December 2023: Our Christmas Message

A seasonal message from all at St Margaret’s.

As Christmas approaches we have an opportunity to look back on another amazing year.  As many of you know, our ambition has been to grow our reputation as a unique high quality venue with enthusiastic and appreciative audiences, and in 2023 we have hosted some outstanding events – a good number filled to capacity.  What’s been noticeable this year is that we are increasingly being approached by artists and agents looking to perform in St Margaret’s – which is a great challenge for our Programming Group to have!

We have run two successful festivals – the Folk Festival in October and the recent Festival de Noel (if you missed the concert you can still view via our website. It’s well worthy a watch!)  In addition, we are working collaboratively with the Fife Arms Hotel around their programme and this year we hosted the main five events of the Literary Festival and the two main events of their pilot Fashion Festival. 

We continue to look to diversify our income streams, for example we hosted four weddings in October.

The long-term issues with the building – most acute being the repairs needed to the tower – are, and will be, a significant challenge over the next few years. We are looking to strengthen our partnership with Historic Churches Scotland, the owners of the building.

In the short term we are making changes which improve the efficiency of St Margaret’s – the container at the side of the building has given us much more flexibility in usage of space and the stage heating has improved conditions for our performers (although not a total solution).

We received planning permission in January to erect an amenity block on the south side (accessible from the Lightfoot Aisle door). We kicked off a £50k fundraising campaign and we are now at just over half that total (£27k) so we hope we will see the completion in Spring next year. “Windswept”, our fundraising event at Queen’s Cross in Aberdeen last month, raised £7k but also boosted the profile of our project and gained us a number of new Friends.

Looking forward to next year – look at the website – but we promise to continue to present an exciting and high quality programme.. Our planning groups for the Folk Festival and Festival de Noel have already met! 

We are also working on a collaboration with Aberdeen City Music School and we hope in June to have a weekend of music in Braemar with their young up and coming performers in different music genres. We also hope to welcome ‘Big Noise’ at Easter supported by the Cairngorms Trust. There is also some early discussion with the BBC re a broadcast from St Margaret’s. So, much to look forward to!

We wish to thank and pay tribute to everyone for their support. From our many hard-working volunteers to our audiences and Friends. All of you play an invaluable role in helping us maintain and use the building for therbenefit of the community as a whole and much wider afield

To you all we wish you a great festive period and all the best for 2024.

The St Margaret’s Team