This January, the Highlands and Islands celebrate the first birthday of a cutting-edge project - thebooth - that is helping cultural organisations across the region to reach new audiences locally and around the globe.

Thebooth pilot ticketing project launched its website, www.thebooth.co.uk, on 14th January 2005, to allow any event promoter - from village halls to festivals, conference organisers to sports teams, and theatre companies to visitor attractions - to sell tickets online.

On its first day of operation, thebooth website sold over 700 tickets.  It was an exceptional first day of trading, as Nick Fearne, promoter of the sell-out Royal Shakespeare Company shows in Forres, recalls: "Thebooth offices were like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise!”

Since then, thebooth has sold over 15,000 tickets to customers across the globe, representing over a quarter of a million pounds of ticket sales for the cultural sector of the Highlands and Islands.  Thebooth now serves over sixty promoters in 145 venues across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and beyond.

These figures are taken from a new evaluation study into thebooth pilot project, which was produced to coincide with the first birthday of the ticket service.  The report demonstrates that the pilot project, which has been developed and managed by HI~Arts, the arts development agency for the Highlands and Islands, has already had a remarkable impact across the region, attracting new and tourist audiences to regional events.

Eoghan Carmichael, a promoter for two venues in rural Lochaber, summed up his experience of the project: “Thebooth has proved popular with locals who may not get a chance to visit regular ticket outlets, and with visitors to the area who book tickets in advance of their holiday.  It has helped us develop a wider audience base and is also proving increasingly popular with regular visitors who now use the facility whenever they purchase tickets.”

The ticketing system developed for thebooth is considered to be unique in Europe, and has been developed with Skye based IT company, Sitekit Solutions Ltd, in partnership with Box Office system specialists Blackbaud Europe Ltd.  It is an easy-to-use service, both for the promoter and the ticket buyer.

Whilst the pilot project will be completed this autumn, there are already plans underway to extend the role of thebooth into 2007, the Scottish Year Highland Culture, and beyond.

Marcus Wilson of HI~Arts explains: "Thebooth is a very cost effective service.  It has the potential to serve hundreds of small scale and voluntary event promoters across the Highlands and Islands and other parts of rural Scotland for about the same cost as running a single theatre's box office operation."

Thebooth ticketing pilot project is supported by the Highlands & Islands Enterprise, the Scottish Arts Council Lottery Fund and the European Regional Development Fund.

Thebooth evaluation report can be downloaded here.