Grass roots ticket service grows first million

(Issued by HI~Arts, 15 May 2007.)

The Booth, the online ticketing service set up in 2005 to serve the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, has sold its first million pounds worth of tickets on behalf of cultural groups and organisations.

The news comes as plans to expand the successful Inverness-based ticketing service to serve the rest of Scotland are announced.

The Booth website was established by HI~Arts, the arts development agency for the Highlands and Islands, to allow the region’s many events promoters, festivals and theatre companies to sell tickets online and reach a wider audience. It now sells tickets on behalf of hundreds of venues and events promoters, from village halls and community centres, through to major festivals such as Rockness, Belladrum Tartan Heart and The Outsider.

The service was piloted in the Highlands and Islands as a response to the needs of the grassroots cultural sector. It will now be available to cultural groups and organisations across Scotland, thanks to investment from the Scottish Arts Council and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

The Booth is targeted at small-scale, rural and voluntary-sector cultural groups and organisations to address the failure of other ticketing services to provide appropriate solutions for this sector.

The Booth’s manager, Fiona Carr, explains: “Before 2005, few event promoters other than commercial and urban-based organisations were able to sell tickets online or process credit card bookings. Existing ticketing systems and services were unaffordable or too cumbersome for the many small-scale and voluntary groups putting on entertainment. The Booth has not only allowed these groups to sell more tickets more easily, but it has also helped them reach new audiences. The Booth website now has the profile to allow these organisations to compete on a level playing with large-scale and commercial venues.”

The Booth will now be established as Booth Scotland Ltd, a separate company to HI~Arts, but will still retain close links with the organisation and region in which it was developed.

HI~Arts’ director, Robert Livingston, said: “The Booth is a great achievement for both HI-Arts and the Highlands and Islands. It shows that where relevant solutions to the challenges of the cultural sector are developed at grassroots level, they have real relevance nationally.”

The Booth has already started work with cultural organisations across Scotland, and is selling tickets widely for events in Dumfries and Galloway and Aberdeenshire.

For more information, contact Fiona Carr, box office manager at The Booth, on 01463 720891 - or email info@thebooth.co.uk

Link to HI~Arts website