We have a fabulous line up of live performers on our music stages and are pleased to welcome back Safer by Sound, providing amazing entertainment from members of

their groups supporting people recovering from addiction through music and drama.

Duncan Place are back on site with family friendly activities, storytelling and games, as well as the Festival Fringe and giving people of all ages the opportunity to try their hand at hula hooping, juggling, acrobatics and more, or if you prefer the quieter life, why not check out Kadampa Meditation? Taylors funfair are returning to Leith Links during gala weekend, and we have a large diverse number of stalls, including hot food, by new and many returning traders and local charities.

Gala day is followed by a week of events and activities, from guided walks, music nights, exhibitions, plays, open days and more, before we close the main festival week with our iconic Pageant and Community Tattoo on the 21st June. We expect this year’s event to be especially exciting, given that we were rained off last year.

But lets talk about the team behind the festival. We currently have five board members, all of whom live in Leith and care deeply about our community. In addition we have a part time paid freelance festival coordinator post for six months, currently held by local musician and professional events planner, Carrie Beattie, with her very able assistant Antonio Pan.

The seven of us work together to plan, organise and run the festival each year. This means we rely heavily on our volunteers, local community collaborators and sponsorship from the wider community. Ideally we would have around seven or eight board members, to enable us to do more throughout the year, and bring additional activities to the festival events and the programme.

We have been advertising for the last couple of years with Volunteer Edinburgh with our long-time designer Darren Smith, and then local Mike Doherty joining us in the past few years, but at the same time, long standing board members Rita Crombie and Phil Attridge stood down, leaving our overall number the same. While we all come to Leith Festival with great ideas and would love to expand our activities and events, the reality is that with such a small team, our capacity is stretched to just delivering the core festival events of gala day and the pageant and tattoo, and pulling together events and the printed programme. All of us have other important commitments which we have to balance alongside the regular work we do to keep Leith Festival going.

Some of the things the board would like to do, but have not had the capacity, or funding, to make happen are:

An annual Leith’s Got Talent event.

Carols in the Kirkgate with local schools.

Creating a youth board to safeguard the future legacy of Leith Festival.

Collaborating with local artists and art groups to support development of community workshops culminating in events held during Leith Festival and performed by local people.

Working with schools to hold young people activities during festival week, such as the poster competition that was held for many years.

Relaunching the Elizabeth Wardlaw Memorial award (known as the crocus) as a Community Hero Award or similar, recognising people in the community who have gone above and beyond.

If you would be interested in making any of the above happen, or have other ideas that you would like to bring to Leith Festival and actively take a lead on we would love to hear from you!

Recruiting board members with relevant skills, knowledge and experience is always challenging for any charity. Leith Festival has a robust but informal process in place to ensure that we meet the governance requirements of a registered charity.

In return we look for a commitment to attending regular meetings, working as a team and having a hands-on approach to getting things done. There is also opportunity to provide board support if being a full board member is not what you want.

Volunteering in the local community can give people a sense of purpose and provide a way for people who want to ‘give back’ to support others in their community. Its also a great way to meet new people.

So to sum up, please consider whether you are in a position to support local organisations you care about – we would love that to be Leith Festival – check out our website for ways you can get involved or support us: www.leithfestival.com/support-us.

Barbara Kerr, Vice Chair, Leith Festival Association ltd