Community Showcase at the Royal Highland Show

Between the 19th and 22nd June, the Royal Highland Show (RHS) returned to Ingliston, bringing together over 210,000 people in a celebration of rural life. The RHS is 202 years old and one of the most important events in Scotland’s rural calendar.

Led by organisations like Scottish Rural Action, InspirAlba, Community Enterprise, SRITC, SCOTO and the Scottish Community Alliance, a radical revolution is taking place designed to shake up the institutional foundations of the RHS…and it is everything our organisations stand for – empowerment, vision, inclusivity, creativity, diversity and drive.

Agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy and food & drink are core to our rural areas…but like everything, they rely on COMMUNITIES, and we are putting COMMUNITY at the heart of the RHS.

We are creating a vibrant space for a host of partner organisations – the Aberdeenshire Youth Forum; Ceidlith Caleerie; Climate Café®; Fife Youth Local Action Group; Forth Environment Link; Forth Valley and Lomond Youth Local Action Group; Greenpower; GrowBiz Scotland; Imagine If… Space CIC; Open Aye; Scottish Islands Federation; Scottish Men’s Sheds Association; Sealladh Folk Band; Social Enterprise Scotland, the Walking Theatre Company, and Youth Scotland.

What is the Community Showcase at the Royal Highland Show?

The Community Showcase is a partial takeover of the Scottish Government marquee on the Thursday and Friday of the Royal Highland Show (RHS) and a full takeover on the Saturday and Sunday.

Amongst the excitement and bustle of the RHS, it is an oasis of calm and creativity, complementing the traditional RHS programme – activities mainly relating to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy, and food & drink – by shining a light on rural communities.

For the rural third sector organisations which take part in the Community Showcase, it is an opportunity to:

✔️ Engage creatively with thousands of RHS visitors and their families, finding out about their aspirations for their neighbourhoods and communities;

✔️ Network with each other and with the hundreds of organisations and businesses present at the RHS;

✔️ Host events for Ministers, officials, stakeholders and RHS participants on topics of interest such as transport, wellbeing, youth work and tourism.

Each participating organisation can bring along volunteers, friends, and family members, to take turns running the stalls and activities of the Community Showcase and enjoying the wider Royal Highland Show. This creates a supportive and inclusive multigenerational feel across all four corners of the marquee – and spilling outdoors as well, when the weather allows!

RHS ‘business days’ – Thursday and Friday 

Thursday and Friday are the ‘business days’ of the Royal Highland Show, where most participants are going with the expressed intention of networking, learning, lobbying…and purchasing! They are perfect days to run high impact events.

Community Showcase highlights included:

• Scottish Rural and Islands Transport Community CIC (SRITC) partnering with Greenpower and pupils from a local high school to showcase their STEM electric chariot project and inspire the next generation of engineers. Hundreds of people stopped by for a chat, including the First Minister of Scotland.

• InspirAlba’s story weaving and policy shaping workshop on Parent Employability Support in Rural Scotland led by families with lived experience of poverty, and attended by Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health Jenni Minto MSP.

• Community Enterprises’ roundtable on Inclusive & Democratic Business Models in Scotland’s economy, with senior officials from the Scottish Government, enterprise agencies HIE and SOSE and Social Enterprise Scotland.

• SCOTO’s reception to celebrate their successful LocalFest® and Press Pause® programmes with Cabinet Secretary Mairi Gougeon MSP, showcasing how rural and island communities are taking the lead in designing tourism offerings that benefit tourists, and the environment. SCOTO’s large map of Scotland, which prompted Showcase attendees to consider questions including where they felt most welcome as a tourist, and where they’d had their best public toilet experience, was a powerful conversation piece.

RHS ‘family days’ – Saturday and Sunday

Family days are called as such because the majority of weekend participants are there to let their hair down and enjoy the sights and activities. Early Saturday morning, we transformed the marquee into a colourful and welcoming village hall, complete with free activities, live music performances, a soft play area, and even limited edition souvenir prints to take home.

While the younger children flocked to the face-painting station, older children and adults gathered around the centre of the marquee, where Imagine If… Space CIC had thoughtfully prepared various activities to capture visitors’ imagination and aspirations, while also weaving together many of the other stallholders’ priorities.

“Co-designing in advance the Community Showcase with the other groups allowed us to understand where we could point visitors to, so they could continue deeper discussions on specific topics,” Imagine If co-founder Ellie Burroughs said.

“On Saturday, in collaboration with the Scottish Rural and Islands Transport Community, we included questions around future transport and how people might like to move around their rural communities.

On Sunday, our popular Postcard from the Future’ activity centred more generally on what people might like to see in rural and island spaces in the future, what they care about now, and what they would like to protect. Visitors responded with a focus on nature, human rights, and equality. This linked well to many of the other stalls and groups present in the Community Showcase.”

Many stall-holders also joined the visitors in appreciating the opportunity to connect and network with other groups and organisations inside the marquee.

Kirsty Bain-Wyse, the facilitator for the Fife Youth Local Action Group, said, “It was fantastic getting to see everyone who’s involved in the Community Showcase, networking, and talking to people who had no idea who we are and getting to connect with them.”

Jenna Robison, a community learning and development worker with Aberdeenshire Youth Forum, added, “We have made lots of links with new local and national partners, I think it has been really good to meet other groups from across Scotland.”

With over 2,200 visitors entering the Community Showcase across the weekend, and many hundreds others enjoying the performances of the Walking Theatre Company outside on Avenue Q, participants had their hands full across the weekend spotlighting their campaigns and trying new and creative ways of engaging with the public.

Anne-Michelle Ketteridge, the Community Led Local Development Manager for the Forth Valley and Lomond Youth Local Action Group, said, “The part of the Community Showcase I’ve enjoyed the most was planning for today’s session with the young people in our group. We’ve had lots and lots of discussion about what would be the best way to interact with people coming to the Highland Show. And this is where our ‘rural tree’ activity comes in.

We’ve had lots of young visitors giving us interesting comments on what the issues are in rural areas, and what they like and don’t like about living in their rural area. So I think that’s gone down really well, with a lot of learning for us too.”

Meanwhile, the Scottish Rural and Islands Transport Community team drew a packed and intergenerational crowd for the launch of the Rural and Islands Mobility Plan – with many staying afterwards for mingling and cake.

Other successful talking points for visitors included an interactive islands-geography game from Scottish Islands Federation, live music from Ceilidh Caleerie and Sealladh Band, and cup-stacking games and candy at the Youth Scotland stall.

For many visitors, however, the highlight was simply to sink into the purple sofas and put their feet up while soaking in the spirit of the Communities Showcase.

One visitor who returned several times in one day said, “The Royal Highland Show is amazing but also really busy and overwhelming. I couldn’t wait to come back to the community space.”

Find out more about SRA at Scottish Rural Action