Facebook page: Orkney Traditional Dance Association Facebook.  Photos and video footage can be found there.

Our venue for Kirkwall was the Royal British Legion who provided a superb venue for us. Hoy Kirk being a heritage centre welcomed these events with committee members volunteering to help.

Dawn Johnston, from Kirkjuvagr Ceilidh Band show-cased her young Highland Dancers at some of the events, not all.  This gave her dancers the experience in performing to an audience.  Most impressive!  The 2 Hoy Reels and Jigs as part of the Summer Specials gave dancers a unique experience travelling to Hoy on the MV Graemsay, dance and back home again. Again, these were family orientated and a sell out! A few tourists also joined in this opportunity. The experience was different styles of dances and a caller leading them through the mix of Ceilidh dances and reels and jigs.

We were able to open up dancing, which we hadn’t done since lockdown, and monitor the viability in these challenging times. We kept records of numbers attending, provided a varied experience of our local traditions of dancing so those attending could happily go to any of the local dances knowing they could join in. The age range was 3 – 90 years old at most of our events.  Yes, we achieved the ‘family’ feeling we planned for.

The regular clientele, from South, who supported the Orkney Ceilidh Weekends, are no longer there as many of the dance clubs have folded or they no longer have large numbers keen who would to travel to dance. We depended on these dancers year upon year to make our events viable.  In fact the summer visitors attending our dancing kept the winter dancing afloat pre-pandemic times.

Unfortunately, this project has confirmed that our events are no longer viable. The deficit at the end has proved this. Higher fees for bands, necessary increases to hire venues, the number of regular local dancers has fallen dramatically since pre-pandemic times. To strike a balance we would not be able to take in enough to cover the basic costs as higher entry fees could well lead to less attendees.