A record number of early bird tickets sold out in a record time of 6hrs on Friday 5th December just days following the festival being hailed the ‘Best Small Event’ at the prestigious UK Event Awards in London.
TMF is proving to be one of Scotland’s most successful annual events having been awarded a commendation for ‘Best Small Festival’ at the Scottish event awards (having held the title in both 2013 and 2012) and been shortlisted at the Scots Trad Music Awards (ceremony 13th December). In 2013 organisers walked away with ‘Best Cultural Event’ at the Highlands and Islands Tourism Awards and ‘Best Cultural Event in Scotland’ at the Thistle Awards.
The festival has sold out each year since its inception in 2010 and the early bird release for 2015 proved a greater demand than ever before.
TMF has been praised for its positive impact upon the local Tiree community with the 2014 economic impact report showing that 94.2% of the attendees were visitors to Tiree and on the island as a direct result of the music festival. The report also showed that three in ten respondents were newcomers to the island, which confirms that the Tiree Music Festival continues to play an important role in attracting new visitors to Tiree.
The total economic impact of the Tiree Music Festival was £634,971 – an overall increase of 29% on the 2013 figure.
Festival Director Stewart MacLennan, who travelled to London for the final of the UK Event Awards said: “We are overwhelmed to have won this award. The judge’s feedback on our application was that the overwhelming positive impact the festival has on Tiree was commendable which makes it mean even more .When we started TMF six years ago it was with the intention to attract people to Tiree and give Islanders a great festival experience.
“We knew demand would be high for early bird tickets due to the number or emails and requests, however to sell out 750 tickets in 6 hours was much quicker than we imagined!”
“It was also great that we made these tickets available to the local community first at our annual Community AGM and we’d like to thank all those who braved the horrible weather to attend last Thursday.”
More tickets for TMF2015 will be released in the New Year, to make sure you stay up to date with the latest news on TMF2015 sign up to the mailing list at tireemusicfestival.co.uk .