Pitlochry Autumn Festival 2007: Evaluation

The prime purpose of the Autumn Festival was to increase the visitor experience of Pitlochry and Highland Perthshire for the many visitors that come in to the area each year for the Enchanted Forest event. It was also important to demonstrate to the organisers of the Enchanted Forest and the Big Tree Country Committee that Pitlochry and Highland Perthshire should be the permanent home for the Enchanted Forest by increasing the economic impact of their event for Highland Perthshire.

In the audience was C’llr Ian Campbell, Hamish Murray, Chairperson for the Enchanted Forest Steering Group and Jenny McLean of Perthshire Amber. The meeting heard John Swinney MSP’s support for the event.
Jenny McLean gave the meeting a brief report of Perthshire Amber's activities and plans for 2008. Hamish Murray thanked the organisers of the Pitlochry Autumn Festival for their magnificent work in getting the festival off to such a flying start.

Karen Aycan, Treasurer for the Enchanted Forest Pitlochry Group, reported that over a hundred businesses had backed the event, raising in excess of £27,000 worth of support in kind and money. She told the meeting of the huge gratitude expressed to all the businesses that supported the event so enthusiastically.
The festival itself consisted of a very successful opening night street festival with a dozen different acts busking along Pitlochry’s main street. Every night including the opening night there were ghost tours, a Halloween Marquee with free apple dooking and sticky doughnut fun, charity & craft stalls, story telling and two sets of musicians playing at either end of Pitlochry’s main street.
There was also a hugely successful pumpkin treasure hunt, where people hunted for pumpkins in shops and restaurants. In addition to this there was Silly McB the clown on certain nights, a Halloween Fancy Dress competition for kids, and an Enchanted Forest poster competition for Pitlochry High School Primary department.

Clare Pinchbeck, secretary of the Enchanted Forest Pitlochry Group that organised the event said, “If you consider that we started organising all this in May, during the main tourist season when most of us business people are up to our necks running our own businesses, we have achieved a huge amount.” She continued, “We are really pleased at how it all went. I was on the street meeting and greeting people at the front of the Enchanted Forest departure point and heard the many many positive comments that people had to make about all the events we were running in the town.”

The businesses also learnt that stands promoting the Pitlochry Autumn Festival along with the Enchanted Forest were at the Etape Caledonia Cycle race, four days of the Blair Horse Trials, and the Pitlochry Highland Games. An additional 13,000 leaflets over and above that which would normally be distributed by the Enchanted Forest organisers were distributed to various venues, primarily in the Pitlochry area, and a 32 page full colour brochure promoting Pitlochry and Highland Perthshire was produced and distributed to those attending the event.
A web site www.pitlochryautumnfestival.co.uk was put up to promote the activities which yielded 3,299 brochure downloads off the web site. A further 723 brochures were mailed out to people who had supplied their details via the web site.